French 1600-1682 Claude Lorrain Galleries In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography. Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno). John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"  Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | Coast Scene with Acis and Galatea (mk17) | Landscape with Dancing Satyrs and Nymphs | Landscape with Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus dsf | henri 11 of lorraine | The Trojan Women Setting Fire to their Fleet |
Related Artists:
askevold
Anders Monsen Askevold was born in Askvoll, Norway in 1834. His early training started at the age of thirteen in Bergen under Hans Leganger Reuch. He trained in Dusseldorf under Professor Hans Gude from 1855 until 1859. and he is known as a member of the Dusseldorf school with others like Adelsteen Normann. From 1861 to 1866 he was in Paris. After this he moved back to Dusseldorf where he would spend his winters in Germany and his summers in Norway. Askevold did some commissions for churches in Norway. He died in 1900 in Dusseldorf.
Eugne Joseph Verboeckhoven
(1790-1881), Belgian painter, was born at Warneton in West Flanders, and received instruction in drawing and modelling from his father, the sculptor Barthelemy Verboeckhoven. Subsequently he settled in Brussels and devoted himself almost exclusively to animal subjects. Shepherd with animals in the countryside attributed to Eugene Verboeckhoven - private collectionHis paintings of sheep, of horses and of cattle in landscape, somewhat after the manner of Paulus Potter, brought him universal fame, and were eagerly sought for by collectors. Precise and careful finish is the chief quality of his art, which is entirely objective and lacking in inspiration. Verboeckhoven visited England in 1826, Germany in 1828, and France and Italy in 1841, and died at Brussels in 1881. He was a member of the academies of Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp, St. Petersburg and Amsterdam. Examples of his art are to be found in nearly all the important galleries of Europe and the United States, notably in Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, New York, Boston and Washington D.C.. His long life and ceaseless industry account for the enormous number of his pictures in public and private collections and in the art market. In addition to his painted work he executed some fifty etched plates of similar subjects.
Carlos Schwabe
German Symbolist Painter, 1877-1926 Swiss painter and printmaker of German birth. He became a Swiss citizen and received his artistic training under Joseph Mittey (b 1853) at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Geneva. Following brief success there, Schwabe moved to Paris where he supported himself as a designer of wallpaper while he developed considerable graphic skills. He soon became active in Symbolist circles, winning favour as an illustrator of mystical religious themes. His highly refined drawings and watercolours accompany texts such as Le Reve by Emile Zola (published 1892; drawings, Paris, Pompidou; exhibited Sociot Nationale des Beaux-Arts, also in 1892), Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (1900), Maeterlinck's Pellias et Melisande, Catulle Mendes's L'Evangile de l'enfance de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ selon Saint Pierre (1900) and Albert Samain's Jardin de l'Infante (1908).