1598-1664 Spanish Francisco de Zurbaran Galleries Spanish baroque painter, active mainly at Llerena, Madrid, and Seville. He worked mostly for ecclesiastical patrons. His early paintings, including Crucifixion (1627; Art Inst., Chicago), St. Michael (Metropolitan Mus.), and St. Francis (City Art Museum, St. Louis), often suggest the austere simplicity of wooden sculpture. The figures, placed close to the picture surface, are strongly modeled in dramatic light against dark backgrounds, indicating the influence of Caravaggio. They were clearly painted as altarpieces or devotional objects. In the 1630s the realistic style seen in his famous Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas (1631; Seville) yields to a more mystical expression in works such as the Adoration of the Shepherds (1638; Grenoble); in this decade he was influenced by Ribera figural types and rapid brushwork. While in Seville, Zurbur??n was clearly influenced by Velazquez. After c.1640 the simple power of Zurbaran work lessened as Murillo influence on his painting increased (e.g., Virgin and Child with St. John, Fine Arts Gall., San Diego, Calif.). There are works by Zurbar??n in the Hispanic Society of America, New York City; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art..  Related Paintings of Francisco de Zurbaran :. | serapio | Saint Luke as a Painter before Christ on the Cross | angel with incense-burner, looking to the left | christ crucified | st. pedro nolasco |
Related Artists:
WEENIX, Jan Baptist
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1621-ca.1663 Painter and draughtsman, son of Jan Baptist Weenix. Jan probably received his first instruction as a painter from his father, and it is possible that he helped finish certain of his father's works. He probably remained in Utrecht after his father's death. By 1664 he had become a member of the Guild of St Luke in Utrecht without, however, having submitted the required entrance painting, which he provided by 1668. There are several documented references to Jan in the late 1660s. He inherited a legacy along with his uncle, the painter Barent Micker, and other family members in 1667, at which time Gillis, his younger brother, apparently still required a guardian. He received another legacy in 1668, the year of his marriage, and in 1669 served as a witness for the inventory of the painter Jacob de Hennin (1629-c. 1688) in The Hague.
Paxton, William McGregor
American Painter, 1869-1941 was an American Impressionist painter. Born in Baltimore, the Paxton family came to Newton Corner in the mid-1870s, where William's father James established himself as a caterer. At 18, William won a scholarship to attend the Cowles Art School, where he began his art studies with Dennis Miller Bunker. Later he studied with Jean-L??on G??rôme in Paris and, on his return to Boston, with Joseph DeCamp at Cowles. There he met his future wife Elizabeth Okie, who also was studying with DeCamp. After their marriage, William and Elizabeth lived with his parents at 43 Elmwood Street, and later bought a house at 19 Montvale Road in Newton Centre. Paxton, who is best known as a portrait painter, taught at the Museum School from 1906 to 1913. Along with other well known artists of the era, including Edmund Charles Tarbell and Frank Benson, he is identified with the Boston School. Like many of his Boston colleagues, Paxton found inspiration in the work of the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Paxton was fascinated not only with Vermeer's imagery, but also with the system of optics he employed. He studied Vermeer's works closely, and discovered that only one area in his compositions was entirely in focus, while the rest were somewhat blurred. Paxton ascribed this peculiarity to "binocular vision," crediting Vermeer with recording the slightly different point of view of each individual eye that combine in human sight. He began to employ this system in his own work, including The New Necklace, where only the gold beads are sharply defined while the rest of the objects in the composition have softer, blurrier edges.
Ernst Oppler
1867, Hannover - 1929, Berlin, a Jewish German painter and etcher; elder brother of Alexander.