The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (222 page)

(1877–1968).
German-born Australian landscape painter, mainly in watercolour. His family emigrated to Australia when he was 6 and he worked mainly in Adelaide. Robert
Hughes
(
The Art of Australia
, 1970) writes: ‘Heysen's large body of work was immensely popular; it has most of the textbook virtues and, for many years, no Australian business firm was considered quite solid unless it had a Heysen in its boardroom…The only deficiency of his art is that it has no imagination… He was, in fact, the Alfred
Munnings
of the gum-tree.’ His work is represented in all Australian state galleries and many provincial galleries.

 
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(1780–1849).
The best-known American primitive painter of the 19th cent., active in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He was a coach-and sign-painter early in life, but for many years he devoted himself to preaching—the pleasure he derived from painting conflicted with his ascetic Quaker outlook and caused him much conscience-searching. Some of his pictures are farm scenes or landscapes, but he is best known for his many versions (he reputedly made more than 100) of
The Peaceable Kingdom
. Exemplifying the pacifism of the Quaker society in which he lived, they depict with a vivid and charming literalness the prophecy in the 11th chapter of Isaiah that all men and beasts will live in peace.

 
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(1692–1780).
English painter, mainly of portraits. He studied at
Kneller's
Academy and had a considerable practice as a portraitist by the 1720s. His early work is in the manner of
Richardson
, but from the 1730s his portraits became more elegant as he responded to the
Rococo
influences that began to pervade English painting at this time. Some of his more informal works, however, have a directness and freshness that recall
Hogarth
(
Mr Oldham and Friends
, Tate, London). Highmore was a friend of the novelist Samuel Richardson and painted a series of twelve illustrations to
Pamela
(Tate; Fitzwilliam, Cambridge; NG of Victoria, Melbourne), which link him with
Hayman
and Hogarth as one of the initiators of a British school of narrative painting. He also painted Richardson's portrait (NPG, London). In 1761 he gave up painting and retired to Canterbury to devote himself to literary pursuits.

 
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(1847–1921).
German sculptor and writer on art. He spent much of his career in Italy, where he was closely associated with Hans von
Marées
, and is regarded as one of the main upholders in his period of the classical tradition in sculpture. His most characteristic works were nude figures—timeless and rather austere, in the high-minded tradition of Greek art. He is now, however, better known for his treatise
Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst
(1893) than for his highly accomplished but rather bland sculpture. The book went through many editions (an English translation,
The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture
, was published in 1907) and its credo of ‘pure form’ was influential in promoting a move against surface naturalism in sculpture.

 
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(
c.
1547–1619).
The most celebrated of English
miniaturists
. He was the son of an Exeter goldsmith and trained as a jeweller. In about 1570 he was appointed Court Miniaturist and Goldsmith by Elizabeth I, and he also worked for James I, but after the turn of the century his position as the leading miniaturist in the country was challenged by his former pupil Isaac
Oliver
. These two were head and shoulders above their contemporaries and dominated the
limning
of their era. Hilliard's reputation extended to France, which he visited
c.
1577–8. In his treatise
The Arte of Limning
(written in about 1600 but not published until 1912) Hilliard declared himself as a follower of
Holbein's
manner of limning. In particular he avoided the use of shadow for modelling and in his treatise he records that this was in agreement with Queen Elizabeth's taste—‘for the lyne without shadows showeth all to good jugment, but the shadowe without lyne showeth nothing’. But whereas for Holbein a miniature was always a painting reduced to a small scale, Hilliard developed in the miniature an intimacy and subtlety peculiar to that art. He combined his unerring use of line with a jeweller's exquisiteness in detail, an engraver's elegance in calligraphy, and a unique realization of the individuality of each sitter. His miniatures are often freighted with enigmatic inscription and intrusive allegory (e.g. a hand reaching from a cloud); yet this literary burden usually manages to heighten the vividness with which the sitter's face is impressed. Apart from the Queen herself, many other of the great Elizabethans sat for him, including Sir Francis Drake , Sir Walter Raleigh , and Sir Philip Sidney . The finest collection of his miniatures is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He is known also to have worked on a large scale and among the paintings attributed to him are portraits of Elizabeth I in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. In spite of his success, Hilliard had considerable financial problems and in 1617 was briefly imprisoned for debt. His son
Lawrence
(1582–after 1640) was also a miniaturist.

 
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