Paintings exhibited at the Fair page 3

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, (July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669), was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters in the history of art, and the most important painter and printer in Dutch history. His works helped nurture the Dutch Golden Age.

Rembrandt achieved success as a portrait painter early in life, but by his later years, the great artist was struck by massive personal tragedy and financial hardship.

Rembrandt taught nearly every important Dutch painter. His work is exemplified in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible.

The painting to the right is Rembrandt's `The Standard-Bearer' Oil on canvas; 55 1/4 x 45 1/4 in. (140.3 x 114.9 cm). The portrait depicts an ensign in one of Amsterdam's civic guard companies named Floris Soop, a wealthy bachelor who owned 140 paintings at the time of his death. The painting is presently in the The Jules Bache Collection.

Rembrandt was born on July 15, 1606 in Leiden, the Netherlands. He was the ninth child born to the well-to-so couple of Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn (a miller), and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuytbrouck. Attending Latin school, he began his love for painting, and soon apprenticed to a Leiden history painter, Jacob van Swanenburgh, for three years and then studied briefly with the famous painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. In his late teens, Rembrandt opened a studio in Leiden in 1624. In 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou.

In 1629 Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, the father of Christiaan Huygens (a famous Dutch mathematician and physicist). With this prominent connections, the artist procured commissions by the wealthy such as: Prince Frederik Hendrik.

By 1631, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, and began to practice as a professional portraitist for the first time, with great success. In 1634, he married Saskia van Uylenburg. The same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and a member of the local guild of painters. He also continued to teach.

Rembrandt began to paint dramatic biblical and mythological scenes in high contrast and of large format, seeking to emulate the baroque style of Rubens.

In 1639, Rembrandt and Saskia moved to a prominent house in the Jodenbreestraat (in the Jewish quarter); which mortgage was quite steep (13,000 guilder). Though Rembrandt was making excellent money, his spending began outweighing his income.

In 1635, his son Rumbartus died two months after his birth; three years later his daughter Cornelia died at just 3 weeks of age in 1638. But tragically, in 1640, his second daughter, also named Cornelia, died after living barely over a month.

Only their fourth child, Titus, born in 1641, survived into adulthood. A year later, his wife Saskia died in 1642 from tuberculosis.

The hard times continued, Geertje Dircx was hired as Titus' caretaker and nurse and probably also became Rembrandt's lover. She would later charge Rembrandt with breach of promise and was awarded alimony of 200 guilders a year. Rembrandt worked to have her committed for twelve years to an asylum or poorhouse upon learning Geertje had pawned Saskia's jewelry.

In the late 1640's Rembrandt began a relationship with this maid- Hendrickje Stoffels, and in 1654 they had a daughter, Cornelia. Hendrickje was summoned from the Reformed church to answer the charge `that she had committed the acts of a whore with Rembrandt the painter'. She pleaded guilty and was banned from receiving communion. Rembrandt was not summoned to the Church council because he was not a member of the Reformed church. The two were considered legally wed under common law, but Rembrandt had not married Henrickje, so as not to lose access to a trust set up for Titus in his mother's will.

In 1642 he painted the The Night Watch, his largest work and the most notable of the important group portrait commissions which he received in this period.

In the decade following the Night Watch, Rembrandt's paintings varied greatly in size, subject, and style. Dramatic effects by strong contrasts of light and shadow gave way to the use of frontal lighting and larger and more saturated areas of color.

In the 1650's, Rembrandt's style changed again. Paintings increased in size, colors became richer and brush strokes more pronounced.

Rembrandt continued to spend, buying art (including bidding up his own work), prints, and rarities. He sold most of his paintings and large collection of antiquities to avoid bankruptcy in 1656. He also had to sell his house and his printing-press and move to more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht in 1660. Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his career, from 1626 to 1660, until he was forced to sell his printing-press and virtually abandoned etching.

Hendrickje died in 1663, and Titus five years later, leaving a baby daughter. Rembrandt passed on within a year of his son, on October 4, 1669 in Amsterdam. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Westerkerk.

Art historians have estimated that Rembrandt had produced over 600 paintings (but might have been about 300), nearly 400 etchings and 2,000 drawings.

Rembrandt had created between 40-90 self-portraits. The wide range accounts to Rembrandt's students and their ability to expertly copy his style, so some might have been done by his pupils. Nevertheless, his oil paintings trace the progress from an uncertain young man, to a very successful portrait-painter of the 1630's, to the troubled but massively powerful portraits of his old age. Together they give a remarkably clear picture of the man, his appearance and his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly-weathered face.

Throughout his career Rembrandt took as his primary subjects the themes of portraiture, landscape and especially narrative painting, which he was praised by his contemporaries.

The most notable collection of Rembrandt's work is at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, including De Nachtwacht (The Night Watch) and De Joodse bruid (The Jewish Bride). Many of his self-portraits are held in The Hague's Mauritshuis.

There are many problems with authenticating a true Rembrandt painting. Rembrandt's own studio practice is a major factor in the difficulty of attribution, since, he encouraged his students to copy his paintings, sometimes finishing or retouching them to be sold as originals, and sometimes selling them as authorized copies. Additionally, his style proved easy enough for his most talented students to emulate. Further complicating matters was the uneven quality of some of Rembrandt's own work, and his frequent stylistic evolutions and experiments. As well, there were later imitations of his work, and restorations which so seriously damaged the original works that they are no longer recognizable.

It is highly likely that there will never be universal agreement as to what does and what does not constitute a genuine Rembrandt.

Albert Joseph Moore was born on the fourth of September in 1841 in York, England, the youngest of the fourteen children of the artist William Moore who was a popular painter in his own right.

In his childhood Albert Moore showed an extraordinary love of art, and began the active exercise of his profession at an unusually early age.

His first exhibited works were two drawings which he sent to the Royal Academy in 1857. A year later he became a student in the Royal Academy schools. During the period that extended from 1858 to 1870.

In all his pictures, save two or three produced in his later boyhood, he avoided any approach to story-telling, and occupied himself exclusively with decorative arrangements of lines and color masses. His first large canvas, Elijah's Sacrifice, was completed during a stay of some five months in Rome at the beginning of 1863, and appeared at the Academy in 1865. A still larger picture, The Shunamite relating the Glories of King Solomon to her Maidens, was exhibited in 1866, and with it two smaller works, Apricots and Pomegranates.

The spirit of his art is essentially neo-classical, and his work shows plainly that he was deeply influenced by study of antique sculpture. Few men have equalled him as a painter of draperies, and still fewer have approached his ability in the application of decorative principles to pictorial art.

He died in 1893, at his studio in Spenser Street, Westminster, South Kensington.

János Thorma was born on April 24, 1870 and was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian painter.

His work progressed from naturalism, to historical subjects, to romantic realism to a Post-Impressionism.

Born in Kiskunhalas to the tax agency cashier, Thorma began to study art at Bertalan Székely's drawing school, continuing to learn under Simon Hollósy at Munich from 1888 to 1890. In 1891 and 1893-95 he worked at the Académie Julian in Paris.

In 1896, on the occasion of the presented his painting "The Martyrs of Arad," which gained him nationwide renown.

After 1900, Thorma's work turned toward realism (Kocsisok között – "Among the Coachmen", 1902; Október elsején – "On the First of October", 1903; Kártyázók – "The Card-Players", 1904). In 1906-07 he was under Spanish influence, Paul Gauguin inspired him to paint- "The Blessing of the Bread", Templombamenők – "People Going toward Church", both ca. 1910).

The painting above is entitled- `First of October Farewell to Recruits,' and was awarded a Gold medal at thw 1904 St. louis World's Fair.

After 1920 he developed his own en plein air style, based on his substantial knowledge of painting and employing certain elements of neo-classicism (Tavasz – "Spring", ca. 1920; Fürdés után – "After Bathing", 1928). In the last decade of his life, he painted very beautiful impressionistic landscapes and portraits.

In September 1929, Thorma, aged 59 married his disciple and distant relative Margit Kiss. He died in eight years later. millennium of the Magyars' conquest of Pannonia, he

Carl Larsson was born on May 28, 1853, in Prästgatan No.78, a house on the Tyska Stallplan in Gamla stan, in Stockholm, Sweden to extremely poor parents. His mother was thrown out of the house, together with Carl and his brother Johan; after enduring a series of temporary dwellings, usually each room was home to three families; penury, filth and vice thrived there.

Carl's artistic talent was probably inherited from his grandfather on his mother's side, who was a painter by trade. At the age of thirteen, his teacher Jacobsen, urged him to apply to the "principskola" of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, and he was admitted. In 1869, at the age of sixteen, he was promoted to the "antique school" of the same academy. There Larsson gained confidence, and even became a central figure in student life. Carl earned his first medal in nude drawing. During the mean time, Larsson worked as a caricaturist for the humorous paper Kasper and as graphic artist for the newspaper Ny Illustrerad Tidning. His annual wages were sufficient to allow him to help his parents out financially.

After several years working as an illustrator of books, magazines, and newspapers, Larsson moved to Paris in 1877, where he spent several frustrating years as a hardworking artist without any success. In 1882 in Grez-sur-Loing, at a Scandinavian artists' colony outside Paris, he met the artist Karin Bergöö, who soon became his wife. In Grez, Larsson painted some of his most important works, now in watercolour and very different from the oil painting technique he had previously employed.

Carl and Karin Larsson had eight children and his family became Larsson's favourite models. Many of his watercolours are now popular all over the world.

In 1888 the young family was given a small house, named Little Hyttnäs, in Sundborn by Karin's father Adolf Bergöö. ccording to their particular artistic taste and also for the needs of the growing family. *

Larsson's popularity increased considerably with the development of colour reproduction technology in the 1890s.

The painting above- `Director Lamm's Wife' and children was created in 1903 and won a Gold medal at the 1904 World's Fair.

Carl Larsson considered his monumental works, such as his frescos in schools, museums and other public buildings, to be his most important works. His last monumental work, Midwinter Sacrifice, a 6x14 meter oil painting completed in 1915, had been commissioned for a wall in the National Museum in Stockholm

Larsson died on January 22, 1919.

* Through Larsson's paintings and books this house has become one of the most famous artist's homes in the world. The descendants of Carl and Karin Larsson now own this house and keep it open for tourists each summer from May until October.