beside the easel

The Birth of the Virgin, ca.1660 Born on November 19, 1607 in Antwerp, Erasmus Quellinus II was a Flemish painter and engraver who worked under Peter Paul Rubens . Erasmus came from a family of artists that profoundly influenced Flemish Baroque in the 1600's. Unlike Rubens, Erasmus had never been to Italy and so his style evolved from the influence of Rubens and others around him, including his brother, sculptor Artus Quellinus II. Although the influence of Rubens is very strong—sometimes easy to mistake—Erasmus developed into a deeper Baroque sensibility with less emphasis on color and sensuality and more on chiaroscuro and architecture. Today little is mentioned about Erasmus, especially in that he worked with Rubens for less than ten years yet became a major painter in the years after Rubens' death in 1640. In The Birth of the Virgin above, we can see here that the cluttered confusion of this composition doesn't quite have the flow and grace of his Master, Rubens....

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...

Legend of Tomyris, 1622-1623 In the art world of the Baroque, Rubens' bio reads like the stuff of legend: scholar, art collector, diplomat, polyglot (spoke seven languages), knighted by three kings, independently wealthy and one of the most prolific painters in history. Although he ran an enormous workshop of nearly a hundred artists, his design and finishing touches were on every single piece, and he painted on a scale that even today makes anyone's jaw drop. In fact, Rubens painted so much and often scenes of vast complex figures that it is challenging to pick only a few, not to mention his incredible drawings and studies that often give insight into his techniques. In this post I will attempt to show a sample from one of his various categories. In the above painting, Rubens has separated the women on the left and the men on the right. The kneeling figure holds the head of Cyrus the Great before Queen Tomyris of Massagetae—he is actually draining the blood into an urn. ...

Portrait of Peeter Stevens, 1627 Four hundred and thirteen years ago two giants of art were born about three months apart— Velazquez, who was born in June and Anthony Van Dyck, who was born on this day. Child prodigy extraordinaire, he was already painting at a high level in his early teens, and by nineteen he was already Rubens' top assistant. Genius of this kind is rather difficult for most of us to really comprehend, and we can safely assume by the confidence in his early self-portraits how cocky he must have been. Still, even he learned a great deal working for a boss like Rubens, the multilingual scholar who made composition and colour seem like no sweat at all. Rubens would have instilled a deep understanding of skin tones and anatomy that would raise Van Dyck to the next level. I remember reading the story once of how while the master Rubens was out of the studio meeting aristocratic clients, the workshop boys were goofing off and someone got pushed into one of the paintin...

I remember when I was younger I had photocopied self-portraits of all my favourite artists tacked to the wall in my basement studio...stern black and white faces looking at me...it made me feel safe, like I was surrounded by the All-Stars of Art, encouraging me silently to get over making mistakes and get past them. It was great support for a self-taught artist! And I needed all the support I could get back then. When we think of self-portraits by famous artists, the usual suspects come to mind...Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Kahlo, or maybe Velazquez or Da Vinci, and it is interesting to note that the Renaissance was where the self-portrait really became popular. With the idea of the artist as more than just a faceless member of a guild (as was the case in the Middle Ages) artists began to study nature and, with better quality mirrors, themselves. This was not a conceit. The publicity machine back then was not quite as state-of-the-art as today, and I'm sure most people could not attach a ...