Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.  Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | Vase of Daisies, Marguerites and Anemones | View of Arles With Iris | Portrait of Doctor Gachet | Vincent van Goghs Decoration for the Yellow House | Wheat Field under Clouded Sky (nn04) |
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PORCELLIS, Jan
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1580-1632
Cornelis Bol
Dutch, born circa 1589-1666,Painter, etcher and draughtsman, active in London. He was probably from a family of painters originating in Mechelen who later settled in Antwerp. Bol and his wife were members of the Dutch Church in London in 1636. An etching of an Action between the Dutch and Spanish Fleets (Oxford, Bodleian Lib.) is signed and dated 1639, and a set of etchings by him after Abraham Casembrot ( fl c. 1650-75) includes a view of Lambeth Palace as well as four imaginary Mediterranean seaports. A signed drawing of the Blockhouse at Gravesend is in the British Museum, London. George Vertue saw at Wotton House, Bucks, 'three views of London from the River side Arundel House Somersett house Tower Lond. painted before the fire of London by Cornelius Boll: a good free taste'. They were probably commissioned by John Evelyn, the diarist, around 1660 and descended in the Evelyn family. Their attribution to Bol is confirmed by a signed version of Somerset House (London, Dulwich Pict. Gal.). Although Bol was only moderately accomplished, he was able to reproduce the distinctive light and character of the River Thames and to render the riverside and its landmarks with much topographical detail; his pictures make pleasing visual documents. The handling of the naval craft is identical in a small signed oil panel of an Action between Dutch and Spanish Ships (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) and in other marine subjects that have appeared in London salerooms. According to Immerzeel, Bol was still working in London at the time of the Great Fire in 1666.
Francis Quarles
1592-1644,was born at Romford, London Borough of Havering, and baptized there on May 8 1592. Francis traced his ancestry to a family settled in England before the Norman Conquest with a long history in royal service. His great-grandfather, George Quarles, was Auditor to Henry VIII, and his father, James Quarles, held several places under Elizabeth I and James I, for which he was rewarded with an estate called Stewards in Romford. His mother, Joan Dalton, was the daughter and heiress of Eldred Dalton of Mores Place, Hadham. There were eight children in the family; the eldest, Sir Robert Quarles, was knighted by James I in 1608. Francis was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1608, and subsequently at Lincoln's Inn. He was made cupbearer to the Princess Elizabeth, in 1613, remaining abroad for some years; and before 1629 he was appointed secretary to Ussher, the primate of Ireland. About 1633 he returned to England, and spent the next two years in the preparation of his Emblems. In 1639 he was made city chronologer, a post in which Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton had preceded him. At the outbreak of the Civil War he took the Royalist side, drawing up three pamphlets in 1644 in support of the king's cause. It is said that his house was searched and his papers destroyed by the Parliamentarians in consequence of these publications. Quarles married in 1618 Ursula Woodgate, by whom he had eighteen children. His son, John Quarles (1624-1665), was exiled to Flanders for his Royalist sympathies and was the author of Fons Lachrymarum (1648) and other poems. The work by which Quarles is best known, the Emblems, was originally published in 1635, with grotesque illustrations engraved by William Marshall and others. The forty-five prints in the last three books are borrowed from the Pia Desideria (Antwerp, 1624) of Herman Hugo. Each "emblem" consists of a paraphrase from a passage of Scripture, expressed in ornate and metaphorical language, followed by passages from the Christian Fathers, and concluding with an epigram of four lines. The Emblems was immensely popular with the common people, but the critics of the 17th and 18th centuries had no mercy on Quarles. Sir John Suckling in his Sessions of the Poets disrespectfully alluded to him as he "that makes God speak so big in's poetry." Pope in the Dunciad spoke of the Emblems, "Where the pictures for the page atone And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own."