b. 1497, Augsburg, d. 1543, London was a German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known as one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century.[2] He also produced religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda, and made a significant contribution to the history of book design. He is called "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, an accomplished painter of the Late Gothic school. Born in Augsburg, Holbein worked mainly in Basel as a young artist. At first he painted murals and religious works and designed for stained glass windows and printed books. He also painted the occasional portrait, making his international mark with portraits of the humanist Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. When the Reformation reached Basel, Holbein worked for reformist clients while continuing to serve traditional religious patrons. His Late Gothic style was enriched by artistic trends in Italy, France, and the Netherlands, as well as by Renaissance Humanism. The result was a combined aesthetic uniquely his own. Holbein travelled to England in 1526 in search of work, with a recommendation from Erasmus. He was welcomed into the humanist circle of Thomas More, where he quickly built a high reputation. After returning to Basel for four years, he resumed his career in England in 1532. This time he worked for the twin founts of patronage, Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. By 1535, he was King's Painter to King Henry VIII. In this role, he produced not only portraits and festive decorations but designs for jewellery, plate, and other precious objects. His portraits of the royal family and nobles are a vivid record of a brilliant court in the momentous years when Henry was asserting his supremacy over the English church. Holbein's art was prized from early in his career. The French poet and reformer Nicholas Bourbon dubbed him "the Apelles of our time".[3] Holbein has also been described as a great "one-off" of art history, since he founded no school.[4] After his death, some of his work was lost, but much was collected, and by the 19th century, Holbein was recognised among the great portrait masters. Recent exhibitions have also highlighted his versatility.   Related Paintings of Hans holbein the younger :. | Portrait of Thomas More | Portrait of Sir Richard Southwell | Portrait of Jane Seymour, | Portrait of an Unknown Man Holding Gloves | Erasmus |
Related Artists:
Daniel Chodowiecki
(16 October 1726 - 7 February 1801) was a Polish - German painter and printmaker with Huguenot ancestry, who is most famous as an etcher. He spent most of his life in Berlin, and became the director of the Berlin Academy of Art. He was born in the city of Danzig in Poland, and in a letter in typical Berlin humor wrote, that he moved to Berlin, Germany, which shows for sure, that he is a 'genuine Pole'.[citation needed] He kept close to the Huguenot scene, due to his ancestry. A distant ancestor Bartholom us Chodowiecki had lived in the 16th century in Greater Poland . Gottfried Chodowiecki, Daniel's father, was a tradesmen in Danzig and his mother, Henriette Ayrer born in Switzerland, was a Huguenot. Daniel's grandfather Christian had been a tradesmen in the city as well. When his father died, both Daniel (aged 16) and his younger brother Gottfried Chodowiecki went to live with their uncle in Berlin, who offered to educate them, and where Daniel received an artistic training with the painter Haid in Augsburg. His brother also became a painter. Soon Daniel was able to earn a living by painting. He was admitted to the Berlin Academy in 1764 and became vice-director under Rhode in 1788. He had found his true calling and became the most famous German graphic artist of his time. His works include several thousand etchings, usually rather small, and many drawings and paintings. He illustrated nearly all of the great classics. His prints represent in great detail the life of the middle classes during the Zopfstil period, a time between Rococo and Classicism. In 1797 Chodowiecki was appointed director of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, where he died on 7 February 1801. The bulk of his work was in illustrating scientific books by Basedow, Buffon, Lavater, Pestalozzi and others. He also painted many portraits of Polish gentry and was interested in Huguenot and Polish history as well, making some paintings on the topic. He was in tune with the developing spirit of the age, and many works reflect the cult of sensibility, and then the revolutionary and German nationalist feelings of the end of the century.
Frederick Smallfield
British Painter and Etcher , (1829-1911)
Arnold Boonen
Arnold van Boonen was a Dutch eminent portrait painter, was born at Dordrecht, in the Dutch Republic in 1669. He was first a scholar of Arnold Verbius, and was later instructed by Godefried Schalken. He painted genre pictures in the style of the latter, representing subjects by candlelight, but met with such encouragement in portrait painting that he devoted himself almost wholly to that branch of art. His style was well adapted to succeed in it. An excellent oolourist, a faithful designer of his model, and highly skilled, he was soon distinguished as one of the ablest artists of his day. He painted a great number of portraits of the most distinguished people of his time, among whom were Peter the Great, the Elector of Mentz, the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, the Prince and Princess of Orange, the great Duke of Marlborough, and several others. He painted some large pictures for the halls of the different companies at Amsterdam and Dordrecht. He died in 1729. The Dresden Gallery has seven works by him, and the 'Woman Singing' in the Lille Gallery is also attributed to him. His son, Kasper van Boonen, also painted portraits, but in no way proved himself equal to his father.