1619-1693 Dutch Willem Kalf Galleries Willem Kalf was born in Rotterdam, in 1619. He was previously thought to have been born in 1622, but H. E. van Gelder??s important archival research has established the painter??s correct place and date of birth. Kalf was born into a prosperous patrician family in Rotterdam, where his father, a cloth merchant, held municipal posts as well. In the late 1630s, Willem Kalf travelled to Paris and spent time in the circle of the Flemish artists in Saint-Germain-des-Pr??s, Paris. In Paris he painted mainly small-scale rustic interiors and still-lifes. Kalf??s rustic interiors are typically dominated by groups of vegetables, buckets, pots and pans, which he arranged as a still-life in the foreground (e.g. Kitchen Still-life, Dresden, Gemäldegal; Alte Meister). Figures usually appeared only in the blurred obscurity of the background. Though painted in Paris, those pictures belong to a pictorial tradition practised primarily in Flanders in the early 17th century, by such artists as David Teniers the Younger. The only indication of the French origin of the paintings are a few objects that Flemish exponents of the same genre would not have pictured in their works. Kalf??s rustic interiors had a large influence on French art in the circle of the Le Nain brothers. The semi-monochrome still-lifes which Kalf created in Paris form a link to the banketjes or 'little banquet pieces' painted by such Dutch artists as Pieter Claesz, Willem Claeszoon Heda and others in the 1630s. During the 1640s, Kalf further developed the banketje into a novel form of sumptuous and ornate still-life (known as pronkstilleven), depicting rich groupings of gold and silver vessels. Like other still-lifes of this period, these paintings were usually expressing vanitas allegories.  Related Paintings of Willem Kalf :. | Style life with Nautilus goblet | Still-Life with a Nautilus Cup | Dessert | A woman drawing water from a well under an arcade | Still Life with Lobster, Drinking Horn and Glasses |
Related Artists:
Abraham Jansz Van Diepenbeeck
1596-1675, Flemish glass-painter, draughtsman, painter and tapestry designer. His reputation rests primarily on his drawings and oil sketches, of which several hundred survive, intended mainly as designs for stained-glass windows and prints. He was strongly influenced by the work of other important Flemish artists of the late 16th century and early 17th, notably Rubens, whose motifs and stylistic elements he frequently reworked in his own compositions.
Jacques Daret
Jacques Daret (c. 1404 - c. 1470) was an Early Netherlandish painter born in Tournai (now in Belgium), where he would spend much of his life. Daret spent 15 years as a pupil in the studio of Robert Campin, alongside Rogier or Rogelet de le Pasture (assumed by scholars to be Rogier van der Weyden, both words meaning "field" or "meadow" in French and Dutch respectively), and afterwards became a master in his own right. He became a favorite of the Burgundian court, and his patron for 20 years was the abbot of St. Vaast in Arras, Jean de Clercq. Though many works of Daret are mentioned in Jean de Clercq's account books, only four panels of Daret's works are known to have survived: all are from the so-called Arras Altarpiece or Saint-Vaast Altarpiece, painted for the abbot between 1433 and 1435. These paintings show a striking resemblance to the Flemish realism of the Master of Flemalle. This is argued by most scholars to be evidence that the Master of Flemalle was Daret's master, Robert Campin. Daret features rather more in the art historical debates over his period than the merit of his work alone would justify because he is relatively well-documented, and in particular can be securely identified as the creator of the altarpiece mentioned above, as well as a pupil of Campin. The stylistic similarity between him and the Master of Flemalle is therefore crucial evidence in the identification of the latter with Campin. This then becomes an important connection in establishing a link between Robert Campin/the Master of Flemalle and his other major pupil, Rogier van der Weyden.
Jean Simeon Chardin
(2 November 1699 - 6 December 1779) was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities. Carefully balanced composition, soft diffusion of light, and granular impasto characterize his work. Chardin was born in Paris, the son of a cabinetmaker, and rarely left the city. He lived on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice until 1757, when Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters in the Louvre. Chardin entered into a marriage contract with Marguerite Saintard in 1723, whom he did not marry until 1731. He served apprenticeships with the history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes and Noël-Nicolas Coypel, and in 1724 became a master in the Academie de Saint-Luc. According to one nineteenth-century writer, at a time when it was hard for unknown painters to come to the attention of the Royal Academy, he first found notice by displaying a painting at the "small Corpus Christi" (held eight days after the regular one) on the Place Dauphine (by the Pont Neuf). Van Loo, passing by in 1720, bought it and later assisted the young painter