1635-1695 Dutch Melchior de Hondecoeter Gallery Melchior d'Hondecoeter (c. 1636 ?C April 3, 1695), Dutch animalier painter, was born at Utrecht, and died in Amsterdam. After the start of his career, he painted virtually exclusively bird subjects, usually exotic or game, in a park-like landscapes. Being the grandson of Gillis d'Hondecoeter and son of Gijsbert d'Hondecoeter, as well as nephew of Jan Baptist Weenix, he was brought up by the last to the profession of painting, when his father died. Of Weenix we know that he married Gilles daughter Josina in 1638. Melchior was, therefore, also related to Jan Weenix. The latter told Arnold Houbraken, in his youth Melchior was extremely religious, praying very loud, so his mother and uncle doubted if they would have him trained as a painter. In 1659 he was working in the Hague and became a member of the painters' academy at the Hague. In 1663 Hondecoeter married Susanne Tradel in Amsterdam. While she was captious and having her sisters living in their house, Hondecoeter spent much time in his garden or drinking in the tavern in the Jordaan. On the Lauriergracht, where he used to live, he was surrounded by art dealers and various painters. Later he moved to a house on Prinsengracht. In 1686 he bought a small countryhouse in Vreeland. Hondecoeter died in the house of his daughter Isabel in Warmoesstraat but was buried in Westerkerk near his house. His inventory lists a small gallow, to keep birds in the right position, and several paintings of Frans Snyders. Melchior began his career with a different speciality from that by which he is usually known. Mr de Stuers affirms that he produced sea-pieces. One of his earliest works is a "Tub with Fish," dated 1655, in the gallery of Brunswick. But Melchior soon abandoned fish for fowl. He acquired celebrity as a painter of birds only, which he represented not exclusively, like Johannes Fyt, as the gamekeeper's perquisite after a day's shooting, or stock of a poulterer's shop, but as living beings with passions, joys, fears and quarrels, to which naturalists will tell us that birds are subject. Without the brilliant tone and high finish of Fyt, his Dutch rival's birds are full of action; and, as Burger truly says, "Hondecoeter displays the maternity of the hen with as much tenderness and feeling as Raphael the maternity of Madonnas."  Related Paintings of Melchior de Hondecoeter :. | The Menagerie | A Pelican and other exotic birds in a park | Floating Feather | with the hunting trophy | Birds in a Park |
Related Artists:
Hercules Seghers
1590-1638 Dutch Hercules Seghers Gallery Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers or Segers (c. 1589 ?C c. 1638) was a Dutch painter and printmaker of the Dutch Golden Age. Segers is in fact the more common form in contemporary documents, and was used by the painter himself (modern use is about equally divided between the two). He was "the most inspired, experimental and original landscapist" of his period and an even more innovative printmaker. He was probably best known to his contemporaries for his paintings of landscapes and still-life subjects; his paintings are also rare, with perhaps only fifteen surviving (one was destroyed in a fire in October 2007 ). The Stadholder, Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange bought landscapes in 1632. Many of his painted landscapes are fantastic mountainous compositions, whereas in his prints it is often the technical approach rather than the subject which is extreme. His painted landscapes tend to show a wide horizontal view, with emphasis on earth rather than sky; two in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin had strips of sky added at the top later in the century to meet a changed taste. Apart from Coninxloo, Seghers drew from the Flemish landscape tradition, perhaps especially Joos de Momper and Roelandt Savery, but also the "fantastic and visionary aspects of Mannerist" landscape painting. A 1680 inventory of Jan van der Capelle, who owned five paintings by Seghers, describes one as view of Brussels, which if correct would presumably mean Seghers travelled there, probably when young, when his style shows most Flemish influence (in so far as the chronology of his work is clear).
Louis-Francois, Baron Lejeune
(3 February 1775, Strasbourg - 29 February 1848) was a French general, painter, and lithographer. His memoirs have frequently been republished and his name is engraved on the Arc de Triomphe. He studied painting in the studio of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, alongside Jean-Victor Bertin, but left the studio to volunteer in the Compagnie des arts de Paris in 1792. He received his baptism of fire in the battle of Valmy later that year. He became a sergeant in the 1st Arsenal battalion and in 1793 moved to the artillery at La Fere, assisting in the sieges of Landrecies, Le Quesnoy and Valenciennes. At Valenciennes he became aide-de-camp to general Jacob then, as a lieutenant on attachment to the engineers, took part in the 1794 Holland campaign and the 1795 campaign. Called to the depot in 1798, he succeeded brilliantly in his exams and was made a captain on attachment to the engineers. He became aide-de-camp to marshal Berthier in 1800, a post he retained until 1812 and in which he took an active part in practically all of the Napoleonic campaigns. He was wounded and captured in Spain. He was promoted to full captain after Marengo and chef de bataillon after Austerlitz, also become a knight of the Legion d'honneur and a colonel at the Siege of Saragossa. The German campaign of 1806 brought him to Munich, where he visited the workshop of Alois Senefelder, the inventor of lithography. Lejeune was fascinated by the possibilities of the new method and whilst there he made the drawing on stone of his famous Cossack (printed by C. and ~f. Senefelder, 1806). Whilst he was taking his dinner, and with his horses harnessed and waiting to take him back to Paris, one hundred proofs were printed, one of which he subsequently submitted to Napoleon. The introduction of lithography into France was greatly due to the efforts of Lejeune. In 1812, during the French invasion of Russia, he was made general de brigade and chief of staff to Davout. Frostbitten on the face, Lejeune left his post during the retreat from Russia and was arrested on the orders of Napoleon. Freed in March 1813, Lejeune was then sent to the Illyrian provinces, before rejoining the army under the orders of marshal Oudinot, becoming his chief of staff. During the Saxony campaign, Lejeune was present at the Battle of Lutzen (1813), the crossing of the River Spree and at Bautzen. He was made an officer of the Legion d'honneur and a commander of the Order of Maximilian of Bavaria. At the battle of Hoyersverda, when Below's corps wiped out the 12th corps formed up in square on the plain, Lejeune (at risk of being kidnapped) ventured into the enemy lines with one battalion, general Wolf's cavalry and six 12 pounder guns. He thus broke the whole of the Prussian artillery and saved marshal Oudinot and his army. Wounded several times and lastly at Hanau, he was authorised to leave the army in November 1813 after more than 20 years' service. After his departure from the army, he devoted himself to painting.
NUVOLONE, Panfilo
Italian painter, Lombard school (1581-1651) After studying with Giovanni Battista Trotti, he moved to Milan, where he is recorded in 1610. The influence of Trotti and of late Cremonese Mannerism is evident in his first known work, SS Nicholas and Costanza Adoring a Miraculous Image of the Virgin (1607; Can?nica d'Adda, S Giovanni Evangelista). In his paintings of scenes from the Life of Samson (1610-14; Milan, S Angelo, Cappella Sansoni) Nuvolone moved away from Trotti, exaggerating the size of the figures and defining form with an academic clarity reminiscent of the contemporary art of Camillo Procaccini. There followed, shortly after the work in S Angelo, frescoes of the Coronation of the Virgin and other scenes in the presbytery of S Maria della Passione in Milan, and, in 1614, a lunette of the Angel Announcing to Mary her Approaching Death for S Domenico, Cremona (Cremona, Mus. Civ. Ala Ponzone). In 1620 he painted the Coronation of the Virgin for the Swiss parish church in Milan (in situ). Still tied stylistically to the earlier work in S Maria della Passione, this demonstrates the difficulty Nuvolone experienced in breaking with the late Mannerism of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Giuseppe Meda (d 1599) and Ambrogio Figino and in adapting to new trends in 17th-century Milanese painting. His Virgin and Child with Two Saints (1624; Milan, S Eustorgio), featuring stiff figures and inflated Mannerist drapery with its metallic folds, indicates continued contact with Procaccini. In the same year he was employed in the decoration of the Collegiata di Appiano Gentile, where he painted two scenes from the Life of St Stephen and a Virgin and Child with SS Anthony and Victor. He continued to produce a vast number of repetitive religious works, yet these are less interesting than his still-life paintings, generally of fruit stands with peaches and grapes presented symmetrically against dark backgrounds.