French, 17th century, male.
Died 1655, in Paris.
Painter, engraver (etching), embroiderer. Religious subjects, allegorical subjects.
Nicolas de La Fage is mentioned in 1648 as 'embroiderer and ordinary painter to the king'. He produced etchings, which include: Mary with the Child; the same subject after A. Carracci; the same subject with the arms of Navarre and the arms of France and those of Anne of Austria (probably to mark the occasion of the birth of Louis XIV); ...
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 27 May 1871, in Paris, France; died 13 February 1958, in Paris.
Painter (gouache), watercolourist, engraver, potter. Religious subjects, figures, landscapes. Stage sets, designs for stained glass, designs for tapestries.
Georges Rouault completed his primary education in 1885 and was apprenticed to stained-glass artists – first the Tamonis, then Hirsch. He received a direct offer from Albert Besnard for stained-glass windows for the School of Pharmacy to be made from his design sketches, but he refused out of loyalty to his employer. He was encouraged to consider painting as a career, having been introduced to the appreciation of art by his grandfather, Alexandre Champdavoine, who, modest white-collar worker though he was, knew and admired Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet, and Édouard Manet. Rouault achieved entry to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1891, first in Elie Delaunay’s studio, then in Gustave Moreau’s (where he met Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, Rudolf Lehmann, Henri Evenepoel, and others). Though he failed twice at the Prix de Rome, he won the Prix Chenavard in 1894 and, by 1900, he had obtained a mention and a bronze medal. In 1903, as Gustave Moreau’s executor, he became the curator of the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris....
Flemish School, 16th – 17th century, male.
Born 28 June 1577 , in Siegen (Westphalia), Germany; died 30 May 1640 , in Antwerp.
Painter, etcher, draughtsman. Historical subjects, figures, nudes, portraits, genre scenes, landscapes. Wall decorations, church decoration, ornaments, designs for tapestries.
Antwerp School.
Peter Pau(we)l Rubens came from a rich bourgeois family from Antwerp. His father, Jan Rubens (b. 13 March 1530, d. 1 March 1587 in Cologne, Germany), was a doctor of civil and canon law, an alderman in Antwerp, and a man of considerable culture who had lived in Italy for seven years. On 29 November 1561, he married Marie Pypelynckx (b. 20 March 1538, d. 15 November 1608 in Antwerp) and fathered seven children by her. Although he was born a Roman Catholic, Jan Rubens belonged to the Reformed (Calvinist) church. He campaigned against the tyranny of the Duke of Alba and, as a result, was obliged to flee the Low Countries in 1568, seeking refuge in Cologne. Following an affair with his employer’s second wife, the Protestant Princess Anna of Saxony, which resulted in a pregnancy, he was banished to Siegen in Westphalia. Rubens was finally allowed to return to Cologne after posting bail to the sum of 6,000 thalers, and on 15 May 1578, he settled his family into a modest house in which he was destined to spend the final nine years of his life - under constant surveillance by the agents of the House of Orange-Nassau. It was during this time that his son, Peter Paul Rubens, commenced his Jesuit education. In the interim, Jan Rubens had had a change of heart and, on his return from imprisonment, abjured Protestantism. On his death in 1587, he was buried at the St Peterskirche in Cologne. His wife, Marie, left Cologne in March 1589, a virtual pauper as a result of the vindictiveness of the House of Orange-Nassau, and returned to Antwerp with her children....
Italian, 17th century, male.
Born c. 1583, in Coreggio; died c. 1650, in Rome.
Painter, fresco artist, draughtsman, engraver (etching), calligrapher, miniaturist, decorative designer, writer. Religious subjects, figures, genre scenes. Designs (embroidery).
Giovanni Luigi Valesio, the son of a Spanish soldier, began his colourful and varied career as a dancer, later becoming a decorative painter. In 1610, he became a pupil of Ludovico Carracci, who encouraged and developed his talent as a miniaturist, fresco artist and draughtsman. He is recorded as being in Rome in 1621, where he produced a series of remarkable embroidery designs for the Countess Lodovisi. He was also secretary to Cardinal Lodovisi, from whom he received a number of important commissions when the latter became pope, as Gregory XV....
