German-born American Hudson River School Painter, 1830-1902 Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany. His family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1833. He studied painting with the members of the D??sseldorf School in D??sseldorf, Germany from 1853 to 1857. He taught drawing and painting briefly before devoting himself to painting. Bierstadt began making paintings in New England and upstate New York. In 1859, he traveled westward in the company of a Land Surveyor for the U.S. government, returning with sketches that would result in numerous finished paintings. In 1863 he returned west again, in the company of the author Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose wife he would later marry. He continued to visit the American West throughout his career. Though his paintings sold for princely sums, Bierstadt was not held in particularly high esteem by critics of his day. His use of uncommonly large canvases was thought to be an egotistical indulgence, as his paintings would invariably dwarf those of his contemporaries when they were displayed together. The romanticism evident in his choices of subject and in his use of light was felt to be excessive by contemporary critics. His paintings emphasized atmospheric elements like fog, clouds and mist to accentuate and complement the feel of his work. Bierstadt sometimes changed details of the landscape to inspire awe. The colors he used are also not always true. He painted what he believed is the way things should be: water is ultramarine, vegetation is lush and green, etc. The shift from foreground to background was very dramatic and there was almost no middle distance Nonetheless, his paintings remain popular. He was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 (possibly as many as 4000) paintings during his lifetime, most of which have survived. Many are scattered through museums around the United States. Prints are available commercially for many. Original paintings themselves do occasionally come up for sale, at ever increasing prices.  Related Paintings of Albert Bierstadt :. | Rocky Mountains | Moat Mountain, Intervale, New Hampshire | Oregon Trail, | Indian Scout | Island of New Providence |
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RECCO, Giuseppe
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1634-1695 Son of Giacomo Recco. He was the most celebrated Neapolitan still-life painter of his day. He began in the tradition of his father and (probable) uncle Giovan Battista Recco, painting naturalistic arrangements of flowers, fish, game and kitchen scenes. There are many signed and dated works which chart the development of his style. The Bodeg?n with a Negro and Musical Instruments (1659; Madrid, Medibacoeli priv. col.), the Bodeg?n with Fish (1664; Paris, Moret priv. col.) and the Kitchen Interior (1675; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) are close to the art of Giovan Battista Recco. The fish and kitchen still-lifes are typically Neapolitan, yet Giuseppe's art is distinguished by the intensity with which he observes light and surface texture and by the clarity of the composition, based on a careful balance of horizontals and verticals. He moved toward a more Baroque and decorative style, and the unfinished Still-life with Fruit, Flowers and Birds (1672) and the Still-life with Fruit and Flowers
Tobias Verhaeght
1561-1631 was a painter and draughtsman active in Antwerp, Florence and Rome. Primarily a landscape painter, his style is indebted to mannerist world landscapes of artists like Joachim Patinir with high viewpoints, fantastic distant perspectives and three-colour scheme. Before Verhaecht entered Antwerp's guild of St. Luke in 1590?C91, he had already spent time in Italy, first in Florence, and then as a fresco painter in Rome. Peter Paul Rubens, who was a relative by marriage, studied with him around 1592, and another student was his own son, Willem van Haecht.
John Ruskin,HRWS
1819-1900 English academic and critic, who had an enormous influence not only on architectural style but on the ways in which standards of aesthetics were judged. He used an Evangelical and polemical tone in his writings that not only reached a mass audience but received the approval of the Ecclesiologists. Initially encouraged by J. C. Loudon, he contributed to some of Loudon's publications, but his key works date from the late 1840s and 1850s. The Gothic Revival was well established when Ruskin published The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), which was an immediate success, encapsulating the mood of the period rather than creating new ideas. He argued that architecture should be true, with no hidden structure, no veneers or finishes, and no carvings made by machines, and that Beauty in architecture was only possible if inspired by nature. As exemplars worthy of imitation (he argued that the styles known to Man were quite sufficient, and that no new style was necessary) he selected Pisan Romanesque, early Gothic of Western Italy, Venetian Gothic, and English early Second Pointed as his paradigms. In the choice of the last, the style of the late C13 and early C14, he was echoing A. W. N. Pugin's preferences as well as that of most ecclesiologically minded Gothic Revivalists such as G. G. Scott. The Stones of Venice (1851C3) helped to promote that phase of the Gothic Revival in which Continental (especially Venetian) Gothic predominated. Deane and Woodward's University Museum, Oxford (1854C60), is an example of Venetian or Ruskinian Gothic. In particular, structural polychromy, featuring colour in the material used, rather than applied, was popularized by Ruskin's writings.