Lucas van Valckenborch

Lucas van Valckenborch (also Valckenborch, Valkenborgh; c. 1535 – 2 February 1597) was a Flemish painter of mainly landscapes, portraits and allegorical scenes.

 

 

Catharina van Hemessen

Caterina, or Catharina van Hemessen (1528 – after 1587) was a Flemish Renaissance painter. She is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there is verifiable extant work. She is mainly known for a series of small scale female portraits completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s and a few religious compositions.^[2]

Van Hemessen is often given the distinction of creating the first self-portrait of an artist (of either gender) depicted seated at an easel. This portrait, created in 1548, shows the artist in the early stages of painting a portrait and is now part of the collection of the Kunstmuseum Basel.^[3] Other paintings by van Hemessen are in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and in the National Gallery, London.

A number of obstacles stood in the way of contemporary women who wished to become painters. Their training would involve both the dissection of cadavers and the study of the nude male form, while the system of apprenticeship meant that the aspiring artist would need to live with an older artist for 4–5 years, often beginning from the age of 9-15. For these reasons, female artists were extremely rare, and those that did make it through were typically trained by a close relative, in van Hemessen’s case, by her father, Jan Sanders van Hemessen.

Rogier van der Weyden

Rogier van der Weyden (Dutch: [roːˈɣiːr vɑn dɛr ˈʋɛi̯də(n)]) or Roger de la Pasture (1399 or 1400 – 18 June 1464) was an Early Netherlandish painter. His surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces and commissioned single and diptych portraits. Although his life was generally uneventful, he was highly successful and internationally famous in his lifetime. His paintings were exported – or taken – to Italy and Spain,^[1] and he received commissions from, amongst others, Philip the Good, Netherlandish nobility and foreign princes.^[2] By the latter half of the 15th century, he had eclipsed Jan van Eyck in popularity. However his fame lasted only until the 17th century, and largely due to changing taste, he was almost totally forgotten by the mid-18th century. His reputation was slowly rebuilt during the following 200 years; today he is known, with Robert Campin and van Eyck, as the third (by birth date) of the three great Early Flemish artists (‘Vlaamse Primitieven’), and widely as the most influential Northern painter of the 15th century.

 

 

 

Louis van Engelen

Born in 1856. Died in 1940. Belgian. That’s all I know. But I lived in Belgian for several years and I was exposed to a lot of home talent.

Martin De Vos

Vos, Martin De , a Flemish painter of the sixteenth century, was born at Antwerp in 1520, and was first entered in his profession under his father. Having made himself somewhat eminent in Flanders, he travelled to Venice, Home, and Florence, where he made a collection of curious drawings of several sorts of vases made use of by the old Greeks and Romans at their entertainments, funerals, and sacrifices. At his return into Flanders he painted some of these old festival-solemnities, in which the disposition and lively representation of these vases were very ornamental to his performance. He excelled in most branches of the art, but his drawings in particular, were reckoned some of the best and most serviceable for beginners. His colouring was strong and lively; his design natural and free, and his disposition judicious. He had so much fame in his profession, that, when the prince of Parma made himself master of Antwerp, he made De Vos a visit, and sat to him. He died at Antwerp in 1604, being eighty-four years of age.

I lived in Flanders for several years. (The Flemish part of Belgium) They love paintings. And their painters. And they love to talk. And drink. And talk some more. And they are very expressive people. Nothing is ordinary. When I see so many of their great paintings I see this conversation. This endless investigation and communication about the ways of the world. About beauty. About romance and adventure. They are in some way, northern Italians.

Erik Thor Sandberg

Its like work right out of the Flemish middle ages. Bosch and Brueghel. And its fun.