1580-1666 Frans Hals Galleries In the field of group portraiture his work is equalled only by that of Rembrandt. Hals's portraits, both individual and group, have an immediacy and brilliance that bring his sitters to life in a way previously unknown in the Netherlands. This effect, achieved by strong Baroque designs and the innovative use of loose brushstrokes to depict light on form, was not to the taste of critics in the 18th century and the early 19th, when his work was characterized as lazy and unfinished. However, with the rise of Realism and, later, Impressionism, Hals was hailed as a modern painter before his time. Since then his works have always been popular.  Related Paintings of Frans Hals :. | Group of Children WGA | Bildnis eines jungen Mannes in gelbbraunem Rock | St Luke. | Die Zigeunerin | Banquet of the Officers of the Civic Guard of St Adrian |
Related Artists:
Owen, William
English, 1769-1825 English painter. The son of a bookseller, he was educated at the grammar school in Ludlow and was sent to London in 1786 to study under Charles Catton the elder (1728-98), coach painter to George III and founder-member of the Royal Academy. Owen's copy of a work by Reynolds, made soon after his arrival, attracted the latter's attention. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1791 and exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. From then on he exhibited there every year, apart from 1823 and 1825, and was elected ARA in 1804 and RA in 1806. He painted a number of rural scenes but specialized in portrait painting. Although his reputation was eclipsed by that of Thomas Lawrence, he was sought after by many of the eminent figures of the day, producing portraits of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr William Howley (1813), and of the politician and essayist John Wilson Croker (exh. 1812; both London, N.P.G.); other of his sitters were William Pitt the younger and John Soane. In 1810 he was appointed portrait painter to the Prince of Wales (later George IV) and in 1813 principal portrait painter to the Prince when the latter became Prince Regent. The Prince Regent does not seem to have sat to him but nonetheless he offered Owen a knighthood, which the painter refused. From c. 1820 Owen's health deteriorated until a disease of the spine confined him to his room and finally rendered him incapable of painting. He died after accidentally taking a bottle of opium that had been wrongly labelled.
Georg Weissmann
painted Christian Ludwig II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1731
Barthelemy Menn
(20 May 1815 - 10 October 1893) was a Swiss painter and draughtsman who introduced the principles of plein-air painting and the paysage intime into Swiss art. Menn was born in Geneva as the youngest son of four to Not (Rhaeto-Romance language form for Louis) Menn, a confectioner from Scuol in the canton of Grisons, and Charlotte-Madeleine-Marguerite Bodmer, the daughter of a wealthy farmer from Coinsins in the Canton de Vaud. Already at the age of twelve, Menn took drawing lessons from the little known Jean Duboi (1789-1849), and later, he entered the drawing school of the Geneva Arts Society. The repeated claim that he was also a pupil of the famous enameller Abraham Constantin (1785-1855) appears to be erroneous. In 1831, Menn was second in the annual drawing competition of the Geneva Art Society. The following year, he entered the studio of the Swiss history painter Jean-Leonard Lugardon (1801-1884), who was a pupil of Baron Gros(1771-1835) and acquainted with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). There, Menn was educated in figure drawing and composition before heading for Paris, where, in fall 1833, he entered the studio of Ingres. He was, therefore, no beginner when meeting the master, but needed some polishing and refinement in his art. In a letter to his friend Jules Hebert, Menn reported on the new situation: eEverybody, even the eldest in the studio tremble before Mr. Ingres. One fears him a lot in such a way that his corrections have a great impact. He is of an extreme sensibility,e while the education in Ingrese studio has been described by Theophile Silvestre, as follows: 'The students spend half of their time studying nature and half studying the masters among which they are especially attached to Phidias, the bas-reliefs of the Parthenon, classical sculpture in general.e This explains why among Menn's early works there are many copies after the Parthenon frieze that was accessible in Paris in a set of plaster casts at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts since 1816. (Fig. 2). Menn also copied several works by Raffael, Titian (Fig. 3), Veronese and Rubens in the Louvre, and works by Ingres. When the latter decided to give up his studio to take the post as director of the French Academy in the Villa Medici in Rome, Menn returned to his grandparents in Coinsins before following his master in fall 1834. His journey led him first via Milan to Venice, where he met briefly his compatriot Louis-Leopold Robert (1798-1835), and where he would copy works by Titian and Tintoretto. He then travelled via Padua and Bologna to Florence, where he met old classmates from Ingrese studio, and arrived finally in Rome in spring 1835. There, Menn copied works by Raphael and Michelangelo, but he also started to produce extraordinary fresh small landscape paintings in the open air. In summer 1836, he visited the Campagna, Capri and Naples, where too he drew and painted landscapes directly from nature, and copied classical antiquities from Pompeii as well as Giovanni Bellini's Transfiguration in the Museo Borbonico. When back in Rome, he produced history - and genre paintings, of which in 1837, he sent 'Solomon presented to Wisdom by his Parents' (Salomon presente e la sagesse par son pere et sa mere; Fig.N) to the annual Salon in Geneva. Menn returned via Florence, Siena and Viterbo to Paris in late 1838, where he exhibited at the Salon from 1839 to 1843, and where he became the drawing master of Maurice Dudevant, the son of George Sand. In her circle, he became acquainted with Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) who wanted to employ him as an assistant while working on the decoration of the cupola of the library in the Palais du Luxembourg. At the same time, Menn got to know the painters of the Barbizon School, and especially Charles Daubigny (1817-1878). Most importantly, however, Menn became friends with Camille Corot (1796-1875), who, from 1842 onwards, visited Switzerland frequently. It was also in Paris that he became acquainted with members of the Genevan Bovy family who followed the utopian socialist ideas of Charles Fourier.