English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1882 Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci. Although he won support from the John Ruskin, criticism of his clubs caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to waterhum, which could be sold privately. In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices. Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix. These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.  Related Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti :. | Arthur's Tomb (mk46) | The Boat of Love (mk28) | The Weding of St George and the Princess Sabra (mk28) | Jane Morris | Dantis Amor (mk28) |
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Pieter de Grebber
(c. 1600, Haarlem - 1652/3, Haarlem) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. De Grebber was the oldest son of Frans Pietersz de Grebber (1573 - 1643), a painter and embroiderer in Haarlem, and the brother of the painters Maria and Albert. He learned to paint from his father and from Hendrick Goltzius. He was descended from a Catholic and artistic family and his sister Maria later became the mother-in-law of Gabriel Metsu. He was a friend of the priest and musicologist Jan Albertszoon Ban, and had a poem set to music by the Haarlem composer Cornelis Padbrue. In 1632 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, but he had already been active as a painter for 10 years. His pupils were Gerbrand Ban, Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem, Egbert van Heemskerck, and Dirck Helmbreeker. In 1618, father and son went to Antwerp and negotiated with Peter Paul Rubens over the sale of his painting "Daniel in the lions pit". It was then handed - via the English ambassador in the Republic, Sir Dudley Carleton - to king Charles I. Pieter got important commissions not only in Haarlem, but also from the stadholder Frederik Hendrik. As such, he worked on the decoration of the Huis Honselaarsdijk in Naaldwijk and at the Paleis Noordeinde in Huis ten Bosch in the Hague. He painted altar pieces for churches in Flanders and hidden Catholic churches in the Republic. He may also have worked for Danish clients. Pieter remained single and lived from 1634 until his death at the Haarlem Beguinage.
John Liston Byam Shaw
1872-1919
Circle of Pierre Gobert
1662-1744