English-born Australian Painter, 1854-1914 was an Australian landscape artist and a member of the Heidelberg School of Australian impressionists. Withers was born at Handsworth, Staffordshire, the son of Edwin Withers. He showed an early desire to paint, but objection was made to this by his father. It is not known what occupation he followed in England, but in 1882 he arrived in Australia with the intention of going on the land. After working for about 18 months on a farm, Withers removed to Melbourne and obtained a position as draughtsman in a firm of printers. He then took up his painting again, and began to exhibit with the Victorian Academy of Arts afterwards merged in the Victorian Artists' Society. In 1887 Withers went to Europe. There he was married to Miss F. Flinn and studied for some months at the Academie Julian, Paris. He returned to Australia with his wife in June 1888 having been commissioned to do black and white work for Messrs Fergusson and Mitchell of Melbourne. His most important work in this way will be found in the illustrations to Edmund Finn's, The Chronicles of Early Melbourne. Withers settled down at first at Kew, a suburb of Melbourne, and then near Heidelberg on the other side of the river Yarra. He became friendly with Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and other leading artists of the period. He began to sell a few pictures, but the collapse of the land boom put an end to his illustrative work. He obtained some work as a drawing and painting master in schools, and in 1891 opened a studio in Collins-street west, where he held his first private exhibition.   Related Paintings of Walter Withers :. | Fossickers | Heidelberg | The Last of Summer, | The Last of Summer | Midsummer |
Related Artists:
SWANEVELT, Herman van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1600-1655 Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher, active in France and Italy. His first signed and dated works are two views of Paris dated 1623 (Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.). He was in Rome from 1629 to 1641. His earliest dated painting there is an Old Testament Scene (1630; The Hague, Mus. Bredius; see fig.), a compositional formula that he often used, with some variations, in Rome. A flat, low foreground is closed on the left by a house and a tree; on the right is a distant hilly scene; and groups of figures are disposed horizontally. This design, derived from Cornelis van Poelenburch, is well suited to van Swanevelt's many landscapes with biblical and mythological subjects. The large tree extending beyond the frame gives a monumental touch to the composition.
Johannes Hubertus Leonardus de Haas
(25 March 1832 - 4 August 1908) was a Dutch animal and landscape painter, and a peripheral figure of the Hague School. Born at Hedel, De Haas spend his youth in Amsterdam where he got his first art education at evening-classes at the Koninklijke Academie. Consequently he moved to Haarlem where he was apprenticed to the artist Pieter Frederik van Os. During his stay in Haarlem he befriended Paul Gabriël and Hendrik Dirk Kruseman Van Elten who were also studying with Van Os. In 1853, together with his two friends, De Haas decided to go to Oosterbeek. Here they came into contact with the influential landscape painter Johannes Warnardus Bilders and the group of painters which had gathered around him, many of whom would later be part of the Hague School. De Haas also met his future wife in Oosterbeek, Bilders' daughter, Caroline. In 1855 he received good reviews for his pictures that were exhibited in Paris from the noted art critic Jean Baptiste Gustave Planche. In 1857 De Haas first went to Brussels, where he became friends with Willem Roelofs. De Haas frequently returned to the Netherlands and Oosterbeek for inspiration and Caroline. From 1860 his friend Gabriël also lived in Brussels, and De Haas often painted cattle in the landscapes of both Roelofs and Gabriel, fitting in perfectly with both their styles. In 1860 he won the gold medal at the exhibition of Utrecht. From 1861 until 1869 De Haas is permanently settled in Brussels, painting mainly on the coasts of Flanders and Picardie in northern France. He married Caroline Bilders in 1862, and in 1864 they are briefly joined by her brother, the promising painter Gerard Bilders. In 1865 Caroline dies at the age of 24 of tuberculosis, leaving him with a young son. During his stay in Brussels De Haas is instrumental in passing on the style of the Barbizon school to the painters at Oosterbeek.
John Greenhill
(c. 1644 -19 May 1676) was an English portrait painter, a pupil of Peter Lely, who approached his teacher in artistic excellence, but whose life was cut short by a dissolute lifestyle. Greenhill was born at Salisbury, Somerset (now Wiltshire) around 1644, the eldest son of John Greenhill, registrar of the diocese of Salisbury, and Penelope Champneys, daughter of Richard Champneys of Orchardleigh, Somerset. His grandfather was Henry Greenhill of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire. His father was connected through his brothers with the East India trade. Greenhill's first attempt was a portrait of his paternal uncle, James Abbott of Salisbury, whom he is said to have sketched surreptitiously, as the old man would not sit for him. About 1662 he moved to London, and became a pupil of Sir Peter Lely. His progress was rapid, and he acquired some of Lely's skill and method. He carefully studied Vandyck's portraits, and George Vertue commented that he copied so closely Vandyck's portrait of "Thomas Killigrew and his dog" that it was difficult to know which was the original. Vertue also says that his progress excited Lely's jealousy. Greenhill was at first industrious, and married early. But a taste for poetry and drama, and living in Covent Garden in the vicinity of the theatres, led him to associate with many members of the free-living theatrical world, and he fell into "irregular habits". On 19 May 1676, while returning from the "Vine Tavern" (in Holborn) in a state of intoxication, he fell into the gutter in Long Acre, and was carried to his lodgings in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he died the same night. He was buried in St Giles in the Fields church. He left a widow and family, to whom Lely gave an annuity.