beside the easel

The Interrupted Pilgrimage (The Sick Pilgrim), 1858 Born on January 15, 1793 in Vienna, Austria, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller was a 19th century painter from the Biedermeier period. One of Austria's most well-known artists in his day, sadly today he is quite obscure but his incredible talent for detail and beautiful colors make him particularly unique from most of the artists I've written about here. It seems like many artists, especially today, fall into either landscape or figures, but not both. Waldmüller wielded both with a musical ease...his use of sunlight is among the most natural and vibrant I can ever remember any artist ever painting. Looking at Waldmüller's work one feels a deep optimism and overall gratifying peacefulness, without the sentimentality that often accompanies art from this era. He has an epic sensibility yet embraces common people instead of heroes and religious figures of the past, a natural storyteller that includes women and children as key ch...

Pan and Syrinx, 1724 Born on January 27, 1679 in Paris, Jean François de Troy was a French Rococo painter and tapestry designer who is known also from his teacher and father, François de Troy. A highly sensual painter with a striking palette, deep shadows and a natural penchant for group compositions, Troy pushed the limits of his Classicism to a quest for the candid. Although poetic and graceful, his figures are neither quite as affected as they may appear at first glance. The way in which he pays equal attention to the posing, anatomy and significance of both male and females reveals a pronounced Italian influence, both sculptural and illustrative, from his seven years there. In Pan and Syrinx above—a subject that has been interpreted by countless artists— Troy depicts the moment that the fleeing Syrinx awaits advice from her river nymph sisters while horny Pan chases her from behind, clutching the water reeds that she will eventually turn into. What is unusual abou...

Born in Paris in 1657, Louis de Boullogne II was a French late Baroque-early Rococo painter. His father, sister and older brother were also painters, and having won the Prix de Rome he spent three years studying in Rome and Northern Italy before returning to Paris. His reception piece, Augustus closing the doors to the temple of Janus : Auguste fait fermer les portes du Temple de Janus, 1681 made him an official member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture . An ambitious painting for a 24 year old, Boullogne reveals an effortless composition culled from all that he learned from his intensive studies in Italy. He uses strong vertical lines in the columns balanced with the implied horizontal lines of the figures, the foreground figures adding space and three-dimensonality. Note the standing figure in green stepping onto the marble base adds a sense of naturalism to an otherwise Classical painting, while the muscular figure on the far left has a strong Baroque sensibili...

Le Triomphe de la Justice, 1714 Born on May 1, 1644, Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet was a French Baroque painter from Rouen, France. At the age of 17 he moved to Paris where he worked under the legendary Charles Le Brun at Versailles for King Louis XIV. Jouvenet is one of those rare painters who was able to synthesize color with light and dark effortlessly, while also having a keen eye for composition with groups of figures. In 1713, at the age of 69, he had a stroke which left his right hand paralyzed, a horrible setback for any artist but led Jouvenet to surmount his frustration and began painting with his left hand. His last two paintings were done with his left hand before his death in 1717. This heroic and dramatic spirit is a hallmark of his painting, a master in the shadows of French Baroque art whose work deserves to be reexamined and appreciated. In Le Triomphe de la Justice Jouvenet's figure arrangement is seamlessly blended with dramatic color, chiaroscuro and dynamic bo...

The Family of the Artist, ca.1621 Born on May 19, 1593, Jacob Jordaens was a Flemish painter from the Baroque era who worked together on occasion with Anthony Van Dyke under the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens . Jordaens' style, having been taught by Adam van Noort, the same teacher as Rubens, is often difficult to discern between the two and today several drawings and oil sketches require scholarly interpretation to identify the artist. His paintings however are a Rubenesque-Caravaggio Baroque flavor that is uniquely Jordaens with his strong dramatically-lit figures, dynamic composition and vibrant palette. Having never travelled to Italy, Jordaens' artistic inspiration came from studying copies or originals available within his vicinity. His work has an immediacy and depth that is more inviting than his Flemish counterparts, and you can see this in person studying his work in that he relies on color and chiaroscuro. Jordaens, like Rubens, most often painted on a massive sc...

L'Atelier du peintre, ca.1740 Born November 25, 1699 in Southern France, Pierre Subleyras was a late-Baroque painter. At the age of 29 he won a scholarship to study in Rome and remained there for the rest of his life painting mainly alterpieces and portraiture. Subleyras had a unique eye for composition, color and figure arrangement, along with an astute sense of perception and presence in his portraits that is distinctively his own. One can see the heavy Italian influence yet there is also a clear French pride in his work, and most often he is an eclectic blend of the two, which makes him very interesting to study as a truly underrated and brilliant painter who had an amazing range. In the painting above in his studio, we see a self-reflexivity that is almost Post-Modern, showing himself painting some of his most famous works as if some kind of greatest hits album cover or something. He is poking fun of himself as an artist carelessly mass-producing work as if in a factory...