1684-1721 Antoine Watteau Art Locations He is best known for his invention of a new genre, the fete galante, a small easel painting in which elegant people are depicted in conversation or music-making in a secluded parkland setting (see under FETE CHAMPETRE). His particular originality lies in the generally restrained nature of the amorous exchanges of his characters, which are conveyed as much by glance as by gesture, and in his mingling of figures in contemporary dress with others in theatrical costume, thus blurring references to both time and place. Watteau work was widely collected during his lifetime and influenced a number of other painters in the decades following his death, especially in France and England. His drawings were particularly admired. Documented facts about Watteau life are notoriously few, though several friends wrote about him after his death (see Champion). Of over two hundred paintings generally accepted as his work   Related Paintings of Jean-Antoine Watteau :. | An Embarrassing Proposal | View through the trees in the Park of Pierre Crozat | Details of The Music-Party | Die Zusammenkunft im Park | Peasant Dance |
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Jan Vermeer van Utrecht
(bapt. 16 February 1630, Schipluiden - c. 1696, Vreeswijk), was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Though he was born near Delft, there is no known relation between this painter and Johannes Vermeer. His father died when he was 10 and he was raised by his step-grandfather in Rotterdam. According to Houbraken he travelled to Italy with Lieve Verschuier and became friends with Willem Drost and Johann Carl Loth. He returned North in 1662, where he became member of the Utrecht Guild of St. Luke in 1663 and became deacon of the guild 1664-1666.Houbraken tells a curious story about Vermeer van Utrecht in his biography of Jan Davidsz de Heem. In this story, on his return from Italy, Vermeer marries a widow who owns a white lead factory. He is wealthy and has a carefree life until his wife dies and then his factory is burned by French soldiers. He manages to save a garland painting by De Heem that he once paid 2000 guilders for. This was an enormous sum of money, but Houbraken mentions that his grandfather had been a wealthy man, and until his factory was destroyed, Vermeer van Utrecht had been painting for pleasure, rather than professionally. The amount is meant as an indication of the fame and esteem of De Heem, rather than the wealth of Vermeer van Utrecht. Vermeer van Utrecht then applies to his benefactor, Frederick Nassau de Zuylestein, to give him a government post in return for this painting, which he offers to paint with the likeness of the young prince Willem III in the middle of the garland. The lord of Zuylestein was the governor of the young prince from 1659 to 1666, so this deal must have been done sometime between 1662 (Vermeer van Utrecht's return from Italy), and 1672 (the death of the lord of Zuylestein). Apparently, the deal is done, and several years pass, in which Vermeer van Utrecht did become an appointed member of the Utrecht regency (Vroedschap), but where he felt like a fifth wheel. In 1672 the Utrecht council takes pity on him, and gave him the post of Toll-collector and controller of the river lock at Vreeswijk, where he later remarried.
William Lees Judson
1842-1928 William Lees Judson was born in 1842 in Manchester, England, and moved to the United States with his parents when he was ten years old. After serving four years with the Illinois volunteers during the American Civil War, Judson studied art in New York and Paris. He settled in London, Ontario, where he became a successful portrait painter and art teacher. He moved to Chicago in 1890 but, suffering from failing health, he moved to Los Angeles in 1893. He settled on the banks of the Arroyo Seco in the Garvanza section of Los Angeles. A 1937 radio program noted that it was ??love at first sight?? when Judson saw the Arroyo Seco, and the area became his home for the rest of his life. Soon after his arrival, Judson was at the forefront of the Arroyo Guild of Craftsmen, an influential group of artists, sculptors and architects who fueled Southern California??s Arts and Crafts Movement. The beauty of the area stirred Judson to switch from portrait painting to landscapes, and his work attracted such favorable attention that in 1896 he was offered a professorship in drawing and painting at the University of Southern California. In the late 1890s, he founded the Los Angeles College of Fine Arts at his home in Garvanza (the present location of Judson Studios). In 1901, Judson's art college became USC??s College of Fine Arts, with Judson serving as dean from 1901 until his retirement in 1922. He died at his home in the studio building in October 1928.
Jean-Baptiste Deshays
French Baroque Era Painter, 1729-1765 was a French painter of religious and mythological subjects.His first training was under his father, the minor Rouen painter Jean-Dominique Deshays, he then spent a little time under Jean-Baptiste Descamps at his Ecole Gratuite de Dessin. He spent time in Hyacinthe Collin de Vermont's Paris studio from around 1740 to 1749 and Jean Restout II's from late 1749 to 1751. Both these had been pupils of Jean Jouvenet, and painted in the Grand Style of French history painting, a style Deshays adopted as his own. While he was in Restout's studio, Deshays entered the Prix de Rome competition, winning second prize in 1750 with His 1750 Laban Giving his Daughter in Marriage to Jacob won the second prize in the Grand Prix de Rome, and his 1751 Job on the Dung-hill the first prize. Deshays served the compulsory three years training at the Ecole des Eleves Prot??g??s (where he learnt from Carle van Loo, its director, and attracted some religious commissions, including two vast canvases, a Visitation and an Annunciation, for the monastery of the Visitation at Rouen), before going to Rome.