The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (491 page)

Valette , Adolphe
.

See
LOWRY
.

 
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Valkenborch
(or Valkenborgh)
.

Family of Netherlandish landscape and
genre
painters, the most important members of which were
Lucas
(
c.
1530–97) and his younger brother
Marten
(1535–1612). Lucas joined the Malines Guild in 1560 and in 1565 was in Antwerp, whence he fled to Aix-la-Chapelle to avoid persecution (he was a Protestant). He worked for Archduke Matthias and accompanied him to Linz before settling in Frankfurt in 1593. Marten fled with his brother and returned to Antwerp before going to Frankfurt, Venice, and Rome. Both worked in the
Bruegel
tradition, and both favoured the subject of the
Tower of Babel
. They also painted series of
The Seasons
, and their winter scenes are especially notable.

 
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(1865–1925).
Swissborn painter, graphic artist, sculptor, and writer who became a French citizen in 1900. In 1882 he settled in Paris and became a friend of
Bonnard
and
Vuillard
, exhibiting several times with the
Nabis
. He painted portraits, nudes, interiors, and landscapes in a style that is essentially naturalistic but shows an almost abstract feeling for simplified form, influenced by his enthusiasm for Japanese prints (see
UKIYO-E
). In about 1890 he began to make woodcuts, and with artists such as
Gauguin
and
Munch
he played a part in the revival of interest in the technique that took place in the early years of the 20th cent.

 
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(1694–1739).
English portrait painter. He had a considerable practice in London in the years immediately succeeding the death of
Kneller
, and
Vertue
says he started the fashion for depicting ladies in Rubens costume. His best work is vigorous, but often marred by sloppy handling. He was one of the founders of the
St Martin's Lane Academy
in 1720.

 
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(1775–1852).
American painter. He spent much of his career in Paris (he also visited Rome), and his style was nearer to the mainstream of European
Neoclassicism
and
Romanticism
than that of almost any other American painter of his generation. His best-known painting is
Ariadne Asleep on Naxos
(Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1814), a reclining figure in the tradition of the Venuses of
Giorgione
and
Titian
that is regarded as the finest American nude before
Eakins
. Although such works won him considerable renown in France, he was much less successful in America, where he worked mainly as a portraitist, and he became embittered in his final years.

 
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(1886–1965).
Belgian sculptor, painter, architect, and writer on art. After being wounded in the First World War he was interned from 1914 to 1918 in the Netherlands. There he joined the De
Stijl
group in 1917 and turned from the conventionally naturalistic style he had previously practised to abstract sculptures in which he applied the principles of
Neo-Plasticism
to three dimensions. In 1919–27 he lived at Menton and then for the rest of his life in Paris, where he was involved in the
Cercle et Carré
and
Abstraction-Création
groups. From 1928 he designed architectural projects and in the 1940s he began using wire and perspex in his sculpture, exploring effects of light. His paintings were based on horizontal and vertical lines until 1937, when he introduced rhythmic curving lines, rejecting his friend
Mondrian's
idea that only constructions based on the right angle reflect the harmony of the universe.