Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1625-1679 Daily life was Jan Steen's main pictorial theme. Many of the genre scenes he portrayed are lively to the point of chaos and lustfulness, even so much that a Jan Steen household, meaning a messy scene, became a Dutch proverb (een huishouden van Jan Steen). Subtle hints in his paintings seem to suggest that Steen meant to warn the viewer rather than invite him to copy this behaviour. Many of Steen's paintings bear references to old Dutch proverbs or literature. He often used members of his family as models. Jan Steen painted also quite a few self-portraits, in which he showed no tendency of vanity. Steen did not shy from other themes: he painted historical, mythological and religious scenes, portraits, still lifes and natural scenes. His portraits of children are famous. He is also well known for his mastery of light and attention to detail, most notably in textiles. Steen was prolific, producing about 800 paintings, of which roughly 350 survive. Steen's work was valued much by contemporaries and as a result he was reasonably well paid for his work. He did not have any students, but his work proved a source of inspiration for many painters.  Related Paintings of Jan Steen :. | Self-Portrait | Der gekronte Redner | The Dissolute Household | Prince-s Day,Interior of an inn with a company celebration the birth of Prince William III | The Drinker |
Related Artists:
BELLANGE, Jacques
French Painter, ca.1575-1616 Jacques Bellange (c. 1575, place unknown - 1616) was an artist and printmaker from Lorraine, now in France, whose etchings and some drawings are his only securely identified works today. They are among the most striking Mannerist old master prints. His known artistic activity dates only from 1602 to 1616 and he is now familiar chiefly for his etchings and drawings, all his decorative works and most of his paintings having perished. His highly idiosyncratic style was inspired by such Italian artists as Parmigianino, by the School of Fontainebleau and by northern artists including Albrecht D?rer and Bartholomeus Spranger. His work would seem to express a private and nervous religious sensibility through a style of the greatest refinement.
Pier Leone Ghezzi
(Rome, 28 June 1674 - Rome, 6 March 1755) was an Italian Rococo painter and caricaturist active in Rome. Caricature of composer Antonio Vivaldi by Pier Leone GhezziGhezzi was born in Rome. His father, Giuseppe Ghezzi, (1634-1721), also trained Antonio Amorosi, and was a secretary to the Roman Accademia di San Luca. Pier Leone himself joined the Academy in 1705 and he executed a painting, the Allegory of Gratitude, to be donated to the institution, as was customary. He was the godson of Carlo Maratta. Pier Leone is known for his frescoes in the Villa Falconieri of Frascati. His pen and gouache caricatures are much freer in emotion than his state portraiture, and often depict named individuals or professions in satirical fashion.
Jacob Maris
(August 25, 1837, The Hague - August 7, 1899, Karlsbad) was a Dutch painter, who with his brothers Willem and Matthijs belonged to what has come to be known as the Hague School of painters. Maris studied at the Antwerp Academy, and subsequently in Hubertus van Hove's studio during a stay in Paris from 1865 till 1871. He returned to Holland when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and died there in August 1899. Though he painted, especially in early life, domestic scenes and interiors invested with deeply sympathetic feeling, it is as a landscape painter that Maris excelled. He was the painter of bridges and windmills, of old quays, massive towers, and level banks; even more was he the painter of water, and misty skies, and chasing clouds. In all his works, whether in water or oil color, and in his etchings, the subject is always subordinate to the effect. His art is suggestive rather than decorative, and his force does not seem to depend on any preconceived method, such as a synthetical treatment of form or gradations of tone. And yet, though his means appear so simple, the artist's mind seems to communicate with the spectator's by directness of pictorial instinct, and we have only to observe the admirable balance of composition and truthful perspective to understand the sure knowledge of his business that underlies such purely impressionist handling.