1599-1660,Spanish painter. He was apprenticed to Francisco Herrera the Elder before being trained by Francisco Pacheco. His early works were mostly religious or genre scenes. After arriving in Madrid in 1623, he painted a portrait of Philip IV that won him immediate success and an appointment as court painter. His position gave him access to the royal collections, including works by Titian, who exerted the greatest influence on his style. In his portraits from this period, only the faces and hands of the figures are accentuated, and the dark figures stand out against a light background. A visit to Italy (1629 ?C 31) further developed his style, and on his return to Madrid he entered his most productive period. Velazquez created a new type of informal royal portrait for Philip hunting lodge, and his portraits of court dwarfs display the same discerning eye as those of his royal subjects. On a second visit to Rome (1649 ?C 51) he painted a portrait of Pope Innocent X. The powerful head, brilliant combinations of crimson of the curtain, chair, and cope are painted with fluent technique and almost imperceptible brushstrokes that go far beyond the late manner of Titian and announce the last stage in Velazquez development. This portrait was copied innumerable times and won him immediate and lasting renown in Italy. In his last years he created his masterpiece, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour, 1656). In this casual scene, the artist is shown painting the king and queen in the presence of the infanta Margarita and her attendants; the nearly life size figures are painted in more or less detail according to their relation to the central figure of the infanta and to the source of light, creating a remarkable illusion of reality never surpassed by Velazquez or any other artist of his age. He is universally acknowledged as one of the giants of Western art.   Related Paintings of Velasquez :. | Philip IV | Our Lady of Dai Guanzhong map | Archbishop of Cape Verde | Dionysus | Jesus and Maria Mada at home |
Related Artists:
James Jebusa Shannon
(1862 - 1923), Anglo-American artist, was born in Auburn, New York, and at the age of eight was taken by his parents to Canada. When he was sixteen, he went to England, where he studied at South Kensington, and after three years won the gold medal for figure painting. His portrait of the Hon. Horatia Stopford , one of the queen's maids of honour, attracted attention at the Royal Academy in 1881, and in 1887 his portrait of Henry Vigne in hunting costume was one of the successes of the exhibition, subsequently securing medals for the artist at Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. He soon became one of the leading portrait painters in London. He was one of the first members of the New English Art Club, a founder member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and in 1897 was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and RA in 1909. His picture, "The Flower Girl", was bought in 1901 for the National Gallery of British Art.
Thomas Nast
September 27, 1840 ?C December 7, 1902,Illustrator Thomas Nast was the first American celebrity cartoonist, famous for helping to turn out New York corrupt politicians and for creating peristent iconographic images of Santa Claus. Nast, from a family of German immigrants, began working in New York City as a cartoonist at the age of 15. He had a long association with Harper Weekly (1861-86), during which his battlefield illustrations and skilled caricatures made him famous in the U.S. and abroad (Van Gogh was a collector). Nast was an opinionated, progressive Republican, and his illustrated attacks on the leader of New York Democrats, William Boss Tweed, are said to have helped bring down an era of government corruption. One of the most influential caricaturists of his time, he is credited with creating the image of Santa as a chubby fellow in a red suit. Nast also came up with the image of an ass to represent Democrats (around 1870) and an elephant to represent Republicans (1874). His popularity waned in the 1880s, and he parted ways with Harper Weekly over political and artistic differences. Failing to succeed with his own publication or as a painter, he managed to be appointed by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1902 to a diplomatic position in Ecuador, where he contracted yellow fever and died. Now officially embraced icons, the animal symbols of the two political parties were meant by Nast to be unflattering.
Floris Arntzenius
(9 June 1864 - 16 February 1925) was a Dutch painter, water-colourist, illustrator and printmaker. He is considered a representative of the younger generation of the Hague School. Arntzenius was born in Surabaya on the island of Java where his father served in the Royal Dutch East Indies Army. In 1875, at the age of 11, he was sent to the Netherlands to Amsterdam to live with his aunt and uncle in order to complete his education. In 1882 he became a student of Frederik Nachtweh, under Nachtweh's supervision he gained admission to the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten. During his time at the Rijksacademie, from 1883 to 1888, his teachers included August Allebe and Barend Wijnveld, and amongst his fellow students were Isaac Israëls, George Breitner, Willem Witsen and Jan Veth. After his studies in Amsterdam he spent another two years at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp, studying under Charles Verlat. Back in Amsterdam, Arntzenuis became a member of the artist's societies Arte et Amicitiae (1890) and St. Lucas (1891), and he had a studio at the Sarphatistraat. In 1892 his mother became widowed and moved to The Hague and Arntzenuis also moved there to keep her company. Around the same time his former fellow students Isaac Israëls and George Breitner left The Hague for Amsterdam to be a part of the capital's more vibrant artistic climate. At The Hague the established painters of the first generation of the Hague School dominated artistic life. Spuistraat, 1919, Haags Historisch MuseumArntzenius became a member of the artist's society Pulchri Studio in The Hague in 1892. From 1893 to 1895 he shared Bernard Blommers' former studio with Cornelis Antonie van Waning. He also contributed illustrations to Elsevier Geïllustreerd Maandschrift from 1892 to 1894. In 1896 he was admitted to the Hollandsche Teeken Maatschappij, a society that promoted the medium of watercolours among its members. He got married in 1900, to Lide Doorman, a talented painter of floral still lives, who lived in the house opposite of Arntzenius' mother, together they had four daughters, who he frequently painted.