Bruno Andreas Liljefors (1860-1939) was a Swedish artist, the most important and probably the most influential wildlife painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.[1] He also drew some sequential picture stories, making him one of the early Swedish comic creators. Liljefors is held in high esteem by painters of wildlife and is acknowledged as an influence, for example, by American wildlife artist Bob Kuhn.[1] All his life Liljefors was a hunter, and he often painted predator-prey action, the hunts engaged between fox and hare, sea eagle and eider, and goshawk and black grouse serving as prime examples.[1] However, he never exaggerated the ferocity of the predator or the pathos of the prey, and his pictures are devoid of sentimentality. The influence of the Impressionists can be seen in his attention to the effects of environment and light, and later that of Art Nouveau in his Mallards, Evening of 1901, in which the pattern of the low sunlight on the water looks like leopardskin, hence the Swedish nickname Panterfällen.[1] Bruno was fascinated by the patterns to be found in nature, and he often made art out of the camouflage patterns of animals and birds. He particularly loved painting capercaillies against woodland, and his most successful painting of this subject is the largescale Capercaillie Lek, 1888, in which he captures the atmosphere of the forest at dawn. He was also influenced by Japanese art, for example in his Goldfinches of the late 1880s.[1] During the last years of the nineteenth century, a brooding element entered his work, perhaps the result of turmoil in his private life, as he left his wife, Anna, and took up with her younger sister, Signe, and was often short of money.[1] This darker quality in his paintings gradually began to attract interest and he had paintings exhibited at the Paris Salon. He amassed a collection of animals to act as his living models. Ernst Malmberg recalled: The animals seemed to have an instinctive trust and actual attraction to him...There in his animal enclosure, we saw his inevitable power over its many residents??foxes, badgers, hares, squirrels, weasels, an eagle, eagle owl, hawk, capercaillie and black game.[1] The greatness of Liljefors lay in his ability to show animals in their environment.[1] Sometimes he achieved this through hunting and observation of the living animal, and sometimes he used dead animals: for example his Hawk and Black Game, painted in the winter of 1883-4, was based on dead specimens, but he also used his memory of the flocks of black grouse in the meadows around a cottage he once lived in at Ehrentuna, near Uppsala. He wrote: The hawk model??a young one??I killed myself. Everything was painted out of doors as was usually done in those days. It was a great deal of work trying to position the dead hawk and the grouse among the bushes that I bent in such a way as to make it seem lively, although the whole thing was in actuality a still life.[1]   Related Paintings of bruno liljefors :. | Fox in Winter Landscape | Winter Hare | tryckande hare | hakbo | gasflock |
Related Artists:
Ludovic Piette
French Painter, 1826-1878.French painter. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris during the 1850s under Isidore Pils and Thomas Couture. He attended classes at the Acad?mie Suisse and made his Salon d?but in 1857 with The Scorpion Broom (ex-Mus. B.-A., Rouen). His early works were often based on literary sources and include The Phantoms (exh. Salon 1859) and The Witches Appearing to Macbeth (exh. Salon 1861). Piette only exhibited at the Salon on two further occasions (1872 and 1876), preferring instead to sell his work at auction in the H?tel Drouot. In the early 1860s he abandoned literary subjects in favour of working directly from nature, a shift that probably relates to his developing friendship with Camille Pissarro. This association is first documented by Pissarros portrait of Piette in his Studio (1861; Dr and Mrs Jordan H. Trafimow priv. col.) and an important correspondence between the two artists from 1863 to 1877 survives. Piette portrayed Pissarro painting out of doors (c. 1870; priv. col., see Pissarro, exh. cat., ACGB, 1980, no. 322).
Michael Willmann
(27 September 1630 - 26 August 1706) was a German painter. The Baroque artist became known as the "Silesian Raphael". Willmann was born in Königsberg, Duchy of Prussia. He was educated by his father, the painter, Christian Peter Willmann. Michael went to the Dutch Republic in 1650 to learn from the masters, and he was inspired by the works of Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyck. For financial reasons he was unable to afford studying at the studio of a well-known painter. After two years in the Netherlands, mostly spent in Amsterdam, Willmann returned to Königsberg, passed his master's examination, and began to travel. After visiting Danzig, Willmann went to Prague, where he stayed from 1653-55. He then spent about a year in Breslau. Willmann's first known paintings, commissioned by Abbot Arnold Freiberger of the Abbatia Lubensis abbey in Leubus, Lower Silesia, date from 1656. Leubus became the setting of much of Willmann's creativity. From 1657-58 Willmann was in Berlin as the court painter of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg. He painted mythological scenes for the elector, presumably for his residence at Königsberg Castle. In 1660 Willmann returned to Leubus, which allowed him a large workshop. Willmann's workship, modeled after those of the Dutch painters, quickly spread his fame. The extensive studio included his son Michael Leopold Willmann the Younger, his daughter Anna Elisabeth, and Anna Elisabeth's husband Christian Neuenhertz and son Georg Wilhelm Neunhertz. Willmann's studio also counted Johann Kretschmer from Glogau, Johann Jacob Eybelwieser from Breslau, the Cistercian Jacob Arlet from Gressau, and Willmann's stepson Johann Christoph Lischka. Willmann became the leading painter of Silesia through his expressiveness, technical dexterity, and speed. Willmann worked on orders from the patriciate of Breslau, as well as churches and monasteries throughout Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia. He received contracts for the Cistercian monasteries in Gressau, Heinrichau, Kamenz, Rauden, and Himmelwitz. With the assistance of his students and assistants, Willmann produced 500 paintings and frescos during his life. Numerous drawings of Willmann's were later used by engravers.
Jacob van der Does
(4 March 1623, Amsterdam - buried 17 November 1673, Sloten) was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter. Van der Does was the son of the secretary of the Amsterdam city council. He was more attracted to the arts than to note-taking, and went to study drawing with Claes Corneliszoon Moeyaert. He left at 21 to go to France, and from there on foot to Italy. In Rome he joined the Bentvueghels and was dubbed Tamboer, which means drummerboy, since he was somewhat short and had been meant for the military life. He studied with Pieter van Laer (Bamboots). When he eventually returned North, he settled in The Hague where he married Margaretha Boortens and got 4 sons and a daughter. His wife died in 1661. Houbraken liked his natural style of painting, and especially his way of painting sheep was very admirable.His wife's sister was Maria Boortens, and they both were good artists themselves. All three of them made drawings for the album of the wealthy Hague diplomat Cornelis de Glarges in 1659. Through Maria Boortens, Jacob van der Does was connected to Jacob van Campen and Adriaen van Nieulandt the younger. He became involved in the Guild of St. Luke in The Hague. He was one of the founders of the Confrerie Pictura in 1656. His pupils were Theodor Bernoille, Marcus de Bye, Gamaliel Day, Alexander Havelaer, Anthony Schinckels, and his sons Jacob II and Simon van der Does.