1593-1648 French Louis Le Nain Gallery French family of painters. Antoine Le Nain (b Laon, c. 1600; bur Paris, 26 May 1648) and his brothers Louis Le Nain (b Laon, c. 1600; bur Paris, 24 May 1648) and Mathieu Le Nain (b Laon, c. 1607; bur Paris, 26 April 1677) lived together and shared a studio in Paris. Since the studio was headed by Antoine, he is assumed to have been older than Louis. The brothers reputation rests on a number of paintings signed Le Nain, on the basis of which other paintings (but no drawings) have also been attributed to them. None of the signed paintings bears a Christian name, and there is no secure way of attributing works to the individual brothers, although many attempts have been made. Eighteenth-century sale catalogues, fearful of anonymity, effectively chose from the three names at random. Since the writings of Witt (1910) and Jamot (1922) in particular, it has been habitual to ascribe small paintings on copper to Antoine, and austere, larger peasant scenes to Louis. This division of hands will be found in almost all the subsequent literature on the artists, although it must be stressed that there is no evidence at all to support it. Great efforts have also been made to identify works by Mathieu, since he survived his brothers by nearly 30 years and presumably continued to paint after their deaths in 1648. However, no such activity after 1648 is securely documented, and none of the surviving works bears a date later than 1647; and the arguments for a separate Mathieu oeuvre, though cogent, should not be regarded as conclusive. The outstanding feature of the work of the Le Nain brothers, and the basis of their celebrity since the mid-19th century, is the artists treatment of the poor.  Related Paintings of Louis Le Nain :. | Peasants at their Cottage Door,undated (mk08) | Twee meisjes. | La Charette (mk08) | The Milkwoman-s Family | Venus in the Forge of Vulcan (df01) |
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William Dexter
Australian, 1818-1860,was an English-Australian painter. Dexter was born at Melbourne, Derbyshire, England, and became an apprentice at the Derby China factory painting flowers and birds in the Chinese and Japanese styles. Dexter then studied at Paris, and returning to England, married Caroline nee Harper at Nottingham in 1843. Dexter had a picture in the Royal Academy exhibition in 1851 and another in 1852. Dexter then sailed to Australia and arrived at Sydney on 8 October 1852. Dexter was at Bendigo in August 1853, where William Howitt heard him advocating republican doctrines at a meeting of diggers. His wife came out from England at the end of 1854, and in March 1855 they together opened a gallery of arts and school of design in Bathurst Street, Sydney. This apparently was not a success for they went to live at Stratford, Victoria, in 1856, and there made the acquaintance of Angus McMillan. In 1857 Dexter exhibited six oils and three watercolours at the first Victorian Society of Fine Arts exhibition, held in Melbourne. Soon afterwards he returned to Sydney as the Dexters had separated. He became a partner in a sign-writing business, dying there in 1860.
MASTER of Heiligenkreuz
Austrian Northern Renaissance Painter, 15th Century,was an Austrian painter active at the beginning of the fifteenth century; a tentative lifespan of 1395 to 1430 has been put forth, but this appears highly conjectural. His name is taken from a diptych that once belonged to the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz, located in southeastern Austria near the present-day border with Hungary. The left panel depicts the Annunciation on the obverse; the reverse is a depiction of the Madonna and Child. The right panel depicts the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine, with Saint Dorothy on its reverse. Details of costume and iconography combine with associations with the International Style to indicate a date of around the first decade of the fifteenth century. It was initially proposed, by Betty Kurth in 1922, that the artist was French and had some association with the court in Paris. Other writers have disagreed, and various nationalities including French, Austrian, German, or Bohemian have been posited for the Master. Some have further suggested that he was an itinerant court artist, trained in France but active in Austria. Various clues have been used in an attempt to describe his nationality. These include his use of finely-worked gold decoration, in which some have seen a link to Franco-Burgundian goldsmith's work of the late fourteenth century. Others, instead, see it as a link to the school of panel painting then active at the court in Prague. Consequently, it seems highly unlikely that the artist's nationality will be conclusively established.
Lotz, Karoly
Hungarian Painter, 1833-1904 was a German-Hungarian painter. Karl Lotz was born in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany, the seventh and youngest surviving child of Wilhelm Christian Lotz and Antonia Höfflick. His father was a valet of Prince Gustav zu Hessen-Homburg at the time when the prince was representing Austria at the Congress of Vienna, which among other matters dealt with the House of Hessen-Homburg's rights of sovereignty over Hessen-Darmstadt. The sudden death of the young Baron von Sinclair, charge d'affaires, forced W. C. Lotz temporarily into the rôle. While in Hungary in 1815 he made the acquaintance of the 13-year-old Antonie Hoefflich, whom he married three years later. She gave birth to eight children, of whom Karl was the youngest. W. C. Lotz died in 1837 and Antonie moved the family to Pest (now that part of Budapest to the north of the River Danube). Karl attended the Piaristengymnasium, where, although Calvinist, he was awarded a scholarship for his exceptional academic performance. He began his artistic career as a pupil of the Hofkapellmeister Destouches, then in the academy of the Venetian master Jacopo Marastoni (1804-1860). Later he was a pupil of the historical painters Henrik Weber (1818-1866) in Budapest and Carl Rahl (1812-1865) in Vienna. Together with Rahl he worked on numerous commissions. Later he started on his own original works, first as a romantic landscape artist in scenes of the Alföld (the Hungarian lowland plain), and then as a creator of monumental murals and frescos in the style of the Venetian master Tiepolo. After various works in Budapest he became active in Vienna. He laid out plans for a grandiose palace, and completed murals commissioned by the Abbot of Tihany for his abbey church on the shore of Lake Balaton. He became known for his portraits and nudes, for which both his wife and his daughters (Katarina in particular) posed. Lotz found married bliss only at the age of 58, when he married the widow Jacoboy, the former wife of his brother Paul Johann Heinrich, who had died in 1828. From then on he signed his works Keroly Jacoboy-Lotz. In 1882 Lotz was appointed Professor at various art academies in Budapest, and in 1885 he became dean of a newly-established department for women painters.