The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (228 page)

(1627–78).
Dutch painter and writer on art. He painted
genre
scenes in the style of
de Hooch
and
Metsu
, and portraits, but he is best known as a specialist in
perspective
effects. One of his ‘perspective boxes’, which shows a painted toy world through a peep-hole, is in the National Gallery, London (see
PEEPSHOW BOX
). Only in his early works can it be detected that he was a pupil of
Rembrandt
. Hoogstraten travelled to London, Vienna, and Rome, worked in Amsterdam and The Hague as well as his native Dordrecht, and was a man of many parts. He was an etcher, poet, director of the mint at Dordrecht, and art theorist. His
Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst
(Introduction to the Art of Painting, 1678) contains one of the rare contemporary appraisals of Rembrandt's work.

 
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(1769–1831).
British collector, patron, and writer. He was born in Amsterdam to a wealthy banking family, and travelled extensively before and after settling in England in 1795. In 1801 he was described as being reputedly ‘the richest, but undoubtedly far from the most agreeable man in Europe’, and he used his great wealth to spend lavishly on art for his London mansion in Duchess Street (to which the public could buy admission tickets) and his country seat at Deepdene, Surrey. He was a devotee of
Neoclassicism
, and the artists he patronized included
Canova
,
Flaxman
, and
Thorvaldsen
. Hope also had notable collections of paintings and antique statuary. He trained craftsmen to make furniture from his own Greek and Egyptian designs, and his publications included
Household Furniture and Interior Decoration
(1807).

 
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(1882–1967).
American painter and etcher. He spent almost all his career in New York, but he travelled extensively in the USA, making long journeys by car. His main training was at the New York School of Art, where Robert
Henri
was one of his teachers. Between 1906 and 1910 he made three trips to Europe (mainly Paris), but these had little influence on his style. In 1913 he exhibited (and sold) a picture at the
Armory Show
, but from then until 1923 he earned his living entirely by commercial illustration. After turning to painting full-time in 1924, however, he enjoyed a fairly rapid rise to recognition as the outstanding exponent of
American Scene Painting
(he was given a retrospective exhibition by the
Museum of Modern Art
in 1933 and this set the seal on his reputation). Hopper's distinctive style was formed by the mid-1920s and thereafter changed little. The central theme of his work is the loneliness of city life, generally expressed through one or two figures in a spare setting—his best-known work,
Nighthawks
(Art Institute of Chicago, 1942), has an unusually large ‘cast’ with four. Typical settings are motel rooms, filling stations, cafeterias, and almost deserted offices at night. He was the first artist to seize on this specifically American visual world and make it definitively his own. However, although his work is rooted in a particular period and place, it also has a peculiarly timeless feel and deals in unchanging realities about the human condition. He never makes feelings explicit or tries to tell a story; rather he suggests weariness, frustration, and troubled isolation with a poignancy that rises above the specific. Hopper himself enjoyed solitude (although he was happily married to another ex-student of Henri) and he disliked talking about his work. When he did, he discussed it mainly in terms of technical problems. Of
Nighthawks
he said: ‘I didn't see it as particularly lonely… Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a big city.’ Deliberately so or not, in his still, reserved, and blandly handled paintings he exerts a powerful psychological impact that makes him one of the great painters of modern life. Hopper worked in watercolour as well as oil and also made etchings, beginning in 1915—in fact his individual vision emerged in this medium before it did in painting. His best-known print is
Evening Wind
(1921), establishing a theme that would later often recur in his paintings—the female nude in a city interior. He virtually abandoned printmaking in 1923, but in spite of his short career in the medium he has been described as ‘undoubtedly the greatest American etcher of this century’ (Frances Carey and Antony Griffiths,
American Prints
1879–1979, 1980).

 
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(1758–1810).
British portrait painter. He was trained as a chorister in the Chapel Royal, and later received an allowance from George III to study at the Royal Academy Schools. The royal favour he was shown led to rumours that he was the king's illegitimate son, but these were never proved. In 1789 he was appointed Portrait Painter to the Prince of Wales (later George IV) and from this time was associated with ‘the Prince of Wales's Set’. After the death of
Reynolds
, he and
Lawrence
were the leading portraitists in the country. In his attempts to emulate first Reynolds, then Lawrence, Hoppner rarely achieved striking individuality, but his best work, particularly his portraits of women and children, often has great charm.

 
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(
c.
1595–1665).
The leading English portrait
miniaturist
between
c.
1625 and
c.
1640. His early work is a development of
Hilliard's
style. He later became a specialist in miniature copies of van
Dyck's
portraits in oils—a type which remained much in demand throughout the 17th cent.—but his miniatures often have a charm and originality of their own. He was
‘limner
’ to Charles I in 1640, but thereafter was overshadowed by the work of his nephew and pupil, Samuel
Cooper
.