The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (45 page)

(
c.
1580–1623/4).
Flemish painter of still life and flower pieces. Beert became a master in Antwerp in 1602 and also carried on business as a cork merchant. He is specially noted for his paintings of oysters, which show a masterly feeling for colour and texture.

 
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Beggarstaff Brothers
.

Pseudonym used by the brothers-in-law William
Nicholson
and James
Pryde
for their poster designs. ‘They joined forces in 1894, and for the next five years they produced a series of posters which by their bold simplicity and clarity of design revolutionized certain aspects of poster art throughout Europe… they presented the image in its starkest form: the background is stripped bare of unnecessary detail and the fullest use is made of the silhouette…Despite the brilliant originality of their work, or perhaps because of it, they received relatively few commissions and several of their designs never reached the hoardings’ (Dennis Farr ,
English Art: 1870–1940
, 1978).

 
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Beham , Hans Sebald
(1500–50) and
Bartel

(1502–40).
German engravers, brothers. They were expelled from their native city of Nuremberg in 1525 for their extreme Protestant views. Hans settled in Frankfurt and Bartel worked for Duke William IV of Bavaria. Both brothers produced a great number of illustrations to the Bible, mythology, and history, strongly influenced by
Dürer
. Bartel was also a painter, primarily of portraits.

 
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(1881–1964).
British critic and writer on art. With Roger
Fry
he was largely instrumental in propagating in Great Britain an appreciation of the
Post Impressionist
painters and particularly
Cézanne
. Bell chose the British section of Fry's second Post-Impressionist exhibition (1912), including work by his wife Vanessa
Bell
, Fry himself, and Duncan
Grant
among
Bloomsbury Group
artists, with Spencer
Gore
and Wyndham
Lewis
representing the more radical wing. His aesthetic ideas were set forth in his book
Art
(1914) and were much concerned with his theory of ‘significant form’. He invented this term to denote ‘the quality that distinguishes works of art from all other classes of objects’—a quality never found in nature but common to all works of art and existing independently of representational or symbolic content. The book is not now taken seriously as philosophy, and it contains some absurd statements (‘The bulk of those who flourished between the high Renaissance and the contemporary movement may be divided into two classes, virtuosi and dunces’); however, it is written with fervour, and there can be no doubt that it was important in spreading an attitude that demanded greater attention to the formal qualities of a work of art.
Quentin Bell
(1910– ), son of Clive and Vanessa Bell , is a painter, sculptor, potter, university professor, and author, probably best known for his writings on art, mainly on the Victorian period and the Bloomsbury Group. Quentin's son
Julian Bell
(1952– ) is a painter and writer on art.

 
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(1910–43).
British painter and art critic, born in South Africa. He came to England in 1931 and was a pupil of Duncan
Grant
. In the early 1930s he painted abstracts, but from 1934 to 1937 abandoned painting for journalism. When he returned to painting it was in the soberly naturalistic style associated with the
Euston Road School
. His work included portraits, landscapes, interiors, and still lifes. He was killed on an RAF training fight in the Second World War.

 
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