Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1593-1678 Jacob Jordeans was born on May 19, 1593, the first of eleven children, to the wealthy linen merchant Jacob Jordaens Sr. and Barbara van Wolschaten in Antwerp. Little is known about Jordaens's early education. It can be assumed that he received the advantages of the education usually provided for children of his social class. This assumption is supported by his clear handwriting, his competence in French and in his knowledge of mythology. Jordaens familiarity with biblical subjects is evident in his many religious paintings, and his personal interaction with the Bible was strengthened by his later conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism. Like Rubens, he studied under Adam van Noort, who was his only teacher. During this time Jordaens lived in Van Noort's house and became very close to the rest of the family. After eight years of training with Van Noort, he enrolled in the Guild of St. Luke as a "waterscilder", or watercolor artist. This medium was often used for preparing tapestry cartoons in the seventeenth century. although examples of his earliest watercolor works are no longer extant. In the same year as his entry into the guild, 1616, he married his teacher's eldest daughter, Anna Catharina van Noort, with whom he had three children. In 1618, Jordaens bought a house in Hoogstraat (the area in Antwerp that he grew up in). He would then later buy the adjoining house to expand his household and workspace in 1639, mimicking Rubens's house built two decades earlier. He lived and worked here until his death in 1678. Jordaens never made the traditional trip to Italy to study classical and Renaissance art. Despite this, he made many efforts to study prints or works of Italian masters available in northern Europe. For example, Jordaens is known to have studied Titian, Veronese, Caravaggio, and Bassano, either through prints, copies or originals (such as Caravaggio's Madonna of the Rosary). His work, however, betrays local traditions, especially the genre traditions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in honestly depicting Flemish life with authenticity and showing common people in the act of celebratory expressions of life. His commissions frequently came from wealthy local Flemish patrons and clergy, although later in his career he worked for courts and governments across Europe. Besides a large output of monumental oil paintings he was a prolific tapestry designer, a career that reflects his early training as a "watercolor" painter. Jordaens' importance can also be seen by his number of pupils; the Guild of St. Luke records fifteen official pupils from 1621 to 1667, but six others were recorded as pupils in court documents and not the Guild records, so it is probable that he had more students than officially recorded. Among them were his cousin and his son Jacob. Like Rubens and other artists at that time, Jordaens' studio relied on his assistants and pupils in the production of his paintings. Not many of these pupils went on to fame themselves,however a position in Jordaens's studio was highly desirable for young artists from across Europe.  Related Paintings of Jacob Jordaens :. | The Artist and His Family in a Garden | The Rest of Diana | The Fall of Man | The Judgement of Midas | Portrait of Abraham Grapheus as Job |
Related Artists:
Leon Lhermitte
1844-1925 was a French painter and etcher of the late nineteenth century. A student of Lecocq de Boisbourdran, he was a realist artist whose primary subject matter was of rural scenes depicting the peasant worker. He gained recognition after his show in the Paris Salon in 1864. His many awards include the French Legion of Honour (1884) and the Grand Prize at the Exposition Universelle in 1889. Lhermittees innovative use of the then contemporary media of pastels won him the admiration of his contemporaries. Vincent Van Gogh wrote that. If every month Le Monde Illustre published one of his compositions.
Auguste Leveque
(b. Nivelles, Walloon Brabant 1866 - d. Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, 1921) is a Belgian painter influenced both by realism and symbolism. Leveque was also a sculptor, poet and art theoretician. He studied under Jean-François Portaels at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and received the Prix Godecharle for his painting Job in 1890. Leveque was a member of the "Salon d'Art Idealiste", formed by Jean Delville in Brussels in 1896, which is considered the Belgian equivalent to the Parisian Rose & Cross Salon. Other members of the group were Leon Frederic, Albert Ciamberlani, Constant Montald, Emile Motte, Victor Rousseau, Armand Point and Alexandre Seon. The Salon was abandoned in 1898.
Vasily Kandinsky
b. Dec. 4 ,Dec. 16, New Style, 1866, Moscow, Russia--d. Dec. 13, 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Fr. Wasilly Kandinsky (or Vassilii Kandinskii) was a Russian painter whose works from 1910 are considered the first abstract paintings. Kandinsky had a law career in Moscow until he opted for art school in Munich in 1896 -- when he was almost 30. Within a decade he'd made a name for himself in Russia and in Europe, an Expressionist whose dazzling watercolors were influenced by Russian folk art and French Impressionists such as Claude Monet. Between 1910 and 1912 he wrote about non-objective "abstract" paintings and published On the Spiritual in Art, a work that solidified his position as the father of abstract art. Known for his ingenuity with geometric shapes and use of brilliant color, Kandinsky was successful in Europe and the United States.