|
|
GOYEN, Jan van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1596-1656
Jan van Goyen was born in Leiden on Jan. 13, 1596. Apprenticed from the age of 10, he had several masters. About 1617 he went to Haarlem to study with Esaias van de Velde, an important innovator in the Haarlem movement of realistic landscape painting. Van Goyen's works between 1621 and 1625 are sometimes hard to distinguish from those of his teacher. They are colorful, detailed views of villages and roads, usually busy with people, as in Winter (1621). It was Van Goyen's usual practice to sign or monogram and date his paintings. He traveled extensively through the Netherlands and beyond, recording his impressions in sketchbooks, occasionally with dates and often depicting recognizable scenes. Thus the chronology of his development is clear. His paintings of the late 1620s show a steady advance from the strong colors and scattered organization of his early works toward tonality and greater simplicity and unity of composition. By 1630 he was painting monochromes in golden brown or pale green; he played a leading part in the tonal phase of Dutch landscape painting. In 1631 Van Goyen settled in The Hague, where he became a citizen in 1634. The simplicity, airiness, and unification of his compositions continued to increase in his abundant production of dune landscapes, river views, seascapes, town views, and winter landscapes. The River View (1636) displays a river so open and extensive as to suggest the sea, with reflections that prolong the vast and luminous sky. In its monumentalization of humble structures and its composition built on a firm scaffolding of horizontal and vertical forces, it forecast at this early date developments that dominated landscape painting in the 1650s and later. In the Village and Dunes (1647) the traditional double-diagonal composition still exists, but it is dominated by horizontal and vertical accents. Stronger contrasts of light and dark replace the earlier tonality. In the last year of his life Van Goyen produced an eloquent new style, in which powerful forms stand out against the radiant sky and water in an exquisitely balanced composition (Evening Calm; 1656). The commission in 1651 to paint a panoramic view of The Hague for the Burgomaster's Room shows the high regard in which Van Goyen was held. He was enormously productive; well over 1,000 of his paintings still exist, and almost as many drawings. Yet he died insolvent, perhaps because of losses in his various business ventures, and soon after his death on April 27, 1656, Related Paintings of GOYEN, Jan van :. | Haarlemer Meer dg | View of the Merwede before Dordrecht sdg | Winter on the River dg | View of Dordrecht dg | Marine Landscape with Fishermen fu | Related Artists: Delannoy jules CharlesBethune
1852-1925
Maurice PrendergastCanadian-born American Impressionist Painter, 1858-1924
American painter, printmaker, illustrator and designer of Canadian birth. He moved with his family to Boston in 1868 and was working as a commercial artist by 1886, lettering showcards, but his early attempts at watercolour foretold little of the talent that emerged after he travelled to Paris in January 1891. He studied for three years at the Atelier Colarossi under Gustave Courtois (1853-1923), and later at the Acad?mie Julian under Benjamin Constant, Joseph Blanc and Jean-Paul Laurens. Viktor VasnetsovRussian Painter , 1848-1926
Painter, designer and graphic artist. He played a leading role in the evolution of Russian art from 19th-century realism towards Art Nouveau with a national historical slant. The son of a priest, he studied at a theological seminary in Vyatka (1862-7); then, developing a passion for drawing, he entered the drawing school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, St Petersburg, and studied under Ivan Kramskoy in 1867-8. He perfected his skills at the Academy of Arts, St Petersburg, in 1869-75 and joined the WANDERERS in 1878.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|