Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | The Fligbt into Egypt (mk01) | Rubens-s son | Workshop Jupiter and Merkur in Philemon | The Landing of Marie de-Medici at Marseille | Portrait of Yissabale |
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William Henry Knight
(26 September 1823 - 31 July 1863) was an English portrait and genre painter. Knight was born in Newbury, Berkshire where his father, John Knight, was a schoolmaster. He was to become a solicitor, but gave up his law studies after two of his paintings were accepted by the annual exhibition of the Society of British Artists. He moved to London in 1855, taking lodgings in Kennington Road, Lambeth, and supporting himself by drawing crayon portraits while studying in the British Museum and in the schools of the Royal Academy.
Grigoriy Soroka
(Russian, real surname Vasilyev. November 27 [O.S. November 15] 1823-April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1864) was a Russian painter, one of the most notable members of Venetsianov school. Soroka was born in Pokrovskoye village (Tver Guberniya), in the family of landowner Milyukov. In 1842-1847 he studied art from Alexey Venetsianov then he was returned to his owner. In 1850s-1860s he resided in his home village. He fell in love with his owners's daughter Lydia but was forcibly married to a serf woman. After the emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, Soroka remained under the serfdom system. He made a formal complaint but it was rejected and he was flogged. Soroka's body was found in the baking room where he had hanged himself. His beloved Lydia poisoned herself soon after.
Louis Michel van Loo
Louis-Michel van Loo (2 March 1707-20 March 1771) was a French painter. He studied under his father, the painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo, at Turin and Rome, and he won a prize at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris in 1725. With his uncle, the painter Charles-Andre van Loo, he went to Rome in 1727 - 1732, and in 1736 he became court painter to Philip V of Spain at Madrid, where he was a founder-member of the Academy in 1752. He returned to Paris in 1753, and painted many portraits of Louis XV of France. In 1765 he succeeded Charles-Andre as director of the special school of the French academy known as the Ecole Royale des Eleves Proteges. In 1766 he made the portrait of the Portuguese statesman Sebastiao de Melo, Marquis of Pombal. Among his brothers were the painters Francois van Loo (1708 - 1732) and Charles-Amedee-Philippe van Loo (1719 - 1795).