Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1632-1675 Johannes (or Jan) Vermeer is now recognized as one of the great Dutch painters, but while he was alive he could barely make ends meet, and his artistic achievement was almost entirely ignored for 200 years after his death. Little is known about his personal life, other than he died poor and young and left behind a wife and eleven children. Vermeer is admired for his realistic style, his subtle use of color and light and his unusual and inventive brush technique, but fewer than forty of his paintings exist. His most famous works include domestic scenes such as Girl With a Peal Earring (1665) and The Music Lesson (1662-65), and tranquil landscapes such as The Little Street (1657-58) and View of Delft (1659-60). Although his actual birth and death dates are unknown, Vermeer was baptized 31 October 1632 and buried 15 December 1675... During his career he used the names Johannes van der Meer, Johannes Vermeer and Jan Vermeer  Related Paintings of Jan Vermeer :. | damen vid spinetten | A Woman Asleep at Tablec | Diana and her Companions | View of Delft (mk08) | View of Delft |
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Washington Allston
1779-1843 Washington Allston Gallery Allston was born on a plantation on the Waccamaw River near Georgetown, South Carolina. His mother Rachel Moore had married Captain William Allston in 1775, though her husband died in 1781, shortly after the Battle of Cowpens. Moore remarried to Dr. Henry C. Flagg, the son of a wealthy shipping merchant from Newport, Rhode Island. Allston graduated from Harvard College in 1800 and moved to Charleston, South Carolina for a short time before sailing to England in May 1801. He was admitted to the Royal Academy in London in September, when painter Benjamin West was then the president. From 1803 to 1808 he visited the great museums of Paris and then for several years those of Italy, where he met Washington Irving in Rome, and Coleridge, his lifelong friend. In 1809 Allston married Ann Channing, sister of William Ellery Channing. Samuel F. B. Morse was one of Allston's art pupils and accompanied Allston to Europe in 1811. After traveling throughout western Europe, Allston finally settled in London, where he won fame and prizes for his pictures. Allston was also a published writer. In London in 1813, he published The Sylphs of the Seasons, with Other Poems, republished in Boston, Massachusetts later that year. His wife died in February 1815, leaving him saddened, lonely, and homesick for America. In 1818 he returned to the United States and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts for 25 years. He was the uncle of the artists George Whiting Flagg and Jared Bradley Flagg, both of whom studied painting under him. In 1841 he published Monaldi, a romance illustrating Italian life, and in 1850, a volume of his Lectures on Art, and Poems. Allston died on July 9, 1843, at age 64. Allston is buried in Harvard Square, in "the Old Burying Ground" between the First Parish Church and Christ Church.
Attributed to John de Critz the Elder
painted Portrait of Anne of Denmark in c. 1605
Semyon Fyodorovich Shchedrin
(1745-1804) was a Russian landscape painter, the uncle and mentor of Sylvester Shchedrin. He was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a life guard. In 1759, he entered the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, and in 1765 graduated with a gold medal and grants to study abroad. Shchedrin ventured to Paris, then to Rome. In Paris he studied the works of old and contemporary painters. Under the influence of Rousseau's idea that beauty exists not only in classic patterns of arts but also in everyday life and nature, Shchedrin worked much en plein-air, otherwise known as painting in outdoor environments. In Rome, however, he fell under the influence of classicism, the idea that art should reflect the works of antiquity and thus prolong their successes. Shchedrin returned to St. Petersburg in 1776 and became a professor of landscape painting in the Academy of Arts. He was assigned to draw views of the palaces and parks of Catherine the Great, which brought into existence such works as View of the Large Pond Island in the Tsarskoselsky Gardens (1777), View of the Large Pond in the Tsarskoselsky Gardens (1777), View of the Farmyard in the Tsarskoye Selo (1777). After 1780, Shchedrin also participated in the restoration of pictures in the Hermitage, and in 1799 he headed a new class of landscape graphics. The pinnacle of his art career came in the 1790s. The most famous of his works of the period are views of parks and palaces in Pavlovsk, Gatchina, and Petergof: The Mill and the Peel Tower at Pavlovsk (1792), View of the Gatchina Palace from the Silver Lake (1798), View of the Gatchina Palace from Long Island (1798), The Stone Bridge at Gatchina (1799-1801), View of the Kamennoostrovsky Palace through Bolshaya Nevka from the Stroganov Seashore (1803).