Willem van Aelst

Willem van Aelst (May 16, 1627, Delft - in or after 1683, Amsterdam) was a Dutch artist who specialized in still-life painting with flowers or game.

Van Aelst was born to a family of prominent city magistrates. He learned to paint from his uncle, the still-life painter Evert van Aelst. On 9 November 1643 he enrolled as a master of the Guild of Saint Luke at Delft.

Between 1645 and 1649 he lived in France. In 1649 Van Aelst travelled to Florence, where he served as court painter to Ferdinand II de Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. At this time, the grand duke also employed two fellow Dutchmen Matthias Withoos and Otto Marseus van Schrieck, the latter also a still-life painter who probably influenced Van Aelst's style.

In 1656 he returned to the Netherlands to settle permanently in Amsterdam. He became one of the most prominent still-life painters of his generation, which allowed him to live on the Prinsengracht. He must have died in 1683 or shortly thereafter, as his latest dated work is from that year. Van Aelst taught Rachel Ruysch and several others.

External links

• Website on Willem van Aelst in Delft

A Still Life of Grapes.

Hunting Still-Life

Still-Life of Dead Birds and Hunting Weapons

Still-Life with Hunting Equipment and Dead Birds

Vase of Flowers with Watch

Andreas Achenbach:

Andreas Achenbach (September 29, 1815 – April 1, 1910) was a German landscape painter.

Born at Kassel, he began his art education in 1827 in Düsseldorf under Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow at the Düsseldorf Academy of Painting. He studied at St Petersburg and travelled in Italy, Holland and Scandinavia.^[1] In his early work he followed the pseudo-idealism of the German romantic school, but on removing to Munich in 1835, the stronger influence of Louis Gurlitt turned his talent into new channels, and he became the founder of the German realistic school. Although his landscapes evince too much of his aim at picture-making and lack personal temperament, he is a master of technique, and is historically important as a reformer. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary says of him that "he was regarded as the father of 19th century German landscape painting."

A number of his finest works are to be found at the Berlin National Gallery, the New Pinakothek in Munich, and the galleries at Dresden, Darmstadt, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Leipzig and Hamburg.

He died in Düsseldorf.

His brother, Oswald Achenbach (1827-1905), was also a painter.

A Fishing Boat Caught In A Squall Off A Jetty

Bringing in the Catch

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza

Fishing Along the Shore

Morning In The Potinian Marches

Return To Harbour In Rough Seas

Niccolò dell' Abbate:

Nicolò dell' Abate, sometimes Niccolò, (1509 or 1512 – 1571) was an Italian painter and decorator. He was of the Emilian school, and was part of the staff of artists called the School of Fontainebleau that introduced the Italianate Renaissance to France.

Niccolò dell'Abbate was born in Modena, the son of a sculptor.

He trained in the studio of a local Modenese sculptor, his early influence including Ferrarese painters such as Garofalo and Dosso Dossi. He specialized in long friezes with secular and mythological subjects, including for the Palazzo dei Beccherie (1537); in various rooms of the Rocca at Scandiano owned by the counts Boiardo, notably a courtly ceiling Concert composed of a ring of young musicians seen in perspective, sotto in su (early 1540s), and the Hercules Room in the Rocca dei Meli Lupi at Soragna (c. 1540–43), and possibly the loggia frescoes removed from Palazzo Casotti at Reggio Emilia.

His style was modified by exposure to notably Correggio and Parmigianino^[1], when he moved to Bologna in 1547. In Bologna, most of his painting depicted elaborate landscapes and aristocratic genre scenes of hunting and courtly loves, often paralleled in mythologic narratives. It was during this time that he decorated the Palazzo Poggi, and executed a cycle of frescoes illustrating Orlando Furioso in the ducal palace at Sassuolo, near Modena.

In 1552, Nicolò moved to France, where he worked at the royal Château de Fontainebleau as a member of the decorating team under the direction of Francesco Primaticcio. Within two years of his arrival he was drawing a project for a decor commemorating Anne de Montmorency (preparatory drawing at the Louvre). In Paris, he frescoed the chapel ceiling in the Hôtel de Guise (destroyed), following Primaticcio's designs. He also executed private commissions for portable canvases of mythological subjects sited in landscapes. Much of his output reflected an often overlooked function of artists of the time: the ephemeral festive decorations erected to celebrate special occasions in the court circle, for example, the decorations for the triumphal entry into Paris staged for Charles IX and his bride Elisabeth of Austria in 1571. That year, Nicolò died in France.

Works

Nicolò is best known for his landscapes enshrouding a mythologic narrative, a thematic which would inspire Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, and for his profuse and elegant drawings. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary says of him, "Few of his frescoes are extant, but the Louvre has a collection of his drawings."^[2]

Deer Hunt

Orpheus and Eurydice

The Continence of Scipio

The Conversion of St Paul

The Rape of Proserpine

Hans von Aachen :

German painter. His renowned cosmopolitan Mannerist style originated humbly: he first trained with a minor painter in his native Cologne, and he took his name from his father's hometown. He probably joined the Cologne painters' guild before leaving for Italy around 1574.

After a stay in Venice, von Aachen was soon in Rome, learning from a circle of Northern European artists. He also painted portraits in Florence. Back in Germany by 1587, he began to gain fame for history pictures and psychologically sensitive portraits.

In 1592 Emperor Rudolf II of Prague named von Aachen imperial painter in absentia. Four years later he moved to Prague, serving as painter, art dealer, and diplomat while also completing commissions for clients in Munich and Augsburg. He frequently journeyed abroad on diplomatic missions and to purchase pictures for his insatiable patron. After Rudolf's death in 1612, he worked for his successor, Emperor Matthias.

Von Aachen's Prague paintings - similarly to the paintings of Bartholomeus Spranger, another painter in Prague - reflect Rudolf's desire for sensuality, with smoothly modeled, elongated figures arranged in elegant poses, often including a nude woman seen from behind. His style combined an idealization indebted to Roman and Florentine Mannerism with brilliant Venetian colour and Dutch realism. The many engravings published after his designs spread von Aachen's influence.

Allegory 1598
Oil on copper, 56 x 47 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Baccus, Seres and Cupid
Oil on canvas, 163 x 113 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Joking Couple