Dutch Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1472-1533
North Netherlandish painter, designer and woodcutter. He was the brother of Cornelis Buys I ( fl 1490-1524), who is usually identified as the MASTER OF ALKMAAR (see MASTERS, ANONYMOUS, AND MONOGRAMMISTS, Related Paintings of CORNELISZ VAN OOSTSANEN, Jacob :. | The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine dfg | Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi fd | Man of Sorrows dfg | Deposition from the Cross fdg | Crucifixion with Donors and Saints fdg | Related Artists:
Charles Wilson Peale1741-1827
Charles Wilson Peale Galleries
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraitures, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. Friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for two years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1777, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale painted in the trompe l'oeil style,[1] and was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington ever sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and there would be six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full length portrait of "Washington at Princeton" from 1779 sold for $21.3 million dollars - setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, and was later renamed the Peale Museum.
This museum is considered the first. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. Most notably, the museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and it was the first to display North American mammoth bones.
The display of the mammoth bones entered Peale into a long standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these mammoths (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Association.
The museum would eventually fail in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
BRAKENBURG, RichardDutch painter (b. 1650, Haarlem, d. 1702, Haarlem)
Gaudenzio Ferrari1741-1546
Italian
Gaudenzio Ferrari Location
Italian painter and sculptor. He probably received his training at Varallo at the beginning of the 1490s, a lively period in the town artistic life, when extensive works were being carried out at the sacromonte. His master was Gian Stefano Scotto ( fl 1508), none of whose works has as yet been identified but who, judging from the early work of his pupil, may have been influenced by Lombard artists. Gaudenzio early works, such as a painting on panel of the Crucifixion (Varallo, Mus. Civ. Pietro Calderini), were influenced by the poetic art of Bramantino and by the northern Italian classicizing style of the Milanese painter Bernardo Zenale. His early, but self-assured, Angel of the Annunciation (c. 1500; Vercelli, Mus. Civ. Borgogna), painted for the Convento delle Grazie, Vercelli, suggests that these sources were soon enriched by his response to the tender Renaissance style of Pietro Perugino (active at the Certosa di Pavia, 1496-9). Gaudenzio is also recorded at Vercelli in the first known documentary reference to him, the contract for a polyptych commissioned by the Confraternit? di Sant Anna in 1508, with Eusebio Ferrari acting as guarantor. There remain four paintings of scenes from the Life of St Anne and God the Father (Turin, Gal. Sabauda) and two of the Annunciation (London, N.G.). In these works Gaudenzio style is more controlled, possibly as a result of a journey to central Italy in c. 1505.