Romanian Painter, 1838-1907 From 1848 he trained in Bucharest with various church painters, producing icons and religious mural decorations. These works, which soon attracted attention, were influenced in style by the Viennese classicism widespread in the Romanian principalities in the early 19th century and by the Italian academicism established there after 1850 by Gheorghe Tattarescu. The earliest of his known paintings are in the church of SS Constantin and Elena at Baicoi, where his signature can be seen beside that of Nita Pereescu on the icon of St George (1853). He subsequently painted a series of icons (1854-5) at Caldarusani Monastery. In the later ensembles he was assisted by his older brother Georghe Grigorescu, who participated under his direction in the decoration of churches, such as those of the Zamfira (1856-8) and Agapia (1858-60) monasteries. In Nicolae's paintings at Agapia, classicism in Romanian art reached its highest point. The royal icons are distinguished for the elegance of the figures, both in their attitudes and in their drapery.   Related Paintings of Nicolae Grigorescu :. | Gypsies | Shepherdess | Portrait of a little girl | Saint George | Painter's Wife |
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Antonio Fontanesi
23 February 1818 - 17 April 1882) was an Italian painter who lived in Meiji period Japan between 1876 and 1878. He introduced European oil painting techniques to Japan, and exerted a significant role in the development of modern Japanese yega (Western style) painting. He is known for his works in the romantic style of the French Barbizon school. Fontanesi was born in Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, and trained with the landscape painters Prospero Minghetti and Vincenzo Carnevali. From 1841 to 1846 he made theatre sets and began painting landscapes. In 1850, he moved to Geneva, where he stayed until 1865. His main area of interest was landscape painting, which he expanded on after visiting the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris. He participated in important artistic exhibitions, displaying his works in Lyon, Turin, Milan, Florence, Genoa and the Triennial Exhibition of Fine Art in Bologna. He was nominated professor at the Academy of Lucca, but moved to Turin when a chair as a landscape professor was created specially for him at the Accademia Albertina in Turin from 1869 to 1876.
Isaac van Ostade
(bapt. June 2, 1621, Haarlem - buried October 16, 1649, Haarlem) was a Dutch genre and landscape painter. Van Ostade began his studies under his brother, Adriaen, with whom he remained till 1641, when he started his own practice. At an early period he felt the influence of Rembrandt, and this is apparent in a Slaughtered Pig of 1639, in the gallery of Augsburg. He soon found a style more suited to his own inclinations. He produced pictures in 1641-1642 on the lines of his brother - amongst these, the Five Senses, which Adrian afterwards represented by a Man reading a Paper, a Peasant tasting Beer, a Rustic smearing his Sores with Ointment and a Countryman sniffing at a Snuff-box. A specimen of Isaac's work at this period may be seen in the Laughing Boor with a Pot of Beer, in the museum of Amsterdam; the cottage interior, with two peasants and three children near a fire, in the Berlin museum; a Concert, with people listening to singers accompanied by a piper and flute player, and a Boor stealing a Kiss from a Woman, in the Lacaze collection at the Louvre. The interior at Berlin is lighted from a casement in the same Rembrandtesque style as Adrian's interior of 1643 at the Louvre. He received low prices for this kind of painting, in which he could only remain subordinate to his brother. Gradually he abandoned Adrian's cottage subjects for landscapes in the fashion of Esaias van de Velde and Salomon van Ruysdael. Once only, in 1645, he reverted to the earlier mode, when he produced the Slaughtered Pig, with a boy puffing out a bladder, in the museum of Lille. Isaac's progress in his new path was greatly facilitated by his previous experience as a figure painter; and, although he now selected his subjects either from village high streets or frozen canals, he gave fresh life to the scenes by depicting animated groups of people with a refined and searching study of picturesque contrasts. He did not live long enough to bring his art to the highest perfection. He died on 16 October 1649 having painted about 400 pictures (see H de Groot, 1910). The first manifestation of Isaac's surrender of Adrian's style is apparent in 1644 when the skating and sledging scenes were executed which we see in the Lacaze collection and the galleries of the Hermitage, Antwerp and Lille. Three of these examples bear the artists name, spelled Isack van Ostade, and the dates of 1644 and 1645. The roadside inns, with halts of travellers, form a compact series from 1646 to 1649. This is the last form of Isaac's art and has very distinct peculiarities. The air which pervades his composition is warm and sunny, yet mellow and hazy, as if the sky were veiled with a vapour coloured by moor smoke. The trees are rubbings of umber, in which the prominent foliage is tipped with touches hardened in a liquid state by amber varnish mediums. The same principle applied to details such asglazed bricks or rents in the mud lining of cottages gives an unreal and conventional stamp to them. These quirks are overcome by his broad contrasts of light and shade and the masterly figures of horses, riders, travellers, rustics, quarrelling children, dogs, poultry and cattle. A favorite place is always given to the white horse, which seems as invariable an accompaniment as the grey in the skirmishes and fairs of Philip Wouwerman. Isaac displays the best qualities in winter scenes. The absence of foliage, the crisp atmosphere and the calm air of cold January days, unsullied by smoke or vapour, preclude the use of the brown tinge, and leave the painter no choice but to ring the changes with a great variety of opal tints. Then the figures emerge with masterly effect on the light background. Amongst the roadside inns it is worth noting those in the collections of Buckingham Palace, the National Gallery, London, the Wallace Collection and Holford collections in England, the Louvre, Berlin, Hermitage and Rotterdam museums and the Rothschild collection at Vienna. The finest of the ice scenes is the famous one at the Louvre.
Procaccini, Andrea
Italian, 1671-1734 Italian painter, draughtsman and architect. A pupil of Carlo Maratti, he is first documented in 1702, among the restorers of Raphael's fresco decorations (1511-14) in the Vatican. His Tarquinius and Lucretia (c. 1705; Holkham Hall, Norfolk) has cold colours and unnatural gestures that recall Guido Reni. Appointed by Pope Clement XI, between 1710 and 1717 Procaccini supervised the tapestry factory in S Michele a Ripa: the Purification of the Virgin (Rome, Vatican, Consistory Hall) is the only extant tapestry made from a cartoon (untraced) by Maratti and an oil painting (untraced) by Procaccini. The Baptism of Cornelius Centurion (1711; Urbino, S Francesco) for the Baptism Chapel in St Peter's, Rome, was previously attributed to Maratti or Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari, but Procaccini apparently based it on sketches supplied by Maratti, who also supervised and revised the work before it was displayed.