1637-1712 Dutch Jan Van Der Heyden Gallery Van der Heyden grew up in Gorcum, but the family moved to Amsterdam around 1650. They lived on Dam Square. As a young guy he witnessed the fire in the old townhall which made a deep impression on him. He later would describe or draw 80 fires in almost any neighborhood of Amsterdam. When he married in 1661 the family was living on Herengracht, the most fashionable canal in Amsterdam. In 1668 Cosimo II de' Medici bought one of his paintings, a view of the townhall with a manipulated perspective. Van der Heyden often painted country estates, like Goudestein, owned by Joan Huydecoper II. He was not good in drawing figures and used for his paintings a metal plate for bricks, a sponge or moss for the leaves. Johannes Lingelbach, Adriaen van de Velde und Eglon van der Neer assisted him drawing the figures. Jan van der Heyden also introduced the lamp post and in 1672 impoved the design of the fire engine. He died in wealth as the superintendent of the lighting and director of the (voluntary) firemen's guild at Amsterdam. Van der Heyden was a contemporary of the landscape painters Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael, with the advantage, which they lacked, of a certain professional versatility; for, whilst they painted admirable pictures and starved, he varied the practice of art with the study of mechanics. Until 1672 he painted in partnership with Adriaen van de Velde. After Adrian's death, and probably because of the loss which that event entailed upon him, he accepted the offices to which allusion has just been made. At no period of artistic activity had the system of division of labour been more fully or more constantly applied to art than it was in Holland towards the close of the 17th century. Van der Heyden, who was perfect as an architectural draughtsman insofar as he painted the outside of buildings and thoroughly mastered linear perspective, seldom turned his hand to the delineation of anything but brick houses and churches in streets and squares, or rows along canals, or "moated granges," common in his native country. He was a travelled man, had seen The Hague, Ghent and Brussels, and had ascended the Rhine past Xanten to Cologne, where he copied over and over again the tower and crane of the great cathedral. But he cared nothing for hill or vale, or stream or wood. He could reproduce the rows of bricks in a square of Dutch houses sparkling in the sun, or stunted trees and lines of dwellings varied by steeples, all in light or thrown into passing shadow by moving cloud. He had the art of painting microscopically without loss of breadth or keeping. But he could draw neither man nor beast, nor ships nor carts; and this was his disadvantage. His good genius under these circumstances was Adrian van der Velde, who enlivened his compositions with spirited figures; and the joint labour of both is a delicate, minute, transparent work, radiant with glow and atmosphere.  Related Paintings of Jan van der Heyden :. | Canal scenery gentleman | Christ Church | Jan van der Heyden | The Dam with the New Town Hall in Amsterdam (mk05) | Square cattle |
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Adrien Lavieille
(March 29, 1848, Montmartre - February 5, 1920, Chartres) was a French painter. Portrait of Adrien Lavieille in 1879, by his wife, Marie Adrien Lavieille. Oil on canvas (private collection).Son of the landscape painter Eugene Lavieille, and nephew of the wood engraver Jacques Adrien Lavieille, he was a painter of the country : near Paris, in Brittany, near Cancale and on the riverside of the Vilaine in the south of Rennes, in Touraine, at Saint-Jean-de-Monts in Vendee, where he was invited by a friend, the painter and engraver Auguste Lepere, around Vendôme where he sojourned in the home of his daughter, Andree Lavieille, so a painter, and of his son-in-law, the man of letters, Paul Tuffrau. He also painted in Montmartre, where he lived during his youthful days, and, as his father, at Moret-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau. Parallelly to his painter's activities, Adrien Lavieille executed, during his life, for money's reasons, works of restoration and decoration : basilica Saint-Martin in Tours (where he worked with the painter Pierre Fritel), Palais de Justice of Rennes, Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, Hôtel de Lauzun, quai d'Anjou in Paris. In 1878, he married the painter Marie Petit.
Francois Stroobant
Francois Stroobant (14 June 1819 Brussels - 1 June 1916 Elsene) was a Belgian painter and lithographer, and brother of the lithographer Louis-Constantin Stroobant (1814-1872) noted for his part in Flore des Serres et des Jardins de l'Europe. He attended the Brussels Academie des Beaux-Arts between 1832 and 1847, studying under Francois-Joseph Navez, Paul Lauters and Francois-Antoine Bossuet (1798 - 1889). In 1835 he worked in the studio of the lithographer Dewasme-Pletinckx in Brussels. Stroobant's subjects were mainly landscapes and architecture. He travelled extensively through the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Hungary, exhibiting in the galleries of the Belgian towns Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. His romantic painting style stayed constant throughout his career. He was founder and first director in 1865 of the Academie des Beaux-Arts at Sint-Jans-Molenbeek in Brussels.
POURBUS, Frans the Younger
Flemish painter (b. 1569, Antwerpen, d. 1622, Paris). was a Flemish painter, son of Frans Pourbus the Elder and grandson of Pieter Pourbus. He was born in Antwerp and died in Paris. He is also referred to as "Frans II". Pourbus worked for many of the highly influential people of his day, including the Brussels-based Spanish Regents of the Netherlands, the Duke of Mantua and Marie de' Medici, Queen of France. Works of his can be found in the Louvre, the Prado, the Rijksmuseum, the Royal College of Art,