1619-1693 Dutch Willem Kalf Galleries Willem Kalf was born in Rotterdam, in 1619. He was previously thought to have been born in 1622, but H. E. van Gelder??s important archival research has established the painter??s correct place and date of birth. Kalf was born into a prosperous patrician family in Rotterdam, where his father, a cloth merchant, held municipal posts as well. In the late 1630s, Willem Kalf travelled to Paris and spent time in the circle of the Flemish artists in Saint-Germain-des-Pr??s, Paris. In Paris he painted mainly small-scale rustic interiors and still-lifes. Kalf??s rustic interiors are typically dominated by groups of vegetables, buckets, pots and pans, which he arranged as a still-life in the foreground (e.g. Kitchen Still-life, Dresden, Gemäldegal; Alte Meister). Figures usually appeared only in the blurred obscurity of the background. Though painted in Paris, those pictures belong to a pictorial tradition practised primarily in Flanders in the early 17th century, by such artists as David Teniers the Younger. The only indication of the French origin of the paintings are a few objects that Flemish exponents of the same genre would not have pictured in their works. Kalf??s rustic interiors had a large influence on French art in the circle of the Le Nain brothers. The semi-monochrome still-lifes which Kalf created in Paris form a link to the banketjes or 'little banquet pieces' painted by such Dutch artists as Pieter Claesz, Willem Claeszoon Heda and others in the 1630s. During the 1640s, Kalf further developed the banketje into a novel form of sumptuous and ornate still-life (known as pronkstilleven), depicting rich groupings of gold and silver vessels. Like other still-lifes of this period, these paintings were usually expressing vanitas allegories.  Related Paintings of Willem Kalf :. | Still Life with the Drinking-Horn of the Saint Sebastian Archers-Guild,Lobster and Glasses | stillleben | Dessert | Still-Life with an Aquamanile, Fruit, and a Nautilus Cup | Still Life (mk08) |
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Simon Mathurin Lantara
(24 March 1729 - 22 December 1778) was a French landscape painter. He was born at Oncy. His father was a weaver, and he himself began life as a herdboy; but, having attracted the notice of Gille de Reumont, a son of his master, he was placed under a painter at Versailles. Endowed with great facility and real talent, his powers found ready recognition; but he found the constraint of a regular life and the society of educated people unbearably tiresome; and as long as the proceeds of the last sale lasted he lived careless of the future in the company of obscure workmen. Rich amateurs more than once attracted him to their houses, only to find that in ease and high living Lantara could produce nothing. He died in Paris in 1778. His works, now much prized, are not numerous; the Louvre has one landscape, Morning, signed and dated 1761. Émile Bernard, Joseph Vernet, and others are said to have added figures to his landscapes and sea-pieces. Engravings after Lantara will be found in the works of Lebas, Piquenot, Duret, Mouchy and others. In 1809 a comedy called Lantara, or the Painter in the Pothouse, was brought out at the Vaudeville with great success.
Meade, Francis
American, Approx. 1807-1870
Charles Meynier
Charles Meynier (1763, Paris - 1832, Paris) was a French painter. A student of François-Andre Vincent, Meynier won the second prize in the 1789 prix de Rome competition. He made designs for the bas-reliefs and statues on the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and was, from 1816 onward, a member of the Academie des Beaux-Arts