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 :. | Die Blute Frankreichs unter der Regentschaft Marias von Medici, Skizze | Praying Hands | The Adoration of the Magi | The Peaceful Reign of King Fames i (mk01) | The Marriage of Henri IV of France and Marie de Medicis |
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Sir Thomas Lawrence
1769-1830 British Sir Thomas Lawrence Galleries was a notable English painter, mostly of portraits. He was born in Bristol. His father was an innkeeper, first at Bristol and afterwards at Devizes, and at the age of six Lawrence was already being shown off to the guests of the Bear as an infant prodigy who could sketch their likenesses and declaim speeches from Milton. In 1779 the elder Lawrence had to leave Devizes, having failed in business and Thomas's precocious talent began to be the main source of the family's income; he had gained a reputation along the Bath road. His debut as a crayon portrait painter was made at Oxford, where he was well patronized, and in 1782 the family settled in Bath, where the young artist soon found himself fully employed in taking crayon likenesses of fashionable people at a guinea or a guinea and a half a head. In 1784 he gained the prize and silver-gilt palette of the Society of Arts for a crayon drawing after Raphael's "Transfiguration," and presently beginning to paint in oil.
Joseph-Desire Court
a painter of historical subjects and portraits, was born at Rouen in 1797. He became a pupil at the École des Beaux-Arts under Gros, and after carrying off the principal honours there pursued his studies still further at Rome. High expectations were formed of him when he exhibited in 1827 'The Death of Caesar,' a work manifesting earnest thought, and a conscientious handling of the facts of history. This is now preserved in the Louvre. Having shown himself in this and other works a vigorous painter, capable of seizing a subject with a masterly grasp, and having also in the region of portrait painting proved himself an artist of no common merit, he eventually dissipated his talents in the production of a series of empty official pictures painted by order of Louis Philippe. He died in Paris in 1865. The Bordeaux Museum has a portrait of Henri Fonfrede by him; that of Lyons, a 'Scene in the Deluge'; that of Rouen,
Jaume Huguet
Spanish Early Renaissance Painter, C.1415-1492