Spanish Painter and Print engraver , 1591-1652 Information concerning the life and personality of Jusepe de Ribera is sparse. He was born the son of a shoemaker in Jetiva, Valencia Province. He appears to have gone to the city of Valencia while still a boy, but nothing is known of his possible artistic training there. As an adolescent, he traveled to Italy and spent time in Lombardy. Next he was in Parma, from which, it is said, he was driven by the contentious jealousy of local artists. He located himself in Rome until an accumulation of debts forced him to flee. Finally he settled in Naples, where in 1616 he married Caterina Azzolino, the daughter of a painter, by whom he had seven children between the years 1627 and 1636. The Academy of St. Luke in Rome elected Ribera to membership in 1625, and 6 years later the Pope conferred upon him the Order of Christ. It is understandably speculated that Ribera revisited Rome for these events. Being sought after in Naples by the Church and the various Spanish viceroys who ruled there in the name of the Spanish monarchy, he dismissed the idea of returning to his homeland. He was quoted as saying that he was honored and well paid in Naples and that Spain was a cruel stepmother to its own children and a compassionate mother to foreigners. Nevertheless, he generally added his nationality when he signed his works. This practice inspired the Italians to nickname him "the Little Spaniard" (Lo Spagnoletto). The last decade of Ribera's life was one of personal struggle. He suffered from failing health, the taunts of other artists that his fame was "extinct," and difficulty in collecting payments due him. Nevertheless, he kept it from being a tragic defeat by continuing to paint until the very year of his death in Naples. Actually, he was the victim of the local politics and finances. Naples was in the throes of a severe economic depression for which the foreign rulers, the patrons of Ribera, were naturally blamed, and the desperate citizenry was rioting in the streets. It is significant that Ribera continued to receive commissions in such a time, even if there was a dearth of payments. Ribera was inventive in subject matter, ranging through visionary spectacles, biblical themes, genre, portraits, mythological subjects, and portraits of ascetics and penitents.   Related Paintings of Jose de Ribera :. | El sueno de Jacob | Jacob's dream. | Hl. Bruno, der Kartauser | the clubfoot | Philosopher Crates |
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Wyke Bayliss
(October 21, 1835, Madeley, Shropshire - April 5, 1906, London) was a British painter, author and poet. He almost exclusively painted interiors of British and European churches and cathedrals, and was known in the late Victorian era as an academic authority on art. From the start of his career Bayliss' main interest was in depicting architecture, finding "infinite charm" in the "infinite variety of the aspect of a Cathedral interior". His unusual first name was his mother Anne's maiden surname. His brother William Wyke Bayliss became a vicar and sister Elizabeth Anne Bayliss married a vicar, whilst a second sister Mary died as a teenager. Bayliss' wider family consisted of a number of luminaries. His great uncle was Thomas Turner, founder of the Caughley porcelain factory, a major leader in the development of the Willow pattern. Bayliss owned a portrait of Turner by Sir Joshua Reynolds as well as a number of further family portraits by Lemuel Francis Abbott . His second cousin was Sir William Maddock Bayliss. Cologne Cathedral, pen and watercolourHis father, Rev. John Cox Bayliss was a railway engineer who taught military and mathematical drawing, and was also an artist known for his work "Views of Shropshire" published in 1839 . He gave his younger son training after he showed drawing aptitude at an early age. The family moved from Madeley to London following a job offer too good to refuse, giving Bayliss the opportunity to immerse himself in the emerging art scene of the early Victorian period. As a young student at the Royal Academy and the School of Design he became affiliated with the Pre-Raphaelites, and he counted amongst his friends John Millais, Frederic Leighton, William Holman Hunt and Edward Burne-Jones While distant from the Pre-Raphaelites in subject and technique, his paintings often reflect the juxtaposition of detail and colour that characterise much of Millais' and Leighton's work. Frederick Wedmore states in the foreword to Bayliss' autobiography "On reflection it will be seen that Wyke Bayliss had his speciality pretty well to himself. He was the inventor of his own genre - as well as his own method" . Bayliss paintings are held in many smaller UK and European collections, including the Atkinson Art Gallery in Southport (Evening: Amiens Cathedral) and the Welsh national collection.
Theodor Hosemann
painted Blick uber die Havel auf das winterliche Brandenburg in 1838
Adolph von Menzel
1815-1905 German Adolph von Menzel Gallery His father was the headmaster of a school for girls, and intended to educate his son as a professor; but he would not thwart his taste for art. Left an orphan in 1832, Menzel had to maintain his family. In 1833 Sachse of Berlin published his first work, an album of pen-and-ink drawings reproduced on stone, to illustrate Goethe's little poem, Kunstlers Erdenwallen. He executed lithographs in the same manner to illustrate Denkw??rdigkeiten aus der brandenburgisch-preussischen Geschichte; The Five Senses and The Prayer, as well as diplomas for various corporations and societies. From 1839 to 1842 he produced 400 drawings, largely introducing to Germany the technique of wood engraving, to illustrate the Geschichte Friedrichs des Grossen (History of Frederick the Great) by Franz Kugler. He subsequently brought out Friedrichs der Grossen Armee in ihrer Uniformirung (The Uniforms of the Army under Frederick the Great), Soldaten Friedrichs der Grossen (The Soldiers of Frederick the Great); and finally, by order of the king Frederick William IV, he illustrated the works of Frederick the Great, Illustrationen zu den Werken Friedricks des Grossen (1843-1849). By these works Menzel established his claim to be considered one of the first, if not actually the first, of the illustrators of his day in his own line. Pencil drawing by Menzel, 1891.Meanwhile Menzel had set himself to study unaided the art of painting, and he soon produced a great number and variety of pictures, always showing keen observation and honest workmanship in subjects dealing with the life and achievements of Frederick the Great, and scenes of everyday life, such as In the Tuileries, The Ball Supper, and At Confession. Among the most important of these works are The Forge (1875) and The Market-place at Verona. Invited to paint The Coronation of William I at Koenigsberg, he produced an exact representation of the ceremony without regard to the traditions of official painting. In Germany he received many honors, and was the first painter to be given the Order of the Black Eagle in 1898 which included a title of nobility, becoming von Menzel.