Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1596-1656 Jan van Goyen was born in Leiden on Jan. 13, 1596. Apprenticed from the age of 10, he had several masters. About 1617 he went to Haarlem to study with Esaias van de Velde, an important innovator in the Haarlem movement of realistic landscape painting. Van Goyen's works between 1621 and 1625 are sometimes hard to distinguish from those of his teacher. They are colorful, detailed views of villages and roads, usually busy with people, as in Winter (1621). It was Van Goyen's usual practice to sign or monogram and date his paintings. He traveled extensively through the Netherlands and beyond, recording his impressions in sketchbooks, occasionally with dates and often depicting recognizable scenes. Thus the chronology of his development is clear. His paintings of the late 1620s show a steady advance from the strong colors and scattered organization of his early works toward tonality and greater simplicity and unity of composition. By 1630 he was painting monochromes in golden brown or pale green; he played a leading part in the tonal phase of Dutch landscape painting. In 1631 Van Goyen settled in The Hague, where he became a citizen in 1634. The simplicity, airiness, and unification of his compositions continued to increase in his abundant production of dune landscapes, river views, seascapes, town views, and winter landscapes. The River View (1636) displays a river so open and extensive as to suggest the sea, with reflections that prolong the vast and luminous sky. In its monumentalization of humble structures and its composition built on a firm scaffolding of horizontal and vertical forces, it forecast at this early date developments that dominated landscape painting in the 1650s and later. In the Village and Dunes (1647) the traditional double-diagonal composition still exists, but it is dominated by horizontal and vertical accents. Stronger contrasts of light and dark replace the earlier tonality. In the last year of his life Van Goyen produced an eloquent new style, in which powerful forms stand out against the radiant sky and water in an exquisitely balanced composition (Evening Calm; 1656). The commission in 1651 to paint a panoramic view of The Hague for the Burgomaster's Room shows the high regard in which Van Goyen was held. He was enormously productive; well over 1,000 of his paintings still exist, and almost as many drawings.   Related Paintings of Jan van Goyen :. | Haymaking | River Landscape with a Ferry | View of Dordrecht | View of Dordrecht across the river Merwede | Beach at Scheveningen |
Related Artists:
Henry Ottmann
painted Nature morte aux fruits et a la fiasque de vin in 20th century French, 1877-1927
John Downman
English Painter, ca.1750-1824, English painter and draughtsman. He became a pupil of Benjamin West in 1768 and entered the Royal Academy Schools, London, the following year. In 1770 and 1772 he exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy and showed his first subject picture in 1773. He left for a period of study in Italy and was in Rome with Joseph Wright of Derby from 1773 to 1774. When he next exhibited at the Royal Academy (1777) he was living in Cambridge, but from 1778 to 1804 his considerable annual contribution to the Academy exhibitions was sent from various London addresses. His very popular small portraits were often shown in groups of six or nine. His occasional subject pictures were based on themes from mythology, Classical history, poetry and the theatre. They included a scene from As You Like It (untraced) painted for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. Downman became ARA in 1795 and travelled widely in later life, marrying in Exeter in 1806 and sending works to the Royal Academy (1805-12 and 1816-19) from all over the country.
George Spencer
painted Hazy Afternoon in 19th Century