1848-1871 Severin Roesen (ca. 1815-1872) is a painter known for his abundant fruit and flower still lifes and is today recognized as one of the major American still-life painters of the mid-nineteenth century. Born in Cologne, in Germany, he emigrated to the United States in 1848. While Roesen's paintings reveal a meticulous attention to detail in their precise arrangements and close brushwork, his subject matter, even down to specific motifs, did not change throughout his career. Sometimes he made near copies of paintings, but usually he merely rearranged and reassembled stock elements. Numerous items in Fruit and Wine Glass, for example, also appear in other paintings. The footed desert plate full of strawberries is a common motif. The pilsner glass, sometimes accompanied by an open bottle of champagne, is interchangeable with a wine goblet filled with lemonade used elsewhere. The glass is nearly always placed at the lower left edge of the painting; a halved lemon often appears nearby. Branches full of grapes arranged from lower left to upper right provide the composition with a graceful S-curve and subtly lead the viewer's eye over the entire display. Here the composition is balanced by light and dark grapes at either side and filled in by scattered raspberries, cherries, peaches, apples, pears, and apricots. Many of these compositional elements, if not the items depicted, were derived from seventeenth-century Dutch still life paintings by such artists as Jan van Huysem.  Related Paintings of Severin Roesen :. | Nature's Bounty | Still Life with a Basket of Fruit | A Still Life with Grapes | Still life with Strawberries | Still life with Strawberries |
Related Artists:
Henri Evenepoel
Belgian, 1872-1899 was a Belgian artist whose most important works are associated with Fauvism. He first studied art in Brussels at the Acad??mie des Beaux-Arts between 1889 and 1890, and entered Paris's Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1892. Evenepoel entered the atelier of Gustave Moreau in 1893, which put him in contact with Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. The artist debuted a portrait of his cousin (Louise in Mourning) at the 1894 Salon des Artistes Français. He showed four portraits at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in 1895 and continued to exhibit there until his death. His first solo exhibition came at the Brussels Cercle Artistique (December 1897 C January 1898). Family and friends were the artist's preferred subjects; his full-length portraits, often against a neutral background, show the influence of Edouard Manet and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. His Parisian scenes were influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jean-Louis Forain.
Prentice, Levi Wells
American, 1850-1935
Luis Melendez
1716-80 He assisted his father, artist Francisco Melendez, until 1737, when he began studying with Lewis-Michel Vanloo, the court painter to Philip V of France. Although accepted (1745) into the Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts, he was expelled after his father denounced the academy in a dispute over a royal competition. After traveling throughout Italy, he returned to work for his father as an illustrator of choirbooks.