John Closterman (1660-1711) (also spelled Cloosterman, Klosterman), portrait-painter, born in Osnabruck, the son of an artist, who taught him the rudiments of design. In 1679 he went to Paris, accompanied by his countryman Tiburen, and there worked under Francois de Troy. In 1681 he came to England, and painted draperies for John Riley, at whose death, in 1691, Closterman finished several of his portraits. This recommended him to the Duke of Somerset, but he lost his favour on account of a dispute about a picture of Guercino, specially acquired for his grace, and which was afterwards purchased by Lord Halifax. In 1696 he was invited to the court of Spain, and executed the portraits of the king and queen; he also went to Italy twice, and made several acquisitions of works of art. On returning to England he obtained considerable employment, and married an Englishwoman. He buried his wife, Hannah, on 27 January 1702. According to Arnold Houbraken, he later took a mistress, who then ruined him by her extravagant habits, and ultimately left him in a state of dejection of body and mind that led to his ultimate decline. Jacob Campo Weyerman, who took much of his biographical material from Houbraken, states "Closterman had taken a beautiful mistress who, while he was away in the country, robbed him of his valuables and disappeared, actions which drove the painter into madness". He died in 1711, and was buried in Covent Garden churchyard.  Related Paintings of John Closterman :. | The Executioner Presents John the Baptist's Head to Herod (nn03) | Still Life with Watermelons and Apples, Museo del Prado, Madrid. | The Massacre of the Triumvirate. | Apple harvest at Eragny | The Tree of Life springs from the fount and bows over the saint |
Related Artists:
Paul Emmert
Paul Emmert (1826-1867) , who is also known as Paul Emert, was an artist born near Berne, Switzerland in 1826. By 1845, he had become an established artist in New York. He joined the gold rush to California in 1849. The following year he exhibited in Brooklyn a panorama of the gold mining activities before making his second trip to California late in 1850. While in California, he operated the Bear Hotel in Sacramento and exhibited the panorama in San Francisco and other communities. In 1853 he moved to Hawaii where he resided until his death in 1867 in Honolulu.
Sylvester Shchedrin
1791-1830,was a Russian landscape painter. Sylvestr Shchedrin was born in St. Petersburg into the family of the famous sculptor Pheodosiy Shchedrin, rector of the Imperial Academy of Arts. The landscape painter, Semion Shchedrin, was his uncle. In 1800, Sylvester Shchedrin entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, where he studied landscape painting. Among his teachers were his uncle, Semion Shchedrin, Fedor Alekseev, M.M. Ivanov and Thomas de Thomon.[1]. In 1811e graduated with several awards including the Large Gold Medal for his painting View from Petrovsky Island that gave him a scholarship to study abroad. Lake of Albano, 1825Sylvester left for Italy in 1818, delayed due to the Napoleonic Wars. In Italy, he studied the old masters in Rome; goes to Naples to paint watacolrs ordered by Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich of Russia; then return back to Rome. The biggest achievement of that period was New Rome. castle Sant'Angelo (1823) It was such a great success that he has painted 8..10 variations of the painting, each from a slightly different angle and with different details. His pension ended in 1823, but he decided to stay in abroad as a freelance painter. In 1825 he finished his work Lake of Albano that was a new step in his movement to the natural composition. In this painting he relaxed the boundary between subject and background, moved from using the formal colors. Shchedrin had many commissions and grew to become a well-known artist in Italy. He lived in Rome and Naples, working en plein air, drawing bays and cliffs and views of small towns and fishermen villages. One of his favorite motifs were terraces in vines with a view of the sea. Referred as the images of the "Midday Paradis".At the end of the 1820s, Shchedrin began to draw nighttime uneasy, almost nightmarish landscapes, which may have been inspired from his gradually declining health. He died in Sorrento in 1830.
BALDASSARE ESTENSE
Italian painter, Ferrarese school (b. 1443, Reggio, d. 1504, Ferrara)