Bright and Brilliant Painters around the world V.V.S.Manian Contents A.E.Kieren Adriaen Brouwer Adriaen van de Venne Armin Mersmann Arpita Singh Artemisia Gentileschi Bikash Bhattacharjee Canaletto Diego Rivera El Greco Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze Fares Cachoux Frederic Remington George Keyt Gustave Courbet Hassan Massoudy Henri Rousseau Heri Dono Hieronymus Bosch Honore Daumier Hossein Nuri & Nadia Ivan KonstantinovichAivazovsky Jacques –Louis David Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Johan Vermeer Johann Michael Rottmayr Kara Walker Kole Idromeno Leonardo Da Vinci Master Mahmoud Farschchian Michelangelo Pablo Picasso Paolo Uccello Patrick Ching Pawel Kuczynski Peter McIntyre Philip Guston Porternari Quintus Pedius Rabindranath Tagore Raphael Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn Richard David Shepherd Sandro Botticelli A.E.Kieren A.E. Kieren is a free lance illustrator and performer. He is a specialist in on – location “sketch journalism” as well as events entertainment. He is famous for sketching human moments happening around him- on the train, in bars/restaurant and on the street. He is fast, operating on instinct to catch. “You had to be there- moments of his subjects doing everything from chatting to staring into space”. Kieren holds a BFA on Illustration from College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI, and an MFS in Illustration and Visual Essay from School of Visual Arts in New York City. His ambition includes editorial illustration for magazines, book covers, theatre posters and wine labels. Kieren’s clients include Target, Entertainment Weekly, John Hopkins Magazine and Refinery Hotel. He lives in New York. Adriaen Brouwer Adriaen Brouwer was a Flemish painter. Brouwer worked in Haarlem and Amsterdam before joining the Antwerp painters’ guild. His extraordinary flair for human comedy earned him the esteem of Ruben and Rembrandt. He contributed to the development of the genre of tronies, i.e. head or facial studies. Adriaen Brouwer was an innovator. His paintings were vivid depictions of peasants, soldiers and other low class individuals engaged in drinking and smoking, card playing, fighting, music making in taverns or rural settings. Brouwer was an active painter in the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century. He also produced few landscapes of tragic intensity, few years before his death. Brouwer was born in Oudenaarde in Flanders in 1605. His father Adriaen worked as a tapestry designer in Oudenaarde. His father died in poverty when Brouwer was only 15 years old. Brouwer worked in Antwerp. By March 1625, he registered in Amsterdam where he lived with painter Barent Van Someren. Brouwer was very active in the Chamber of Rhetoric in Haarlem. The motto of this amateur literary circle was “In love above all else”. In 1631, Brouwer returned to Flanders where he was registered as a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke. The artist continued to work in Antwerp and produced some of his best paintings. Yet, he got into bad times and incurred huge debts. The artist’s name regularly shows up in Antwerp records in connection with arrangements for his various debts. (WP). In 1633 Brouwer was jailed in the Citadel of Antwerp for tax evasion. Some records say that he was arrested for political reasons because the local authorities may have considered him to be a spy for the Dutch Republic. The operation of the bakery in Antwerp citadel was in the hands of baker and painter Jos Van Caesbeeck. Caesbeeck genre scenes depict low-life figure as well as scenes of middle class people. Brouwer’s paintings have similarities to Caesbeeck’s paintings. On 26th April 1634, Brouwer took up lodgings in the house of prominent engraver Paulus Pontius. Both joined the local Chamber of Rhetoric Violieren. Brouwer and his artist friends spent a lot of time partying in local pubs. Brouwer painted a tavern scene called “The Smokers”: which included a self –portrait together with Jan Cossiers, Jan Lievens, Caesbeeck and Jan Davidz. Brouwer was a highly respected admired painter by his colleagues and contemporaries. In fact Ruben owned 17 works of Brouwer. Even Rembrandt had paintings by Brouwer in his collection. In January 1638, Brouwer died in Antwerp. A month after his death, his body was re-interred in the Carmelite Church on 1st February 1638. Adriaen van de Venne The world is still in the grip of barbarism and poverty. You can see it near Oxford campus in London or in Manhattan, NY city. Painters and writers have tried to focus on this evil in society from early times. Poverty persists. It pushes a woman to resort to immoral strides to feed the family, and the men to become thieves. All for survival, not of the fittest but the worst. Some painters, right from the 17th century tried to educate the society and the rulers on the need to eradicate poverty. Who cares? Even the so-called champions of Dalits are the ones exploiting his own brothers and sisters for improving his social status and happy to see them struggling for decent living. It is a very sad truth that most of the people who are born in poverty, live and die in poverty. One of the earliest who focused on this topic was the 17th century Dutch painter Van de Venne. His painting showing a man in rags carrying a child on his back indicates that poverty rides on ones back and never leaves him until he dies. And the child continues to rot on earth and subsequently faces death due to starving. Van de Venne was born in Delft in 1589. He learned to paint from the master goldsmith and painter Simon de Valk. He also learnt engraving from Jeronimus van Dies, a famous painter of grisailles. He moved to Middelburg in 1614, where he was influenced by Jan Brueghel and Pieter Brueghel. Both are Flemish painters and draughtsman. Van’s political painting “Fishing for Souls” in 1614 is an ironic commentary on Catholic and Protestant troubles of the Eighty Years War that split the border between Northern and Southern Netherlands along the Schuler river, close to his home in Middlebury(WP). From 1620 until his death, Van de Venne made many grisailles and engravings featuring peasants, beggars, thieves and fools as illustrations of current proverbs and sayings by Jacob Cats (Where the wine is in, the wit is out; as you sow, so shall you reap: JC). These works made him very famous. Van de Venne also worked as a book illustrator and print designer. He moved to The Hague and joined the Guild of Saint Luke in 1625 and assumed office as Dean in 1637. He was a founding member of “Confrerie Pictura, a group devoted to improving the status and social position of artists in Dutch society. After a distinguished career as a great painter and engraver, Venne died on 12th November 1662 in The Hague at the age of 73. Armin Mersmann German artist Armin Mersmann is known for naturalistic graphite drawings. His work has been featured in more than 200 exhibitions. He also works in photography and encaustic wax which is more abstract than his drawings. He is a great technician who creates incredibly realistic images in graphic pencil with emotion and soul. His artworks are alive and they speak to “us in the language that words alone cannot express”. Mersmann has won over 50 awards in juried exhibitions, both state wide and nationally. He has a massive following of artists who admire and respect his work as they strive to follow his footsteps. Early life Armin was born in Remscheid, Germany in 1955. In 1962 his parents immigrated to US along with him. Armin had initial training in painting from his father Fritz who was also a painter. He spent six years in college and began a successful stint as portrait artist in Chicago. He soon stopped commission work and found more interest in the fine arts. He worked many long and hard years to become a master artist. He continues to challenge himself even further with every single artwork he creates. Mersonn has taught drawing, the creative process, iPhonegraphy and advanced critique at the American Academy of Art, Chicago IL, the Colorado Academy of Art, Boulder Co, Northwood University, Midland MI and the Midland Center for Arts. He conducts regular workshops within the US. He lives in Midland MI where he is the Senior Visual Art Curator and Artist in Residence at Midland Center for Arts. He shares a studio with his wife Valeris Allen who is also an accomplished artist in her own right. Arpita Singh Arpita Singh is an Indian artist. She was born in 1937 at Baragnagar, Kolkata. She is well known for her creativity and ingenious presentation. Her paintings put across a contemporary woman’s point of view. “Her paintings reveal the inner world, their perspective and aspirations. Both comic and tragic (elements) are interchangeable and interwoven in her works. An element of tension inbuilt in them reflects a realm, part naïve and part real as she portrays the space of women in the social structure… The artist often deftly inserts simple objects, such as guns, flowers, telephones to convey her viewpoint”. Her work includes traditional Indian Art forms and aesthetics like miniaturist paintings and different forms of folk art employing them in her work regularly. In 1946, Arpita’s mother with her son and daughter went to Kolkata when the country was in turmoil. In 1962, Arpita married a fellow artist Paramjit Singh. They have a daughter, artist Anjum Singh. Arpita Singh began her professional career in the 1960’s. She was a founder member of the artist group “The Unknown” with other members of the alumni of the department of Fine Arts of Delhi Polytechnic.