1757-1827 British William Blake Galleries William Blake started writing poems as a boy, many of them inspired by religious visions. Apprenticed to an engraver as a young man, Blake learned skills that allowed him to put his poems and drawings together on etchings, and he began to publish his own work. Throughout his life he survived on small commissions, never gaining much attention from the London art world. His paintings were rejected by the public (he was called a lunatic for his imaginative work), but he had a profound influence on Romanticism as a literary movement.   Related Paintings of William Blake :. | The Ancient of Days,frontispiece for Europe,a Prophecy (mk19) | Count Ugolino and his sons in prision | Joseflasst Simeon tie up | The Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding Leviathan (mk47) | Job and his dottrar |
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Pieter de Hooch
1629-1684 Dutch Pieter de Hooch Galleries De Hooch was born in Rotterdam to Hendrick Hendricksz de Hooch, a bricklayer, and Annetge Pieters, a midwife. He was the eldest of five children and outlived all of his siblings. He studied art in Haarlem under the landscape painter, Nicolaes Berchem. Beginning in 1650, he worked as a painter and servant for a linen-merchant and art collector named Justus de la Grange. His service for the merchant required him to accompany him on his travels to The Hague, Leiden, and Delft, to which he eventually moved. It is likely that de Hooch handed over most of his works to la Grange during this period in exchange for board and other benefits, as this was a common commercial arrangement for painters at the time, and a later inventory recorded that la Grange possessed eleven of his paintings. De Hooch was married in Delft in 1654 to Jannetje van der Burch, by whom he fathered seven children. While in Delft, de Hooch is also believed to have learned from the painters Carel Fabritius and Nicolaes Maes, who were both early members of the Delft School. He became a member of the painters' guild of Saint Luke in 1655, and had moved to Amsterdam by 1661. The early work of de Hooch, like most young painters of his time, was mostly composed of scenes of soldiers in stables and taverns, though he used these to develop great skill in light, color, and perspective rather than to explore an interest in the subject matter. After beginning his family in the mid-1650s, he switched his focus to domestic scenes and family portraits. His work showed astute observation of the mundane details of everyday life while also functioning as well-ordered morality tales. These paintings often exhibited a sophisticated and delicate treatment of light similar to those of Vermeer, who lived in Delft at the same time as de Hooch. 19th century art historians had assumed that Vermeer had been influenced by de Hooch's work, but the opposite is now believed.
Emil Barentzen
Emilius Ditlev Bærentzen, usually known as Emil Barentzen, (30 October 1799, Copenhagen - 14 February 1868, Copenhagen) was a Danish portrait painter and lithographer, active during the Golden Age of Danish Painting. Born in Copenhagen on 30 October 1799, Barentzen served an apprenticeship at the pharmacy in Nykobing Sjælland but then travelled to Christiansted on the then Danish island of St. Croix in the West Indies where he worked in one of the government offices. Five years later he returned to Denmark and, after qualifying as a lawyer, moved into painting which until then he had practiced as a hobby. In 1821, he entered the Danish Academy where he studied under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. He was awarded the little silver medal in 1826 and the large silver medal the following year. He soon became one of Copenhagen's most popular portrait painters. His paintings were characterized by an elegant but sober style, free of psychological trimmings in accordance with contemporary practice. One of his most successful works is the portrait of Soren Kirkegaard's fiancee Regine Olsen (1840). In 1837, he began to specialize in lithography with H.L. Danschell who managed his deceased father-in-law's oilcloth factory where stones were used to colour the fabric. This led to the founding of a lithographic company, Emilius Bärentzen & Co.s litografiske Institut, which later became Hoffensberg, Jespersen & Fr. Trap. Bærentzen made lithographs of many of the period's most important figures. He continued to work both as a lithographer and artist until 1866 when he painted the portraint of Cosmus Bræstrup for the Freemasons lodge in Helsingor. He died on 14 February 1868.
Walter Withers
English-born Australian Painter, 1854-1914 was an Australian landscape artist and a member of the Heidelberg School of Australian impressionists. Withers was born at Handsworth, Staffordshire, the son of Edwin Withers. He showed an early desire to paint, but objection was made to this by his father. It is not known what occupation he followed in England, but in 1882 he arrived in Australia with the intention of going on the land. After working for about 18 months on a farm, Withers removed to Melbourne and obtained a position as draughtsman in a firm of printers. He then took up his painting again, and began to exhibit with the Victorian Academy of Arts afterwards merged in the Victorian Artists' Society. In 1887 Withers went to Europe. There he was married to Miss F. Flinn and studied for some months at the Academie Julian, Paris. He returned to Australia with his wife in June 1888 having been commissioned to do black and white work for Messrs Fergusson and Mitchell of Melbourne. His most important work in this way will be found in the illustrations to Edmund Finn's, The Chronicles of Early Melbourne. Withers settled down at first at Kew, a suburb of Melbourne, and then near Heidelberg on the other side of the river Yarra. He became friendly with Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and other leading artists of the period. He began to sell a few pictures, but the collapse of the land boom put an end to his illustrative work. He obtained some work as a drawing and painting master in schools, and in 1891 opened a studio in Collins-street west, where he held his first private exhibition.