beside the easel

The Tame Magpie, 1708 Born on February 4, 1667 in Genoa, Italy, Alessandro Magnasco was a late Baroque painter, aka. il Lissandrino. His style was highly distinctive and idiosyncratic—elongated, muscular forms in brisk brushwork reminiscent of Tintoretto along with some of his contemporaries: Tintoretto, Sebastiano Ricci, Francesco Solimena, and Giovanni Pellegrini. His strong shadows and vibrant colors are reminiscent of a Venetian style, yet suggest an ominous influence of Piranesi in his architectural capriccios. What makes him interesting is his highly idiosyncratic subject matter that was not common during his era, making him a genre painter by definition, or Bamboccianti as some may have described him. Highly individualistic or Romantic, his work is interesting so let's take a closer look. In The Tame Magpie above, an odd collection of people gather round to watch a man attempt to teach a magpie to sing. Some appear to be drunk and destitute, the woman ...

Pentecost, 1732 Jean Restout II was born on March 26, 1692 in Rouen, France. He comes from a long line of painters and is distinguised from his father, Jean I Restout or Jean Restout the elder (1666-1702) . Misattribution is common between them, even within wikipedia where both artists are sometimes shown as having painted the same work. Restout II studied with his uncle, the great Jean Jouvenet . In Pentecost above, Restout II depicts the 50th day after Easter, (sometimes called "White Sunday") where the Holy Spirit appears before the Apostles and Christians during the Jewish holiday known as the Feast of Weeks or Shavuot . Out of the various renditions of this holy event by other artists, Restout II's is the most impressive visually, both compositionally and in scale: the painting measures 4,65 m in height by 7,78 m in length! In the top center the Virgin Mary stands tall while balls of fire shoot out and touch the Apostles symbolizing the gift of tongues to h...

Portrait of the painter Caspar de Crayer by Anthony Van Dyck , 1630 A contemporary of Rubens, Gaspar de Crayer was born in Antwerp on November 18, 1582. Crayer is interesting in that his style gradually evolved from his early career as a high-Renaissance Flemish artist to Baroque after being in contact with Rubens and his workshop. It is not clear the kind of working relationship they had, but one can easily see the grand scale and intricate compositions of Rubens that held an enormous influence on Crayer. Yet curiously Crayer paints his women with a distinctly Italian sensibility that is reminiscent of Titian, Veronese, and even Spanish artist Murillo. At any rate, judging by the brilliant portrait of him by Van Dyck above his company was well-received by and not seen as a competitor of Rubens nor Van Dyck. Alexander and Diogenes, early 1600's Crayer bathes the figures in an uncharacteristically Titianesque warm light. I like how Crayer uses body language to great effe...

Marten Looten , 1632 by Rembrandt van Rijn July is a month in art history that has produced some of the most idiosyncratic, passionate, sensitive and rebellious artists of all time. If you don't believe me, consider these names: Rembrandt , Artemisia Gentileschi (and her father Orazio) , Camille Pissarro , Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot , Edgar Degas , Salvator Rosa ...all born in July. All rebellious in their own particular way. All brilliant. Let's explore a few of these great painters and find out why... Marten Looten was a wealthy Dutch merchant from Leiden who commissioned this portrait. Although understated compared to some of his less formal portraiture, Rembrandt creates here a likeness that is painted with such sensitivity and depth that those penetrating eyes, tight lips, and thick hands convey a person who breathes through the paint. Normally Rembrandt loved using texture in his sitter's clothing to describe and identify their very soul, yet here the ma...

A fascinating look at the genius of Velázquez in this BBC documentary

Watch this fascinating BBC documentary on the Italian Baroque Artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione by Art Historian Helen Rosslyn. describing the life and art of the man who pioneered the oil sketch and invented the printing technique known as monotype.

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...

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...

Childhood of Christ, ca 1620 Born on 4 November, 1592 Gerard van Honthorst , sometimes written as Gerrit , was a prolific Dutch Baroque painter from Utrecht who typified the chiaroscuro of tenebrism in the Netherlands. Having spent four years in Italy absorbing the styles of Caravaggio, Manfredi and others he developed his own brand of powerful realism that earned him the nickname "Gherardo Delle Notti", or Gerard of the Nights . Interestingly, he did paint a few scenes and portraits that were not at night and with deep chiaroscuro—many of them quite amusing—but as he was known for painting in his usual dark manner they were not immediately recognizable as his own. Honthorst was unique from his tenebrist contemporaries in that he not only painted religious scenes but genre painting, with characters from everyday life, especially musicians. Compared to his French contemporary Georges de La Tour , whose style was much darker, painting common people in similar scenes to H...