1593-1652 French Georges de La Tour Galleries His early work shows influences from Caravaggio, probably via his Dutch followers, and the genre scenes of cheats??as in The Fortune Teller ??and fighting beggars clearly derive from the Dutch Caravaggisti, and probably also his fellow-Lorrainer, Jacques Bellange. These are believed to date from relatively early in his career. La Tour is best known for the nocturnal light effects which he developed much further than his artistic predecessors had done, and transferred their use in the genre subjects in the paintings of the Dutch Caravaggisti to religious painting in his. Unlike Caravaggio his religious paintings lack dramatic effects. He painted these in a second phase of his style, perhaps beginning in the 1640s, using chiaroscuro, careful geometrical compositions, and very simplified painting of forms. His work moves during his career towards greater simplicity and stillness ?? taking from Caravaggio very different qualities than Jusepe de Ribera and his Tenebrist followers did. He often painted several variations on the same subjects, and his surviving output is relatively small. His son Etienne was his pupil, and distinguishing between their work in versions of La Tour's compositions is difficult. The version of the Education of the Virgin, in the Frick Collection in New York is an example, as the Museum itself admits. Another group of paintings (example left), of great skill but claimed to be different in style to those of de La Tour, have been attributed to an unknown "Hurdy-gurdy Master". All show older male figures (one group in Malibu includes a female), mostly solitary, either beggars or saints. After his death in 1652, La Tour's work was largely forgotten until rediscovered by Hermann Voss, a German scholar, in 1915. In 1935 an exhibition in Paris began the revival in interest among a wider public. In the twentieth century a number of his works were identified once more, and forgers tried to help meet the new demand; many aspects of his œuvre remain controversial among art historians.  Related Paintings of Georges de La Tour :. | Bauernapaar | Nativity, Louvre | St Joseph | The Fortune Teller | Brawl, Getty Museum |
Related Artists:
Ambrosius Holbein
1494-1519 German Ambrosius Holbein Gallery Ambrosius Holbein (c. 1494 ?C c. 1519) was a German and Swiss artist in painting, drawing and printmaking. He was the elder brother, by about three years, of Hans Holbein the Younger and like his brother was born in Augsburg (which today is in Bavaria, but then was a free imperial city), a center of art, culture and trade at that time. His father Hans Holbein the Elder was a pioneer and leader in the transformation of German art from the Gothic to the Renaissance style. In his studio both his sons, Ambrosius and Hans, received their first painting lessons as well as the an introduction to the crafts of the goldsmith, jeweller and printmaker. Portrait of a Boy with Blond Hair, 1516, BaselIn 1515 Ambrosius lived in the Swiss town of Stein am Rhein, where he helped a Schaffhausen painter named Thomas Schmid with the murals in the main hall of the St George monastery. The next year saw Ambrosius, as well as his brother Hans, in Basel, where he initially worked as a journeyman in Hans Herbster??s studio. In 1517 he was enrolled in a register of the Basel painters' guild and in 1518 he was naturalized as a citizen there. The Portrait of a Boy with Blond Hair and its companion, the Portrait of a Boy with Brown Hair, are among Ambrosius?? best works of this period. Both are nowadays in the Basel Kunstmuseum. Ambrosius Holbein ranks among the most important of Basel??s illustrators and prominent „small formats?? artists.
Jan Fyt
1611-1661 Flemish Jan Fyt Gallery Flemish painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was apprenticed in Antwerp in 1621-2 to Hans van den Berch [Berghe] (not to be confused with Jan van den Bergh of Alkmaar) and probably completed his training with Frans Snyders. In 1629-30 Fyt became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, but he continued to work for Snyders until 1631. In 1633 and 1634 he was in Paris. According to his biographers, he then went to Italy; an Italian journey is confirmed by the fact that in 1650 he joined the Antwerp Guild of Romanists (exclusive to those who had visited Rome), of which he became the dean in 1652. He apparently worked in Rome, where he joined the Schildersbent and was given the nickname Goudvink (Dut.: goldfinch). In Venice, according to Orlandi, Fyt worked for the Sagredo and Contarini families. He is also thought to have visited Naples, Florence and Genoa, and Orlandi stated that he also went to Spain and London. By 5 September 1641 Fyt was back in Antwerp, where, apart from a brief trip to the northern Netherlands in 1642, he apparently remained for the rest of his career. However, Jan-Erasmus Quellinus stated that he again travelled to Italy in the 1650s, a claim supported to some extent by the mention in 1671 of a Self-portrait (untraced) supposedly painted some 20 years earlier in Venice (see 1977 exh. cat.).
Lemuel Francis Abbott
1760-1803 Lemuel Francis Abbott Locations English painter. He was the son of a clergyman and went to London to study with Francis Hayman shortly before the latter death in 1776; he may have completed his studies in Derby with Joseph Wright of Derby. By the early 1780s Abbott had established a busy portrait practice in London. The formula he adopted for most of his head-and-shoulder portraits can be seen in Sir William Herschel (1785; London, N. Mar. Mus.): the body is parallel to the picture plane, and the sitter head is moved into three-quarter profile, as if his attention has been suddenly distracted. In later portraits, such as those of fellow artists Francesco Bartolozzi (c. 1792; London, Tate) or Joseph Nollekens (c. 1797; London, N.P.G.), the sitter hand or some attribute balances the movement of the head. Only male portraits by Abbott are known, and his patrons were mostly drawn from the professional classes, particularly the Navy; there are several versions of Lord Nelson (e.g. 1798; London, N. Mar. Mus.). His style is crisp but scratchy in technique, and often the anatomy of his figures is inaccurate. Paint is handled in a manner comparable with that of Gainsborough Dupont, but Abbott sense of composition is superior. In 1798 he was certified insane, but he continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy in London for two further years. Several of his works were probably finished by another hand.