1508-1575 Flemish Pieter Aertsen Galleries Dutch painter and draughtsman, active also in the southern Netherlands. He probably trained in his native Amsterdam but early on moved to Antwerp, where he enrolled in the Guild of St Luke as a master in 1535. In 1542 he was granted citizenship of the city. Among his pupils in Antwerp were Johannes Stradanus and later Joachim Beuckelaer, a cousin of the artist wife and his most loyal follower. The earliest known work by Aertsen is a triptych with the Crucifixion (c. 1545-6; Antwerp, Maagdenhuismus.) for the van den Biest Almshouse in Antwerp. From 1550 Aertsen development can be traced through a large number of signed and dated paintings. Religious works, mostly intended for churches, must have formed an important part of Aertsen output. His early paintings seem to have been strongly influenced by other Antwerp artists, as can be seen in the van den Biest triptych, where the figures are close to those in Jan Sanders van Hemessen background scenes. Van Hemessen influence is also strong in the pair of triptychs showing the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin and the Seven Joys of the Virgin (the latter dated 1554; both Zoutleeuw, St Leonard).   Related Paintings of Pieter Aertsen :. | Vanitas still-life in the background Christ in the House of Mary and Martha | The Cook | Apostles Peter and John by Pieter Aertsen | Market Scene (detail) | The Egg Dance |
Related Artists:
George Bellows
1882-1925 Growing prestige as a painter brought changes in his life and work. Though he continued his earlier themes, Bellows also began to receive portrait commissions, as well as social invitations, from New York's wealthy elite. Additionally, he followed Henri's lead and began to summer in Maine, painting seascapes on Monhegan and Matinicus islands. At the same time, the always socially conscious Bellows also associated with a group of radical artists and activists called "the Lyrical Left", who tended towards anarchism in their extreme advocacy of individual rights. He taught at the first Modern School in New York City (as did his mentor, Henri), and served on the editorial board of the socialist journal, The Masses, to which he contributed many drawings and prints beginning in 1911. However, he was often at odds with the other contributors because of his belief that artistic freedom should trump any ideological editorial policy. Bellows also notably dissented from this circle in his very public support of U.S. intervention in World War I. In 1918, he created a series of lithographs and paintings that graphically depicted the atrocities committed by Germany during its invasion of Belgium. Notable among these was The Germans Arrive, which was based on an actual account and gruesomely illustrated a German soldier restraining a Belgian teen whose hands had just been severed. However, his work was also highly critical of the domestic censorship and persecution of anti-war dissenters conducted by the U.S. government under the Espionage Act.
ANGUISSOLA Sofonisba
Italian Mannerist Painter, 1532-1625 The best known of the sisters, she was trained, with Elena, by Campi and Gatti. Most of Vasari's account of his visit to the Anguissola family is devoted to Sofonisba, about whom he wrote: 'Anguissola has shown greater application and better grace than any other woman of our age in her endeavours at drawing; she has thus succeeded not only in drawing, colouring and painting from nature, and copying excellently from others, but by herself has created rare and very beautiful paintings'. Sofonisba's privileged background was unusual among woman artists of the 16th century, most of whom, like Lavinia Fontana (see FONTANA (ii),(2)), FEDE GALIZIA and Barbara Longhi (see LONGHI (i), (3)), were daughters of painters. Her social class did not, however, enable her to transcend the constraints of her sex. Without the possibility of studying anatomy, or drawing from life, she could not undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for large-scale religious or history paintings. She turned instead to the models accessible to her, exploring a new type of portraiture with sitters in informal domestic settings. The influence of Campi, whose reputation was based on portraiture, is evident in her early works, such as the Self-portrait (Florence, Uffizi). Her work was allied to the worldly tradition of Cremona, much influenced by the art of Parma and Mantua, in which even religious works were imbued with extreme delicacy and charm. From Gatti she seems to have absorbed elements reminiscent of Correggio, beginning a trend that became marked in Cremonese painting of the late 16th century. This new direction is reflected in Lucia, Minerva and Europa Anguissola Playing Chess (1555; Poznan, N. Mus.) in which portraiture merges into a quasi-genre scene, a characteristic derived from Brescian models.
Le Sidaner Henri
Ile Maurice 1862-Versailles,1939 was an impressionist painter born to a French family in Port Louis, Mauritius. In 1870 he and his family settled in Dunkirk. Le Sidaner received most of his tutelage from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the instruction of Alexandre Cabanel but later broke away due to artistic differences. He traveled extensively throughout France and also visited many cities around the globe such as London, New York, Venice and Paris as well as some small villages throughout Europe. Le Sidaner exhibited at the Salon, the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris and the Goupil Gallery in London. He lived in Gerberoy, France. Le Sidaner's work was referenced in Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time.