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 :. | Rivierlandschap met gezicht op Arnhem. | Hollandische Flachlandschaft. | Marine Landscape with fishermen | A View on the Maas near Dordrecht | Beach at Scheveningen |
Related Artists:
JACOBSZ, Dirck
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1497-1567 North Netherlandish painter, son of JACOB CORNELISZ. VAN OOSTSANEN. His birthdate is estimated from van Mander's claim that he died at the age of almost 70. His birthplace is unknown, but by about the age of three he was living in Amsterdam, where his father purchased a house in 1500. Dirck himself is documented in the city from 1546 until his burial. About 1550 he married Marritgen Gerritsdr., by whom he had two children, Maria Dircksdr. and Jacob Dircksz. War, also a painter. Dirck was trained by his father, probably around 1512, when Jan van Scorel was an apprentice. The two young artists may have remained friends, for in later years elements of Jan's mature, more Mannerist style can be seen in Dirck's paintings. Not only were Dirck's father and his brother, the little-known painter Cornelis Jacobsz. (d 1526-33), artists, his uncle Cornelis Buys I ( fl c. 1490-1524)
Thomas Alder
British 19th
Hans Multscher
German Northern Renaissance Sculptor, ca.1400-1467 German sculptor. Multscher mentions his birthplace on the inscribed band, originally a predella, of the Karg altarpiece in Ulm Cathedral (1433) and on two wings of the so-called 'Wurzach Altar' (1437) at Reichenhofen in the Allgeu. The town archives of Leutkirch, written between 1405 and 1437, record that Multscher belonged to the 'Freien Leute auf Leutkircher Heide', a commune of free peasants who had been able to preserve their independence because they were the direct descendants of Kenigsfreie, who had always been free. Under a charter of Emperor Ludwig in 1337