Artists of London Yard


Jan Vermeer
The Concert	Vermeer, Jan (1632-75), Dutch painter. Vermeer, also called Jan van der Meer van Delft, was born in Delft and baptized on October 31, 1632. After serving a 6-year apprenticeship, part of it probably under the Dutch painter Carel Fabritius, he was admitted in 1653 to the guild of Saint Luke of Delft as a master painter. An important member of the guild, he served four terms on its board of governors and appears to have been well known to his contemporaries. He made a modest living as an art dealer rather than as a painter. Only 35 of Vermeer's canvases have survived, and none appears to have been sold. Their small number is the result of Vermeer's deliberate, methodical work habits, comparatively short life, and the disappearance of many of his paintings during the period of obscurity following his death in Delft on December 15, 1675. With a few exceptions, including some landscapes, street scenes, and portraits, Vermeer painted sunlit domestic interiors in which one or two figures are shown engaged in reading, writing, or playing musical instruments.
Frans Hals
Laughing Cavalier	Hals, Frans (circa 1580-1666), Dutch painter, one of the greatest masters of the art of portraiture, much admired for his brilliant lighting effects and the freedom of his brushwork. Hals was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and probably trained by the Dutch painter Karel van Mander. He spent all of his adult life in Haarlem, the Netherlands, finding patronage with the wealthy middle-class merchants and burghers of his time. Throughout his life he received important commissions for group portraits of the officers and corporations of Haarlem; toward the end of his life he was granted a small pension by the city. He died September 1, 1666, in what is now the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. In all of his portraits Hals achieved an air of complete spontaneity; his subjects give the impression of being caught in a fleeting, but characteristic, pose and expression. The gay mood of the early work The Laughing Cavalier (1624, Wallace Collection, London), the subject's apparently momentary smile and stance, demonstrate Hals's ability to attain the immediacy of a sketch by the use of rapid, spontaneous brushstrokes.
Rembrandt
Night Watch	Rembrandt (1606-1669), Dutch baroque artist, who ranks as one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art. His full name was Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. Born in Leiden on July 15, 1606, Rembrandt was the son of a miller. Despite the fact that he came from a family of relatively modest means, his parents took great care with his education. Rembrandt began his studies at the Latin School, and at the age of 14 he was enrolled at the University of Leiden. The program did not interest him, and he soon left to study art—first with a local master, Jacob van Swanenburch, and then, in Amsterdam, with Pieter Lastman, known for his historical paintings. After six months, having mastered everything he had been taught, Rembrandt returned to Leiden, where he was soon so highly regarded that although barely 22 years old, he took his first pupils, among them Gerrit Dou. Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in 1631; his marriage in 1634 to Saskia van Uylenburgh, the cousin of a successful art dealer, enhanced his career, bringing him in contact with wealthy patrons who eagerly commissioned portraits.
Vincent Van Gogh
Self Portrait	Gogh, Vincent Willem van (1853-1890), Dutch postimpressionist painter, whose work represents the archetype of expressionism, the idea of emotional spontaneity in painting. Van Gogh was born March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, son of a Dutch Protestant pastor. Early in life he displayed a moody, restless temperament that was to thwart his every pursuit. By the age of 27 he had been in turn a salesman in an art gallery, a French tutor, a theological student, and an evangelist among the miners at Wasmes in Belgium. His experiences as a preacher are reflected in his first paintings of peasants and potato diggers; of these early works, the best known is the rough, earthy Potato Eaters (1885, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam). In 1886 van Gogh went to Paris to live with his brother Théo van Gogh, an art dealer, and became familiar with the new art movements developing at the time. In 1888 van Gogh left Paris for southern France, where, under the burning sun of Provence, he painted scenes of the fields, cypress trees, peasants, and rustic life characteristic of the region. In his enthusiasm he induced the painter Paul Gauguin, whom he had met earlier in Paris, to join him. After less than two months they began to have violent disagreements, culminating in a quarrel in which van Gogh wildly threatened Gauguin with a razor; the same night, in deep remorse, van Gogh cut off part of his own ear. For a time he was in a hospital at Arles. He then spent a year in the nearby asylum of Saint-Rémy, working between repeated spells of madness. Under the care of a sympathetic doctor, whose portrait he painted (Dr. Gachet, 1890, Louvre, Paris), van Gogh spent three months at Auvers. Just after completing his ominous Crows in the Wheatfields (1890, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh), he shot himself on July 27, 1890, and died two days later. The more than 700 letters that van Gogh wrote to his brother Théo (published 1911, translated 1958) constitute a remarkably illuminating record of the life of an artist and a thorough documentation of his unusually fertile output—about 750 paintings and 1600 drawings.