The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (219 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
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Heidelberg School
.
Group of Australian painters led by Tom
Roberts
who met at the painting camp at Eaglemont, Heidelberg, Victoria. The art of the school, based on open-air
Impressionist
painting, featured local subject-matter and was associated with the emergence of a distinctive Australian literature. It flourished, appropriately enough, between 1888 (the centenary of Australia) and 1901 (the foundation year of the Commonwealth). Lack of patronage at home and desire for overseas training and experience had forced most of its members to Europe by 1900. But their vision of Australian life and landscape has had lasting influence.
Heizer , Michael
.
Held , Al
(1928– ).
American painter. His early work was in the prevailing
Abstract Expressionist
idiom, being particularly influenced by Jackson
Pollock
. From about 1960, however, he began to develop a more individual style characterized by cleanedged, bold, brightly coloured geometrical forms. It had affinities with
Hard-Edge painting
, but Held's work was distinguished by his use of very heavily textured paint. He often worked on a huge scale, giving his paintings an extremely forceful physical impact. In 1967 he began making black-and-white paintings, using white linear structures on a black ground or black lines on a white ground to create overlapping and interlocking box-like forms that demonstrate his interest in Renaissance perspective. In the 1980s he reintroduced colour with a vengeance, as in his 55-feet-long mural
Mantegna's Edge
(Southland Center, Dallas, 1983), a work of tremendous high-keyed vigour.
Hellenistic
.
A term applied to Greek culture in the late 4th to late 1st cent. BC, say from 323 BC, when Alexander the Great died, to 27 BC, when Augustus became the first Roman emperor. During this period Greece itself had lost its political importance as Rome rose to power, but Greek culture was adopted by diverse peoples in the Mediterranean world and beyond. Hellenistic art is more varied in inspiration than that of the
Classical
age which preceded it, and the sculpture of the period is often remarkable for its technical bravura and overt display of emotion, as in the celebrated
Laocoön
, the most famous of Hellenistic works of art. After original Greek works of the Classical period became widely known in the course of the 19th cent. much Hellenistic art was generally dismissed as decadent, but it is now recognized as a rich field of study.
Helst , Bartholomeus van der
(1613–70).
Dutch portrait painter. He was born in Haarlem, settled in Amsterdam in 1636, and in the 1640s took over from
Rembrandt
as the most popular portraitist in the city, his detailed, tasteful, and slightly flattering likenesses appealing more to the fashionable burghers than the master's work, which was becoming more individual and introspective. Van der Helst's influence during his lifetime was great. For example, Rembrandt's talented pupils
Bol
and
Flinck
abandoned the style of their master in order to follow his more popular manner. His reputation endured into the next century and as late as 1781
Reynolds
wrote that van der Helst's
Banquet of the Amsterdam Civic Guard in Celebration of the Peace of Münster
(Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1648) ‘is, perhaps, the first picture of portraits in the world’, adding that it as far exceeded his expectations as Rembrandt's
Night Watch
fell below them.
Hemessen , Jan Sanders van
(
c.
1500–
c.
1566).
Netherlandish painter of religious and
genre
scenes and portraits. The facts of his life are obscure, but in 1524 he was made a master of the Antwerp Guild. He is reputed to have moved to Haarlem
c.
1550 and to have died there. His paintings illustrating popular proverbs and religious parables, and his satirical portraits, link him with Quentin
Massys
and
Marinus van Reymerswaele
, and Hemessen ranks with them as one of the founders of Flemish genre painting. An example of his work is
The Prodigal Son
(Musées Royaux, Brussels, 1536).

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