1778-1860 Rembrandt Peale Galleries Rembrandt Peale (February 22, 1778 ?C October 3, 1860) was a 19th century American artist that received critical acclaim for his portraits of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Although modern art critics would consider Peale??s artwork as French neoclassical, its dark and stylized characteristics are similar to 15th and 16th century paintings. Rembrandt Peale was born the third of six surviving children (eleven had died) to his mother, Rachel Brewer, and father, Charles Willson Peale in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on February 22, 1778. The father, Charles, also a notable artist, taught each child to paint scenery and portraiture, and Rembrandt was no exception. Charles tutored Rembrandt about the importance of having a strong mind from learning arts and sciences. At the age of eight, Rembrandt discovered drawing, and at thirteen, painted his first known self-portrait. Later on in his life, Rembrandt Peale "often showed this painting to young beginners, to encourage them to go from 'bad' to better..." like his steady progressions to become a successful portraitist. A year after his mother??s death and remarriage of his father, Rembrandt Peale left the school of the arts, thereby applying his time to completing his first ever self-portrait at the age of 13. The canvas illustrates early mastery of a young aspiring artist, seeming very mature. The clothes, however give the notion that Peale over-exaggerated what a 13 year old would look like. This style demonstrates early forms of neoclassicism by the looks of Peale's angel-like hair, the way it waves and curls in such a fashion so as to depict an angel from a general Renaissance artist's works of art. In July of 1787, Charles Willson Peale introduced his son Rembrandt to George Washington, where the young aspirant artist watched his father paint the remarkable figure of the country. In 1795, at the age of 17, Rembrandt painted an aging Washington, though the painter had depicted the politician as far more aged than the original facial characteristics. It did, nevertheless attain praise and Rembrandt had begun his debut. At the age of 20, Rembrandt married 22-year-old Eleanor May Short (1776-1836) at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Philadelphia. During their marriage, Rembrandt and Eleanor had nine children: Rosalba, Eleanor, Sarah Miriam, Michael Angelo, and Emma Clara among them. In 1822, Peale moved to New York City where he embarked on an attempt to paint what he hoped would become the "standard likeness" of Washington. He studied portraits by other artists including John Trumbull, Gilbert Stuart and his own father, as well as his own 1795 picture which had never truly satisfied him. His resulting work Patriae Pater, completed in 1824, depicts Washington through an oval window, and is considered by many to be second only to Gilbert Stuart's iconic Athenaeum painting of the first president. Peale subsequently attempted to capitalize on the success of what quickly became known as his "Porthole" picture. Patriae Pater was purchased by Congress in 1832 and still hangs in the U.S. Capitol. Later on, Peale made over 70 detailed replicas of the same "father of our country", the first President of the United States. Peale continued to paint other noted portraits, such as those of the third president Thomas Jefferson while he was in office (1805), and later on a portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall.  Related Paintings of Rembrandt Peale :. | Holy Family | Tote Pfauen | Biblical Scene | Rembrandt and Saskia in the parable of the Prodigal Son | Selbstportrat |
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Michael Sweerts
Flemish 1618-1664 Michiel Sweerts (September 29, 1618 - 1664), also known as Michael Sweerts, was a Flemish painter of the Baroque period, active in Rome (1645-1656) in the style of the Bamboccianti. The Bamboccianti were known for depicting genre scenes of daily life. Born in Brussels, he arrived in Rome in the mid 1640s, and rapidly moved into the circle of Flemish painters that had arrayed around Pieter van Laer, and that resided near Santa Maria del Popolo. In 1647, he attended meetings of the Accademia di San Luca, although not as a member. By 1659, he had returned to Brussels, where he joined the painter's guild. He appears to have become mentally unstable in his last years. In Amsterdam, he joined the Jesuits as a "lay Brother" rather than a priest, and sailed from Marsaille to the East with a missionary group. Travelling to Jerusalem, and from there to Goa, where after causing tribulations to those around him, he died. Sweerts is an enigmatic and difficult artist to categorize, since he seems to have absorbed a variety of influences to create an eclectic hybrid that can be described as a Netherlandish genre adaptation of an early tenebrist styles: a blend of Vermeer's genre of painting and Caravaggio-influenced full bodied figures.
Mortimer Menpes
British Painter, 1855-1939 was a war artist and engraver, author, printmaker and illustrator. Menpes was born at Port Adelaide on 22 February 1855, the second son of property developer James Menpes, who with his wife, Ann, had settled in Australia in 1839. Educated at a private school, he attended classes at the Adelaide school of design, but his formal art training began at the South Kensington School of Art in 1878, after his family had moved back to England in 1875. Edward Poynter was a fellow student at the school. Menpes first exhibited at a Royal Academy exhibition in 1880. Over the following 20 years 35 of his paintings and etchings appeared at the Academy. He set off on a sketching tour of Brittany in 1880 and thereby met James McNeill Whistler, becoming his pupil and at one stage sharing a flat with him at Cheyne Walk on the Embankment in London. Here he was taught etching by Whistler, whose influence, together with that of Japanese design, is evident in his later work. His 1887 trip to Japan led to his first one-man exhibition at Dowdeswell's Gallery (1878-1912) in London. Menpes bought a property at 25 Cadogan Gardens in Sloane Square in 1888 and decorated it in the Japanese style. Whistler and Menpes quarreled in 1888 over the interior design of the house, which Whistler felt was a brazen copying of his own ideas. The house was sold in 1900, and Menpes retired to Kent. In 1900, after the outbreak of the Boer War, Menpes was sent to South Africa as a war artist for the weekly Black and White. With the war's end in 1902 he travelled widely, visiting Burma, Egypt, France, India, Italy, Japan, Kashmir, Mexico, Morocco, and Spain and producing illustrated books of those countries. His book on the Delhi Darbar of illustrated Curzon's grand spectacle of 1903. He married Rosa Mary Grosse in London in 1875. She too, was from Australia and died 23 August 1936. They produced a son, Mortimer James (b. 1879) and two daughters, Rose Maud Goodwin and Dorothy Whistler. Dorothy, Whistler's godchild, married a Mr. Flower and died in Minehead in July 1973 aged 89.