French 1600-1682 Claude Lorrain Galleries In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography. Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno). John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"  Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | Civitavecchia (mk17) | Perseus and the Origin of Coral (mk17) | Landscape with Paris and Oenone fdg | Imaginary View of Tivoli dfg | Belagerung von La Rochelle durch die Truppen Ludwigs XIII., Oval |
Related Artists:
Johannes Jelgerhuis
Netherlands (1770 -1836 ) - Watercolours
Adriaen van der werff
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1659-1722 Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was apprenticed to the portrait painter Cornelis Picolet (1626-79) from 1668 to 1670 and then from c.1671 to 1676 to Eglon van der Neer in Rotterdam. From 1676 van der Werff produced small portraits and genre paintings as an independent master; the Cook and Hunter at a Window (1678; New York, priv. col.; see Gaethgens, no. 2) and Man and Woman Seated at a Table (1678; St Petersburg, Hermitage) perpetuate the thematic and stylistic traditions of Gerrit Dou, Gabriel Metsu, Frans van Mieris and Gerard ter Borch (ii) but are distinguished by their greater elegance and richness of costume and interior. Van der Werff's portraits date mainly from the years 1680-95 (e.g. Two Children with a Guinea-pig and a Kitten (1681; London, Buckingham Pal., Royal Col.)). The motif of children with animals recalls van der Neer, while the careful depiction of fabrics recalls the Leiden school of 'Fine' painters. His Portrait of a Man in a Quilted Gown (1685; London, N.G.) resembles compositions by Caspar Netscher and Nicolaes Maes: a figure leaning against a balustrade, before a landscape. Van der Werff's work is, however, more elegant, in part because of the depiction of fabrics
Samuel FB Morse
1791-1872,American painter and inventor. The son of a Calvinist minister, he began amateur sketching while a student at Yale College, New Haven, CT. After graduating in 1810, he returned to Charlestown, MA, to paint family portraits. In Boston in the same year he met Washington Allston, recently returned from Italy, under whose tutelage he executed his first history painting, the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth (c. 1810-11; Boston, MA, Pub. Lib.). He joined Allston on his trip to London in 1811, enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools and also studied privately with Allston and Benjamin West. Morse Dying Hercules (1812-13; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.), based on the pose and musculature of the Laokoon (Rome, Vatican, Mus. Pio-Clementino) and the theory evident in Allston Dead Man Restored to Life by Touching the Bones of the Prophet Elisha (1811-14; Philadelphia, PA Acad. F.A.), was critically acclaimed when exhibited at the Royal Academy and is indicative of Morse academic interests. After two trips in 1813 and 1814 to Bristol, where he painted a number of portraits and small subject pieces, Morse ended his period in England with another mythological history painting, the Judgement of Jupiter (1814-15; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.).