1586-1667 Dutch Thomas De Keyser Gallery De Keyser excelled as a portrait painter, and was the most in-demand portrait painter in the Netherlands until the 1630s, when Rembrandt eclipsed him in popularity. Rembrandt was influenced by his work, and many of de Keyser's paintings were later falsely attributed to Rembrandt. His portraiture is full of character and masterly in handling, and often distinguished by a rich golden glow of color and Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro. Some of his portraits are life-size, but the artist generally preferred to keep them on a considerably smaller scale, like the famous Four Amsterdam burgomasters assembled to receive Marie de Medici in 1638, now on display at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. In addition to portraits, he also executed some historical and mythological pictures, such as the Theseus and Ariadne in the Amsterdam town hall, now the Royal Palace. De Keyser also worked as an architect. From 1662 until his death in 1667 he oversaw construction of the new Amsterdam town hall, now Royal Palace. De Keyser was a son of the architect and sculptor Hendrik de Keyser. We have no definite knowledge of his training, and but scant information as to the course of his life. Aert Pietersz, Cornelis vander Voort, Werner van Valckert and Nicolas Elias are accredited by different authorities with having developed his talent. In the 1640s, de Keyser received very few painting commissions, and was forced to seek income elsewhere. He owned a basalt business from 1640 until 1654, when he returned to painting. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has the largest collection of paintings by de Keyser. His work can also be seen at the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and the National Gallery in London, among others. The Stedelijk Museum modern art museum in Amsterdam carries a statue of de Keyser on its facade. A street in Enschede is named for him. A contemporary namesake of the painter was Thomas de Keyser (Utrecht, 1597-1651), an actor and nephew of Hendrick de Keyser.  Related Paintings of Thomas De Keyser :. | The company of Captain Allaert Cloeck and Lieutenant Lucas Jacobsz Rotgans | Pieter Schout | The Burgomasters of Amsterdam Gathered fro the Arrival of Queen Marie des Medicis of France | A Lady | Portrait of a Man |
Related Artists:
Willem van Nieulandt
(1584-1635) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver from Antwerp. His father Adrien van Nieulandt the elder was born to a family of artists of Flemish origin from Antwerp. He probably moved with his family to Amsterdam in 1589 after the Siege of Antwerp, because they were Protestants. His three sons Willem van Nieulandt II (named for his uncle, also a painter), Adriaen van Nieulandt the younger, and Jacob van Nieulandt all became painters. According to Houbraken, Willem was a pupil of Roelant Savery in Amsterdam, and he left him to travel to Rome, where he became a student of Paulus Bril. He specialized in painting artistic ruins of monuments, arches, and temples, many of which he then engraved himself. He returned to Amsterdam (via Antwerp) in 1607, and became a respected poet there as well as Italianate painter.
Antoine Le Nain
French Baroque Era Painter, ca.1600-1648,The three were born in Laon (Mathieu in 1607; Antoine and Louis were originally believed to have been born in 1588 and 1593, respectively, but those dates have since been disputed: they may have instead been born just before and just after 1600), and by 1630, all three lived in Paris. Because of the remarkable similarity of their styles of painting and the difficulty of distinguishing works by each brother (they signed their paintings only with their surname, and many may have been collaborations), they are commonly referred to as a single entity, Le Nain. Louis is usually credited with the best-known of their paintings, a series of scenes depicting peasant life. These genre paintings are often noted for being remarkably literal, yet sympathetic; the subjects are never grotesque or seem ridiculed. There remains some question, however, as to whether some of the assumed "peasants" were truly from the rural class--many seem to be simply the bourgeois at leisure in the country. The brothers also produced miniatures (mainly attributed to Antoine) and portraits (attributed to Mathieu). Mathieu became the official painter of Paris in 1633, and was made a chevalier. Antoine and Louis died in 1648. Mathieu lived until 1677. The Le Nain paintings had a revival in the 1840s and, thanks to the exertions of Champfleury, made their appearance on the walls of the Louvre in 1848.
Henry Bacon
1839-1922 Henry Bacon Gallery Henry Bacon was born in Watseka, Illinois to father civil engineer Henry Bacon and mother Elizabeth Kelton Bacon, both of Massachusetts. Bacon was largely raised in Wilmington, N.C., where his father settled down and served as a government engineer in charge of the Cape Fear River improvements. At age 15, Henry Bacon was sent north to Boston's Chauncey Hall School. In 1884 he matriculated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but left within a year to launch an architectural career in the office of Chamberlin & Whidden in Boston as a draftsman. Bacon was soon hired into the office of famed McKim, Mead & White in New York City, the best-known American architectural firm of its time. While at McKim, Mead & White (MMW), Bacon won, in 1889, the Rotch Traveling Scholarship for architectural students, which gave him two years of study and travel in Europe, learning and drawing details of Roman and Greek architecture as far afield as Turkey, where he met his future wife, Laura Florence Calvert, daughter of a British Consul. He traveled with another fellowship student, Albert Kahn who would become a leading industrial architect. Returning to the U.S. he spent a few more years with his mentor, McKim, working on projects like the Rhode Island State House in Providence, Rhode Island, and serving as McKim's personal representative in Chicago during the World's Fair in Chicago, where MMW was at work designing certain buildings for the World's Fair. In 1897, Bacon left the office of McKim, Mead & White (MMW) to found, with a younger MMW architect James Brite, a new partnership Brite and Bacon Architects, where Brite was in charge of financial, administrative, and contracting aspects of the partnership, while Henry Bacon was in charge of the architectural design and construction. The partnership immediately won the competition for the Jersey City Public Library, the Hall of History for the American University at Washington, DC, and thereafter built a good number of public buildings and a small number of private residences. The partnership was selected to build two private residences in 1897, the "La Fetra Mansion" in Summit, New Jersey, and a three-story Georgian mansion "Laurel Hill" in Columbia, NC. The "La Fetra Mansion" was completed by the partnership sometime during 1899 to 1900, and published in the September 1901 issue of The Architecture, the pre-eminent architectural professional journal of its time. The LeFetra Mansion fully exhibits Bacon's Greek and Roman architectural predilections, his simple, austere, elegant lines, and his skill in dimensions and proportions that give rise to a feeling of the presence of divine spirituality, peaceful tranquility, and a sense of divine protection. While the La Fetra Mansion in Summit, NJ bears Bacon's signature style, the Georgian Mansion "Laurel Hill" was most probably designed by Brite.