Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1625-1679
Daily life was Jan Steen's main pictorial theme. Many of the genre scenes he portrayed are lively to the point of chaos and lustfulness, even so much that a Jan Steen household, meaning a messy scene, became a Dutch proverb (een huishouden van Jan Steen). Subtle hints in his paintings seem to suggest that Steen meant to warn the viewer rather than invite him to copy this behaviour. Many of Steen's paintings bear references to old Dutch proverbs or literature. He often used members of his family as models. Jan Steen painted also quite a few self-portraits, in which he showed no tendency of vanity.
Steen did not shy from other themes: he painted historical, mythological and religious scenes, portraits, still lifes and natural scenes. His portraits of children are famous. He is also well known for his mastery of light and attention to detail, most notably in textiles. Steen was prolific, producing about 800 paintings, of which roughly 350 survive.
Steen's work was valued much by contemporaries and as a result he was reasonably well paid for his work. He did not have any students, but his work proved a source of inspiration for many painters. Related Paintings of Jan Steen :. | Argument over a Card Game | The Christening | Interior of an inn | Self-Portrait | Merry Company in an inn. | Related Artists:
Joseph Crawhall1861-1913
English painter, active in Scotland. He was brought up in Newcastle upon Tyne and was encouraged by his father and by Charles Keene, the cartoonist for Punch, studying at King's College School in London under P. H. Delamotte. There he met E. A. Walton, with whom, joined by James Guthrie, he painted at Roseneath, near Glasgow, in 1879. Crawhall also collaborated with Walton and Guthrie on illustration. His association with the Glasgow Boys was consolidated during the early 1880s on further painting trips in the Trossachs, Berwicks, and Crowland, Lincs. A keen huntsman and rider, Crawhall specialized in bird, animal and humorous subjects, and his work, with that of Arthur Melville, exemplifies the achievement of the Glasgow Boys in watercolour. After studying in Paris in 1882 under Aim? Morot (1850-1913), Crawhall exhibited for the first and only time at the Royal Academy, probably showing A Lincolnshire Meadow (1883; Glasgow, A.G. & Mus.). He then virtually abandoned oil painting and the plein-air technique, working instead from memory and using line and watercolour.
Basilius Besler1561-1629,was a respected Nuremberg apothecary and botanist, best known for his monumental Hortus Eystettensis. He was curator of the garden of Johann Konrad von Gemmingen, prince bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria. The bishop was an enthusiastic botanist who derived great pleasure from his garden, which was the only important European botanical garden outside Italy. The gardens surrounded the bishop's palace, Willibaldsburg, which was built on a hill overlooking the town. These gardens had been started in 1596 and designed by Besler's colleague, Joachim Camerarius, the Younger (1534-1598), a physician and botanist. Upon Camerarius' death in 1598, Besler had the remainder of Camerarius' plants moved to Eichstätt and carried on the work of planting and supervision. The bishop commissioned Besler to compile a codex of the plants growing in his garden, a task which Besler took sixteen years to complete, the bishop dying shortly before the work was published. Besler had the assistance of his brother and a group of skilled German draughtsmen and engravers, including Sebastian Schedel, an accomplished painter, and Wolfgang Kilian, a skilled engraver from Augsburg. Kilian and his team engraved the initial copper plates, but after the bishop??s death, the operations moved to N??rnberg and a new team of engravers, among whom were Johannes Leypold, Georg Gärtner, Levin and Friedrich van Hulsen, Peter Isselburg, Heinrich Ulrich, Dominicus Custos and Servatius Raeven. Camerarius' nephew, Ludwig Jungermann (1572-1653), was a botanist and wrote the lion's share of the descriptive text. The work was named Hortus Eystettensis (Garden at Eichstätt). The emphasis in botanicals of previous centuries had been on medicinal and culinary herbs, and these had usually been depicted in a crude manner. The images were often inadequate for identification, and had little claim to being aesthetic. The Hortus Eystettensis changed botanical art overnight. The plates were of garden flowers, herbs and vegetables, exotic plants such as castor-oil and arum lilies.
Evans, De ScottAmerican, 1847-1898
was an American artist who worked in Indiana, Ohio and New York. He was known for portraits, still lifes, landscapes and other genres. Born in Boston, Indiana to David S. and Nancy A. (Davenport) Evans. His father was a physician. Evans changed his signature to D. Scott Evans and later to De Scott Evans. He also signed paintings with the names David Scott, S. S. David, and Stanley S. David. He attended Miami University's preparatory school in the 1860s, studying with professor Adrian Beaugureau at Miami and later in Cincinnati. In 1873, he became head of the art department at Mount Union College and after several terms there, he moved to Cleveland to teach and to paint. From Cleveland, he moved to New York. He died along with 500 other passengers and crew, including his daughters when the French steamer La Bourgogne was rammed by a sailing ship in July 1898.