Born 1606, Died 1669.One of the great Dutch painters and printmakers of the 17th century, Rembrandt van Rijn is best known for his expressive use of light and shadow (also called chiaroscuro) in his many portraits. Raised in Leiden, he studied with Pieter Lastman (1583-1633) in Amsterdam, then returned to Leiden around 1625 and set up shop as a teacher and portrait artist. Sometime between 1630 and 1632 Rembrandt relocated to Amsterdam, where he spent the rest of his career. Though he had his detractors (some of whom considered him coarse and "low born"), Rembrandt was successful and famous during his lifetime, though he fell on financial hard times in his later years. He was a master printer and produced hundreds of group portraits and historical paintings, including The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp (1632), The Military Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (1642) and Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1653). His portraits -- including a lifelong trail of intriguing and rather frank self-portraits -- reveal his interest in psychological study and continue to be admired as landmarks in Western art. The Military Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq is also known as "The Night Watch" because it was thought the painting depicted a nighttime scene. When the painting was cleaned in the 1940s it became obvious that it depicted a daytime scene... He married Saskia van Ulenburgh (also Uylenburgh) in 1634. Related Paintings of REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van Rijn :. | The Virgin of Sorrow | Self-Portrait (mk330 | nattvakten | The Raising of Lazarus | Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, | Related Artists:
Francesco TrainiItalian Byzantine Style Painter, active 1321-1363
Johan Vilhelm Gertner (10 March 1818 - 28 March 1871) was a Danish painter, best known for his portraiture. One of the last students of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, who was known as the father of the Golden Age of Danish Painting, Gertner belonged to the tail end of the Golden Age, a period during which Danish art moved towards a more realistic style, relying on inspiration both from French Realism and emerging photographic techniques.
Gertner was born on 10 March 1818 to a craftsman at the Holmen naval base. He attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1831 to 1837 where he was one of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, known as the farther of Goldn Age of Danish Painting. Eckersberg taught him a naturalistic approach to painting, but Gertner went much further with inspiration from French art and the emerging techniques of photography.
His virtuosity in producing almost photographically precise portraits impressed many; in particular, his ability to reproduce textures and materials e crisp silk dresses, lustrous medals and jewellery, dark mahogany furniture, silky wallpapers, and soft carpets e won him much acclaim. Others, such as the influential art historian and critic Niels Lauritz Høyen, who opposed any foreign influence on Danish painting, disapproved of his style, preferring more sincere and sensitive portrayals. He was a professor at the Academy from 1858.
Frederick Arthur BridgmanAmerican Painter, 1847-1928
was an American artist, born in Tuskegee, Alabama. An American Southerner, born in Tuskeegee, Alabama, the son of a physician, Bridgman would become one of the United States' most well-known and well-regarded painters and become known as one of the world's most talented "Orientalist" painters. He began as a draughtsman in New York City, for the American Bank Note Company in 1864-1865, and studied art in the same years at the Brooklyn Art Association and at the National Academy of Design; but he went to Paris in 1866 and became a pupil of Jean-Leon Gerôme. Paris then became his headquarters. A trip to Egypt in 1873-1874 resulted in pictures of the East that attracted immediate attention, and his large and important composition, The Funeral Procession of a Mummy on the Nile, in the Paris Salon (1877), bought by James Gordon Bennett, brought him the Cross of the Legion of Honor. Other paintings by him were An American Circus in Normandy, Procession of the Bull Apis (now in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and a Rumanian Lady (in the Temple collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). In 1867, Bridgman entered the studio of the noted academic painter Jean-Leon Gerôme (1824-1904), where he was deeply influenced by Gerôme's precise draftsmanship, smooth finishes, and concern for Middle-Eastern themes. (Bridgman would even become known as "the American Gerôme.") No mere imitator, however, Bridgman would later adopt a more naturalistic aesthetic, emphasizing bright colors and painterly brushwork. Bridgman made his first trip to North Africa between 1872 and 1874, dividing his time between Algeria and Egypt. There he executed approximately three hundred sketches, which became the source material for several later oil paintings. Additional visits to the region throughout the 1870s and 1880s allowed him to amass a collection of costumes, architectural pieces, and objets d'art, which often appear in his paintings. (Amusingly, John Singer Sargent noted that Bridgman's overstuffed studio, along with the Eiffel Tower, were Paris's must-see attractions.) Though Bridgman maintained a lifelong connection to France, his popularity in America never waned. Indeed, in 1890, the artist had a one-man show of over 400 pictures in New York's 5th Avenue galleries. When the show moved to Chicago's Art Institute, it contained only 300 works - testimony to the high number of sales Bridgman had made.