British Painter and Printmaker, 1697-1764
English painter and engraver. He played a crucial part in establishing an English school of painting, both through the quality of his painting and through campaigns to improve the status of the artist in England. He also demonstrated that artists could become independent of wealthy patrons by publishing engravings after their own paintings. Related Paintings of HOGARTH, William :. | The Prodigal Son | The Painter and his Pug f | Heads of Six of Hogarth's Servants (mk08) | Self-portrait (mk08) | Marriage a la Mode:Shortly after the Marriage | Related Artists:
Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt (Delft, 1567 - Delft 27 June 1641) was a Dutch Golden Age painter.
He was the son of a goldsmith, who apprenticed him to the copperplate engraver Hieronymus Wierix. He subsequently became a pupil of Willem Willemz and Augusteyn of Delft, until Anthonie van Montfoort (Houbraken calls him Antony Blokland), who had seen and admired two of Mierevelt's early engravings, Christ and the Samaritan and Judith and Holofernes, invited him to enter his school at Utrecht.
He registered as a member of the Guild of St. Luke in The Hague in 1625.Devoting himself first to still lifes, he eventually took up portraiture, in which he achieved such success that the many commissions entrusted to him necessitated the employment of numerous assistants, by whom hundreds of portraits were turned out in factory fashion. Today over 500 paintings are or have been attributed to him.The works that can with certainty be ascribed to his own brush are remarkable for their sincerity, severe drawing and harmonious color, but comparatively few of the two thousand or more portraits that bear his name are wholly his own handiwork. So great was his reputation that he was patronized by royalty in many countries and acquired great wealth. The king of Sweden and the count palatine of Neuburg presented him with golden chains; Albert VII, Archduke of Austria, at whose court he lived in Delft, gave him a pension; and Charles I vainly endeavoured to induce him to visit the English court.
Though Mierevelt is chiefly known as a portrait painter, he also executed some mythological pieces of minor importance. Many of his portraits have been reproduced in line by the leading Dutch engravers of his time. He died at Delft.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has the richest collection of Mierevelt's works, chief of them being the portraits of William, Philip William, Maurice, and Frederick Henry of Orange, and of the count palatine Frederick V. At the Mauritshuis in The Hague are the portraits of four princes of the house of Orange, of Frederick V as king of Bohemia, and of Louise de Coligny as a widow. Other portraits by him are at nearly all the leading continental galleries, notably at Brunswick (3), Gotha (2), Schwerin (3), Munich (2), Paris (Louvre, 3), Dresden (4), Berlin (2), and Darmstadt (3). The town hall of Delft also has numerous examples of his work.
DUSART, CornelisDutch Baroque Era Painter, 1660-1704
Dutch painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the son of the organist at St Bavo in Haarlem and one of the last pupils of Adriaen van Ostade. He became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke on 10 January 1679 and served as its dean in 1692. Dated pictures by Dusart have survived from almost every year between 1679 and 1702. Two of his earliest pictures of peasants relied heavily on compositions by van Ostade: Mother and Child (1679; Dresden, Gemeldegal. Alte Meister) and Woman Selling Milk (1679; sold Amsterdam, Muller, 16 Oct 1928, lot 9; the original drawing by van Ostade is in Paris
George Gower1540-1596
English
George Gower Gallery
Little is known about his early life except that he was a grandson of Sir John Gower of Stettenham, Yorkshire.
His earliest documented works are the two 1573 companion portraits of Sir Thomas Kytson and his wife Lady Kytson, now in the Tate Gallery in London.
Gower painted a self-portrait in 1579 (right) that shows his coat of arms and his artist's tools of his trade. An allegorical device shows a balance with an artist's dividers outweighing the family coat of arms, "a startling claim in England where a painter was still viewed as little more than an artisan."
The Armada portrait of Elizabeth I by George Gower c. 1588Gower was appointed to the position of Serjeant Painter to Queen Elizabeth in 1581. This allowed him to paint most of England??s aristocracy. The post also made him responsible for painted decoration at the royal residences, and on coaches and furniture. Among his works were a fountain (now destroyed) and the astronomical clock, both at Hampton Court Palace. He also inspected portraits of the Queen by other artists prior to their official release.
Gower's best-known work is the version of the Armada Portrait of Elizabeth now at Woburn Abbey, painted to commemorate the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. (A cut down version of this painting in the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom) is attributed to Gower; the "Drake" version is by a different hand.)