Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | Rubens is known for the frenetic energy and lusty ebullience of his paintings, as typified by the Hippopotamus Hunt | The Sacred Family with Holy Isabel | The Raising of the Cross (mk01) | Psyche et l Amour endormi | Portret van Alfons, koning van Aragon en Napels |
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James Sharples
(1751 or 1752 in Lancashire - 26 February 1811 in New York ) was an English portrait painter and pastelist, who moved to the United States in 1794. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1779. James was first intended for the Catholic priesthood, but became an artist instead.Sharples headed a family of successful portrait artists, including his third wife Ellen Sharples. He had four children, George by his first wife, Felix Thomas Sharples from his second marriage (c. 1786- after 1823), and James Sharples Jr.(c. 1788-1839) and daughter Rolinda Sharples (1793-1838) with this third wife, Ellen. Felix, James Jr. and Rolinda joined the family enterprise at ages 17, 15, and 13 respectively. Before marrying Ellen Wallace, James had been active in Bristol, Liverpool and Bath, where he taught drawing. Ellen was a lady of French extraction who had relations in America. The family left for the United States in 1796, but, according to Ellen's diaries, their ship fell into the hands of the French, and for seven months the family spent time in Brest, near Cherbourg. Landing in New York, James quickly became popular for his small portraits in pastel and his miniatures. From 1796 to 1801 he worked mainly in Philadelphia and New York, securing portrait commissions. The family traveled throughout New England region as itinerant portrait painters, looking for work and making inexpensive copies from the originals portraits they had made of popular and well-known figures, such as George Washington and James Madison.
FARINATI, Paolo
Italian painter, Veronese school (b. 1524, Verona, d. 1606, Verona) Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the son of a painter, Giambattista, but probably trained in the workshop of Nicola Giolfino (Vasari). His earliest documented painting, St Martin and the Beggar (1552; Mantua Cathedral), was commissioned by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga along with works by Battista dell'Angolo del Moro, Veronese and Domenico Brusasorci for Mantua Cathedral, newly restored by Giulio Romano. As is evident in his chiaroscuro and figure types, Farinati had absorbed certain Mannerist influences from the frescoes of scenes from the Life of the Virgin (1534) in the choir of Verona Cathedral, executed by Francesco Torbido to Giulio's design. Giolfino's eccentric style would also have encouraged Farinati to emphasize line over colour and to restrict his palette to rather opaque greys, browns, mauve and rust. His two-canvas Massacre of the Innocents (1556; Verona, S Maria in Organo) displays the muscular figures, sharp foreshortenings and posed attitudes of Mannerism and has a more polished finish than his earlier work. Its strong, plastic qualities are also evident in Christ Walking on the Water and the Supper of St Gregory (1558) in the choir of the same church.
Hippolyte Petitjean
Hippolyte Petitjean (1854 - 1929)