1756-1843 John Trumbull Gallery Trumbull was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, to Jonathan Trumbull, who was Governor of Connecticut from 1769 to 1784. He entered the 1771 junior class at Harvard University at age fifteen and graduated in 1773. Due to a childhood accident, Trumbull lost use of one eye, which may have influenced his detailed painting style. As a soldier in the American Revolutionary War, Trumbull rendered a particular service at Boston by sketching plans of the British works, and witnessed the famous Battle of Bunker Hill. He was appointed second personal aide to General George Washington, and in June 1776 deputy adjutant-general to General Horatio Gates, but resigned from the army in 1777. In 1780 he traveled to London where he studied under Benjamin West, who suggested to him that he paint small pictures of the War of Independence and miniature portraits, of which he produced about 250 in his lifetime. On September 23, 1780 and October 2, 1780, British agent Major John Andr?? was, respectively, captured and hanged as a spy in America. News reached Europe, and as an officer of similar rank as Andr?? in the Continental Army, Trumbull was imprisoned for seven months in London's Tothill Fields Bridewell. In 1784 he was again in London working under West, in whose studio he painted his Battle of Bunker Hill and Death of Montgomery, both of which are now in the Yale University Art Gallery. In 1785 Trumbull went to Paris, where he made portrait sketches of French officers for The Surrender of Cornwallis, and began, with the assistance of Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, well-known from the engraving by Asher Brown Durand. This latter painting was purchased by the United States Congress along with his Surrender of General Burgoyne, Surrender at Yorktown, and Washington Resigning his Commission, and these paintings now hang in the United States Capitol. Trumbull's The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar, 1789, owned by the Boston Athenaeum, is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  Related Paintings of John Trumbull :. | The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton | Detail of The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar | Portait of Timothy Dwight IV | the death of general montgomery | Alexander Hamilton |
Related Artists:
John Knox
British artist ,1778-1845
Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
1803-1862 Dutch Barend Cornelis Koekkoek Gallery Koekkoek??s own paintings reveal a careful study and synthesis of Dutch seventeenth century painters. His art is firmly rooted in the great Dutch romantic tradition established by the seventeenth-century masters: Hobbema, Cuyp, Ruisdael and Wynants. The golden light and the inclusion of travellers in his work suggests Koekkoek also admired the Dutch Italianate painters of the seventeenth century, collectively known as the Bamboccianti, especially Pieter van Laer and Jan Both. Koekkoek imagined his pictures as the result of an ideal combination of observation and artifice. He studied art and nature with equal acuity, creating beautiful landscape paintings that celebrated the greatness of Creation. ??Koekkoek's work impresses the spectator by its power, by the firm and correct construction of the trees, by the broad, natural growth of the leaves and boughs, [and] by the careful and elaborate reproduction of the wooded landscape?? (G. H. Marius, Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century, Woodbridge, 1973, p. 89). Up to this day, Willem Koekkoek's work is very much favoured for the lively composition and the mood of nostalgia, in which the Dutch Golden Age seems to linger on. Just as he was during his own lifetime, Koekkoek is widely regarded as the most accomplished landscape painter of Dutch romanticism, against whose scrupulously refined paintings the work his contemporaries is measured.
Jan Baptist Weenix
(Amsterdam, 1621- Vleuten 1660), a painter of the Dutch Golden Age. Despite his relatively brief career, he was a very productive and versatile painter. His favourite subjects were Italian landscapes with large figures among ruins, seaside views, and, later in life, large still life pictures of dead game or dogs. He was mainly responsible for introducing the Italian harbour scene into Dutch art, in mid-size paintings with a group of figures in the foreground. Weenix was the son of an architect and born near Amsterdam's harbour. He could not speak well, apparently from a medical condition, and because he very much liked to read books, his mother sent him to work for a bookseller, who was not able to deal with him. He drew whenever he could, according to Jan Weenix his son, who told the story to Arnold Houbraken. Weenix first studied under Jan Micker, then in Utrecht under Abraham Bloemaert, and later back in Amsterdam under Claes Cornelisz. Moeyaert. In 1643 Weenix travelled to Rome with Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem. He had left his home secretly, but his wife, the daughter of Gillis d'Hondecoeter, traced him to Rotterdam. Then he was allowed to stay away for four months. In Rome he became a member of the Bentvueghels and was much esteemed and worked for Pope Innocent X. He returned to Amsterdam after four years; his wife had refused to come to Rome. In 1649 he became master of the guild of St. Luke in Utrecht and also painted a portrait of Rene Descartes. When his brother-in-law Gijsbert d'Hondecoeter died, he trained his nephew Melchior d'Hondecoeter, together with his own son Jan Weenix. Weenix moved to a castle outside Utrecht, to concentrate on his work or for health reasons, where he probably died in poor circumstances, at an unknown date. He painted a few religious scenes, one of the rare pieces of this kind being the "Jacob and Esau" (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden). In the National Gallery, London, is a "Hunting Scene" by Weenix, and Glasgow has a characteristic painting of ruins. Weenix is represented at most of the important continental galleries, notably at Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, and St Petersburg.