1712-1787 English By 1728 he had left Preston, and the following year he was working in London for the Flemish topographical and sporting painter Peter Tillemans. There he specialized in landscape painting and copying various works in Tillemans studio after Marco Ricci, Giovanni Paolo Panini and Jan van Bloemen. Devis earliest known commission, Hoghton Towers from Duxon Hill, Lancashire (1735; priv. col., see 1983 exh. cat., no. 3), painted for Sir Henry Hoghton during a trip to Preston in 1734-5, shows Tillemans influence in its attention to detail and the use of thin, transparent paint. Thomas Lister with his Family (c. 1738; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.) demonstrates a similar interest in landscape, featuring the family group in Gisburn Park, Lancs. Devis had returned to London by 1742 and established himself as a painter of conversation pieces, with a studio in Great Queen Street. Roger Hesketh with his Family is typical of his work at this time; it shows how Devis transformed the intimacy of a Dutch 17th-century genre scene into an elegant interior with the group of sitters connected by formal, schematic gestures. Roger Hesketh stands apart, in a tastefully contrived pose, his legs crossed and right arm thrust inside his waistcoat. His son, Fleetwood, stands with his hand resting on a dog next to his wife, who is seated with an infant on her lap. The adjacent telescope, globe and marine paintings are intended to advertise Hesketh interest in astronomy and travel.  Related Paintings of Arthur Devis :. | Edward Robert Hughes as a Child | Fair Rosamund | Gentleman and Lady in a Landscape | Robert Manners Sutton | Portrait of an unknown Lady |
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john scarlett davis
John Scarlett Davis (1 September 1804 - 29 September 1845), or Davies, was an English painter of the first half of the nineteenth century. Davis was born in Leominster, the son of James Davis, a watchmaker; Scarlett was his mother's maiden name. At the age of eleven, Davis won an award from the local society for the encouragement of the arts. He was educated at the Royal Academy of Art School in London, and began exhibiting his works at the annual Royal Academy shows in 1825. He was influenced by the work of his contemporary, Richard Parkes Bonington. Davis painted portraits, landscapes, and church interiors, and developed a distinctive specialty in painting the interiors of art galleries. His picture The Interior of the British Institution Gallery (1829) records a collection of Old Masters. His watercolor of the collection of Benjamin Godfrey Windus (1835) shows the Turner pictures on the walls. (John Ruskin studied those Turners while writing his Modern Painters.) Davis painted the interiors of the Louvre as well. Between 1842 and 1845 he was commissioned to draw copies of the paintings in the collections of the British royal palaces. Davis painted scenes on the Continent during his travels there. He was in Florence in 1834, and Amsterdam in 1841. He painted the interior of the Uffizi Gallery. Davis's later years were marred by alcoholism and spells of imprisonment. His posthumous reputation suffered as a result. Davis's name is almost identical to that of John Scarlett-Davies, a modern video artist and director.
Simon Vouet
French Simon Vouet Gallery 1590-1649 French painter and draughtsman. Although at the time regarded as one of the leading French painters of the first half of the 17th century, he is now known more for his influence on French painting than for his actual oeuvre. He made his reputation in Italy, where he executed numerous portraits for aristocratic patrons and was commissioned for religious subjects. Although the early Italian works show the influence of Caravaggio, his work was subsequently modified by the Baroque style of such painters as Lanfranco and the influence of the Venetian use of light and colour. When he was summoned back to France by Louis XIII in 1627 he thus brought with him an Italian idiom hitherto unknown in France that revitalized French painting.
VARIN, Quentin
French Painter, ca.1570-1634 French painter. He was the son of a shoemaker and from 1597 to 1600 was in the papal territory of Avignon, where he worked with a local painter, Pierre Duplan ( fl late 16th century), enrolling also in the local painters' guild. By 1607 he had returned to northern France, and he was married that year at Amiens. In 1612 he was working in the Norman village of Les Andelys, and there he became Nicolas Poussin's first master. For the Gothic church of Notre-Dame, Le Grand Andely, he produced in 1612 a Martyrdom of St Vincent, a Martyrdom of St Clarus and a Regina Coeli (all in situ), the works that provided Poussin with his first contact with contemporary painting. These are the earliest fixed points in Varin's oeuvre, although a ruined Rock of the Philosophers (Rouen, Mus. B.-A.), reminiscent of such late 16th-century French Mannerist painters as Antoine Caron,