Leonard Bramer
(1595 - 1674) |
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Genre Narratives, Historical Narratives, Murals Art Work
| Name: |
Leonard Bramer |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Delft |
| Nationality: |
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| Birth: |
1595 |
| Death: |
1674 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Genre Narratives, Historical Narratives, Murals |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
Muralist |
| Style: |
Illusionistic, Realism |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| More famous in his own day than Vermeer, Bramer is now ranked with the independents and eccentrics of his day, whose work is difficult to categorize and still underappreciated. For all his fame, Bramer's teacher is unknown, though Adriaen van de Venne has been suggested as his master. In 1614 Leonard began a ten-year study trip that took him on a route to Arras, Amiens, Paris, Aix-en- Provence, Marseilles, Genoa, Livorno, and Rome. He remained in Italy for six years, during which time he visited Mantua, Naples, Parma, and Venice and learned from such artists as Correggio, the Bassani, and Domenico Fetti. Adam Elsheimer was also an important influence on Bramer, as were the Utrecht Caravaggisti, notably Gerrit van Honthorst. In Italy Bramer likely saw the work of Francois de Nome", whose phantasmagoric imagery would have had an impact on him. After a tavern brawl in 1627 Bramer had difficulties with the police and left Italy in haste, returning to Delft in 1628. He remained there except for a short trip to Rome in 1648. He became a member of the Delft St. Luke's Guild in 1629 and was its governor in 1654, 1655, 1660, 1664, and 1665. Once home, Bramer made a name for himself as a painter of large wall and ceiling paintings, and he was one of the few Dutch painters skilled at fresco. He received commissions from Prince Frederik Hendrik to decorate his palaces at Rijswijk and Honselaersdijk, some time before 1647. In 1661 Bramer painted a ceiling for the Delft Guild of St. Luke, depicting the Seven Liberal Arts and adding an eighth to represent painting. Between 1667 and 1669 he painted the main hall of the Princenhof in Delft with various biblical scenes (part of the ceiling survives), the only legacy of the source of his principal fame in his own day. Owing to the damp climate of the Netherlands, Bramer was required to restore his own work several times in his lifetime; gradually the climate has eroded much of his important largescale decorations. Today Bramer is best known for his small easel pictures, which are valued for their daring use of light, paint, and subject matter. His nocturnal scenes, lit by phosphorescent colors and streaks of light, are clearly inspired by Elsheimer and anticipate the style of Salvator Rosa. These scenes reflect Bramer's response to the painting of Fetti. None of Bramer's works merely imitate his sources; they absorb and transform them into a dark and highly personal style. He painted and drew fluidly, letting deep ridges form on his paint to define light glowing on a surface or catching an edge, adding an excited nervousness and hallucinatory (as well as transitory) feeling to his paintings. Bramer's protoromantic cabinet pictures deserve to be better known, in part because his approach transcends subject matter, rendering his paintings captivating to modem tastes and sensibilities. Together with Christiaen van Couwenbergh, Bramer was the only distinctive history specialist in Delft. Both artists trained in Italy and both worked in independent styles. Bramer may also have been Vermeer's friend, and he has sometimes been called his teacher. Some of Bramer's pictorial conceits, notably his contrived arrangement of staffage and his provision of incidental details, make him a forerunner of the decorative narrative interests that gained followers during the last half of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. |
Samples of Work
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