Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | Portrait of duchess | Immaculate Conception | Mary | The Descent from the Cross (mk01) | Stormy lanscape with Philemon and Baucis |
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James Otto Lewis
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Vilhelm Melbye
(14 May 1824 - 6 October 1882) was a Danish marine artist, the brother of Anton Melbye and Fritz Melbye. He worked in London from 1853 to 1866 and, over the course of his career, painted seascapes, coastal and harbor scenes, sailing vessels and topographical subjects in many parts of Europe, especially in the Mediterranean region. Knud Frederik Vilhelm Hannibal Melbye was born on 14 May 1824 in Elsinore, Denmark. He first trained to become a merchant but then turned to painting, studying under his older brother Anton, already an established marine painter, and attending the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1844 to 1847. He also took private classes in perspective drawing with Carl Dahl. In 1847, he went on his first journey, to Iceland aboard the corvette Valkyrien, and the following year he traveled to Paris by way of Desseldorf. In Paris he studied with Theodore Gudin (1802 - 1880) before returning to Denmark in 1849. From 1853 to 1866, he lived in London and it was here he changed his name from Vilhelm to Wilhelm. He was appointed Professor at the academy in Copenhagen in 1880 but died in 1882 in Roskilde. He is interred at Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen.
Edouard Richter
French, 1844-1913