1637-1712 Dutch Jan Van Der Heyden Gallery Van der Heyden grew up in Gorcum, but the family moved to Amsterdam around 1650. They lived on Dam Square. As a young guy he witnessed the fire in the old townhall which made a deep impression on him. He later would describe or draw 80 fires in almost any neighborhood of Amsterdam. When he married in 1661 the family was living on Herengracht, the most fashionable canal in Amsterdam. In 1668 Cosimo II de' Medici bought one of his paintings, a view of the townhall with a manipulated perspective. Van der Heyden often painted country estates, like Goudestein, owned by Joan Huydecoper II. He was not good in drawing figures and used for his paintings a metal plate for bricks, a sponge or moss for the leaves. Johannes Lingelbach, Adriaen van de Velde und Eglon van der Neer assisted him drawing the figures. Jan van der Heyden also introduced the lamp post and in 1672 impoved the design of the fire engine. He died in wealth as the superintendent of the lighting and director of the (voluntary) firemen's guild at Amsterdam. Van der Heyden was a contemporary of the landscape painters Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael, with the advantage, which they lacked, of a certain professional versatility; for, whilst they painted admirable pictures and starved, he varied the practice of art with the study of mechanics. Until 1672 he painted in partnership with Adriaen van de Velde. After Adrian's death, and probably because of the loss which that event entailed upon him, he accepted the offices to which allusion has just been made. At no period of artistic activity had the system of division of labour been more fully or more constantly applied to art than it was in Holland towards the close of the 17th century. Van der Heyden, who was perfect as an architectural draughtsman insofar as he painted the outside of buildings and thoroughly mastered linear perspective, seldom turned his hand to the delineation of anything but brick houses and churches in streets and squares, or rows along canals, or "moated granges," common in his native country. He was a travelled man, had seen The Hague, Ghent and Brussels, and had ascended the Rhine past Xanten to Cologne, where he copied over and over again the tower and crane of the great cathedral. But he cared nothing for hill or vale, or stream or wood. He could reproduce the rows of bricks in a square of Dutch houses sparkling in the sun, or stunted trees and lines of dwellings varied by steeples, all in light or thrown into passing shadow by moving cloud. He had the art of painting microscopically without loss of breadth or keeping. But he could draw neither man nor beast, nor ships nor carts; and this was his disadvantage. His good genius under these circumstances was Adrian van der Velde, who enlivened his compositions with spirited figures; and the joint labour of both is a delicate, minute, transparent work, radiant with glow and atmosphere.  Related Paintings of Jan van der Heyden :. | Church of Jesus landscape | Construction of the Arc de Triomphe | The crossroads of the forest landscape | Canal house | The City Hall in Amsterdam |
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Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein
(26 June 1788, Wildenfels, Kursachsen - 4 March 1868, Munich), born Vogel, was a German painter. Son of the child and portrait painter Christian Leberecht Vogel, Vogel was trained early in life by his father. From 1804 he visited the Kunstakademie in Dresden, where he copied many paintings in the Gemäldegalerie and also produced the first of his own portraits. In 1807 he replied to an invitation from Baron von Löwenstern, whose children he had taught in Dresden, to come to Dorpat in Livland. In 1808 he moved to Saint Petersburg, where he set up a studio in the princely and successfully worked producing portraits of nobles and diplomats. In 1812 Vogel was finally rich enough to make a long-desired grand tour to Italy, stopping off at Berlin and Dresden on the way, where he painted his parents and Franz Pettrich. From 1813 to 1820 he lived in Rome, where many German artists were active at that time. He tried to run a middle course between the classicising and romanticising schools then prevailing there, with a style of his own closely drawing on that of Raphael Mengs. In Italy he copied a large number of paintings and wall paintings by the old masters. On later journeys he further augmented his collection of copies and in 1860 published a catalogue of them. Besides religious paintings, landscapes and anatomical studies, Vogel also produced portraits in Rome, of subjects such as Bertel Thorvaldsen, Lucien Bonaparte and - on behalf of the king of Saxony - Pope Pius VII. Vogel much enjoyed Rome, as Ringseis illustrates by this story - in 1818 he received a gift of a bottle of 1634 Rheinwein wine (given by crown prince Louis I of Bavaria in thanks for the decoration of a festal hall) by unanimous resolution of his colleagues
Huntington Daniel
American Hudson River School Painter. b.1816 d.1906 was born in New York City, New York, the son of Benjamin Huntington, Jr. and Faith Trumbull Huntington; his paternal grandfather was Benjamin Huntington, delegate at the Second Continental Congress and First U.S. Representative from Connecticut. In 1835 he studied with SFB Morse, and produced "A Bar-Room Politician" and "A Toper Asleep." Subsequently he painted some landscapes on the Hudson river, and in 1839 went to Rome. On his return to America he painted portraits and began the illustration of The Pilgrim's Progress, but his eyesight failed, and in 1844 he went back to Rome. Returning to New York around 1846, he devoted his time chiefly to portrait-painting, although he has painted many genre, religious and historical subjects. He was president of the National Academy from 1862 to 1870, and again in 1877-1890.
Richard Earlom
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