Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.  Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | Poppies and Butterflies (nn04) | L'Arlesienne (nn04) | Field with Ploughman and Mill (nn04) | Sunflowers | Landscape at Dusk |
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Jan van Huijsum
also spelled Huijsum, (April 15, 1682, Amsterdam - February 8, 1749, Amsterdam) was a Dutch painter. He was the brother of Jacob van Huysum, the son of the flower painter Justus van Huysum, and the grandson of Jan van Huysum I, who is said to have been expeditious in decorating doorways, screens and vases. A picture by Justus is preserved in the gallery of Brunswick, representing "Orpheus and the Beasts in a wooded landscape", and here we have some explanation of his son's fondness for landscapes of a conventional and Arcadian kind; for Jan van Huysum, though skilled as a painter of still life, believed himself to possess the genius of a landscape painter. Half his pictures in public galleries are landscapes, views of imaginary lakes and harbours with impossible ruins and classic edifices, and woods of tall and motionless trees-the whole very glossy and smooth, and entirely lifeless. The earliest dated work of this kind is that of 1717, in the Louvre, a grove with maidens culling flowers near a tomb, ruins of a portico, and a distant palace on the shores of a lake bounded by mountains. Some of the finest of van Huysum's fruit and flower pieces have been in English private collections: those of 1723 in the earl of Ellesmere's gallery, others of 1730-1732 in the collections of Hope and Ashburton. One of the best examples is now in the National Gallery, London (1736-1737). No public museum has finer and more numerous specimens than the Louvre, which boasts of four landscapes and six panels with still life; then come Berlin and Amsterdam with four fruit and flower pieces; then St Petersburg, Munich, Hanover, Dresden, the Hague, Brunswick, Vienna, Carlsruhe, Boston and Copenhagen.
queen victoria
Born: 24 May 1819 Birthplace: London, England Died: 22 January 1901 (cerebral hemorrhage) Best Known As: The queen who reigned for 64 years
Hendrik Willem Mesdag
Hendrik Willem Mesdag was born on February 23, 1831 in Groningen. His father, a merchant and banker, was an amateur painter who saw to it that his two sons were also educated in the art of painting. He was a Dutch marine painter. He was born in Groningen, the son of the banker Klaas Mesdag and his wife Johanna Wilhelmina van Giffen. Mesdag was encouraged by his father, an amateur painter, to study art. He married Sina van Houten in 1856, and when they inherited a fortune from her father, Mesdag retired from banking to pursue a career as a painter. He studied in Brussels with Willem Roelofs and in 1868 moved to The Hague to paint the sea. In 1870 he exhibited at the Paris Salon and won the gold medal for The Breakers of the North Sea. Preparations for departureIn 1880 he received a commission from a Belgian company to paint a panorama giving a view over the village of Scheveningen on the North Sea coast near The Hague .