Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1628-1682 Ruysdael's favorite subjects are simple woodland scenes, similar to those of Everdingen and Hobbema. He is especially noted as a painter of trees, and his rendering of foliage, particularly of oak leaf age, is characterized by the greatest spirit and precision. His views of distant cities, such as that of Haarlem in the possession of the marquess of Bute, and that of Katwijk in the Glasgow Corporation Galleries, clearly indicate the influence of Rembrandt. He frequently painted coast-scenes and sea-pieces, but it is in his rendering of lonely forest glades that we find him at his best. The subjects of certain of his mountain scenes seem to be taken from Norway, and have led to the supposition that he had traveled in that country. We have, however, no record of such a journey, and the works in question are probably merely adaptations from the landscapes of Van Everdingen, whose manner he copied at one period. Only a single architectural subject from his brush is known--an admirable interior of the New Church, Amsterdam. The prevailing hue of his landscapes is a full rich green, which, however, has darkened with time, while a clear grey tone is characteristic of his seapieces. The art of Ruysdael, while it shows little of the scientific knowledge of later landscapists, is sensitive and poetic in sentiment, and direct and skillful in technique. Figures are sparingly introduced into his compositions, and such as occur are believed to be from the pencils of Adriaen van de Velde, Philip Wouwerman, and Jan Lingelbach. Unlike the other great Dutch landscape painters, Ruysdael did not aim at a pictorial record of particular scenes, but he carefully thought out and arranged his compositions, introducing into them an infinite variety of subtle contrasts in the formation of the clouds, the plants and tree forms, and the play of light. He particularly excelled in the painting of cloudscapes which are spanned dome-like over the landscape, and determine the light and shade of the objects. Goethe lauded him as a poet among painters, and his work shows some of the sensibilities the Romantics would later celebrate.  Related Paintings of Jacob van Ruisdael :. | The Dam with the weigh house at Amsterdam | The Great Forest | Dunes by the sea | Landscape with Church and Village | View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds |
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Karl Nordstrom
Swedish Painter, 1855-1923 was a Swedish painter and one of the leading members of Konstnärsförbundet, which he chaired from 1896 until its dissolution in 1920. Born on Gotland, but growing up on Tjörn on the Swedish West Coast, Nordström studied at principskolan, the preparatory school of the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm and the private painting school of Edvard Perseus, but was never promoted to the "Antique school" of the Academy but had to continue on his own. Traveling to Paris in 1881, he was influenced by the impressionists. He spent a couple of years in Grez-sur-Loing, the site of an important colony of Scandinavian artists, practising his plein air painting in the strong French sunlight. In 1885, he joined the group of young artists protesting against the policies and leadership of the Academy, and he was ever since 1886 one of the leading members of Konstnärsförbundet, the formalization of the opposition group. He was its chairman from 1896 until its dissolution in 1920. In 1886, he married xylographer and photographer Tekla Lindeström in Paris. Later the same year, he settled on Tjörn, using what he had learnt in France about light and colours to depict the landscape where he had grown up. He spent the summer of 1889 in Visby. Around 1890, he moved from his earlier impressionism towards a more synthetist style. His influences came from Japanese art, which he had encountered in Paris, and from Gauguin, whose paintings he first saw in photographs he had received from Ivan Agueli. One of Nordström's old friends from the time at the Academy and in Perseus' school, Nils Kreuger, had lived in the city of Varberg since 1888. He convinced Nordström to move there in 1892, and they were joined by another of their old friends, Richard Bergh, in 1893.
Johann Christian Reinhart
German , 1761-1847 He revealed an interest in art while still at school and, though he began to study theology in Leipzig in 1778, he soon transferred to the private art academy of Adam Friedrich Oeser (1717-99). Here he made copies of the work of his teacher and drew after plaster casts of antique statues. The Liber Veritatis, a collection of 200 drawings by Claude Lorrain, was also used as a model and had an important influence on him. In 1783 he went to Dresden where he was especially attracted to the Dutch landscape paintings in the Gem?ldegalerie. In 1785 Reinhart returned to Leipzig where he made the acquaintance of the German poet Friedrich Schiller, with whom he had a lifelong friendship, and to whom he later dedicated an etching of a heroic landscape (1800). From 1786 to 1789, while resident at the court of the Duke of Sachsen-Meiningen, he explored the Thuringian countryside on foot, making sketches as he went.
Jacopo Torriti
Italian painter, Roman school active c. 1270-1300, Italian painter and mosaicist. Two mosaics in Rome are signed by him: one, on the apse of S Giovanni in Laterano, that once bore the date 1291 (or, according to some sources, 1290 or 1292); and another on the apse and triumphal arch of S Maria Maggiore, now replaced by a 19th-century restoration but at one time dated 1295 or 1296. Torriti is also known to have executed a mosaic for Arnolfo di Cambio's tomb of Pope Boniface VIII (1296; destr.; see ARNOLFO DI CAMBIO) in Old St Peter's, Rome. Torriti was active during the same period as Cimabue and Giotto, Pietro Cavallini and Arnolfo di Cambio, but his fame has been obscured by theirs, no doubt because of his closer links with Byzantine art. He was nevertheless one of the most important artists working in Rome during the papacy of Nicholas IV (1288-92) and was entrusted with some of the most prestigious commissions of the day.