The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (501 page)

(
c.
1600–53).
Dutch painter, mainly of marine subjects, active in his native Rotterdam, Delft, and Amsterdam. One of the outstanding marine painters of his period, he moved from stormy subjects in the manner of
Porcellis
to serene and majestic images that influenced van de
Cappelle
and Willem van de
Velde
the Younger. De Vlieger also painted a few landscapes and
genre
pictures.

 
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(1865–1939).
French dealer, connoisseur, art publisher, and writer on art, famous as a champion of avant-garde art. In 1893 he opened a gallery in Paris and in 1895 he gave the first important exhibition of
Cézanne
. From that time the gallery became the centre of innovative art in the city, other landmark events including the first one-man exhibitions of
Picasso
(1901) and
Matisse
(1904). Vollard was the first to commission prominent artists to illustrate literary classics and contemporary works, publishing volumes which were of interest primarily for the illustrations. His portrait was painted many times, among others by
Bonnard
, Cézanne , Picasso ,
Renoir
, and
Rouault
. Vollard's writings included books on Cézanne and
Degas
and the autobiographical
Recollections of a Picture Dealer
(1936).

 
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Vorticism
.

A short-lived British avant-garde art movement originating just before the First World War. The central figure of Vorticism was Wyndham
Lewis
, who edited its review—
Blast
—and later claimed that ‘Vorticism … was what I, personally, did, and said, at a certain period.’ His harsh, angular, mechanistic style was, however, shared by other artists in his circle, among them the painters,
Bomberg
,
Nevinson
,
Roberts
, and
Wadsworth
, and sculptors
Epstein
and
Gaudier-Brzeska
. Vorticism was strongly influenced by
Cubism
and
Futurism
; the name was coined by the poet Ezra Pound, perhaps in reference to a statement by the Futurist artist
Boccioni
that all artistic creation must originate in a state of emotional vortex. Only one Vorticist exhibition was held, in 1915, and the movement did not survive the First World War (an attempt to revive it in 1920 as Group X proved abortive). However, it is of great significance as the first organized movement towards abstraction in English art and it subsequently had a strong influence on the development of British modernism.

 
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(1584?–1651).
Flemish painter, active in Antwerp. He painted historical, allegorical, mythological, and religious works, but excelled chiefly as a portraitist, in a style derived from
Rubens
and van
Dyck
. His finest paintings are his portraits of children, which have great sensitivity and charm without lapsing into sentimentality. A splendid self-portrait of
The Artist with his Family
(Musées Royaux, Brussels, 1621) shows him looking happy and proud with his own children. His brother
Paul de Vos
(
c.
1596–1678) painted hunting scenes and still lifes in the style of Frans
Snyders
, who was the brother-in-law of the de Vos brothers. In 1637 all three helped Rubens execute pictures for the Torre de la Parada, Philip IV of Spain's hunting-lodge near Madrid.

 
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(1532–1603).
Netherlandish painter, active mainly in his native Antwerp. In about 1552 he went to Italy (perhaps in company with
Bruegel
) and studied in Rome, in Florence, and with
Tintoretto
in Venice. By 1558 he was back in Antwerp, and after the death of Frans
Floris
in 1570 he became the leading Italianate artist in that city. The altarpieces that make up the bulk of his output are typically
Mannerist
in their strained, slender elegance. His much rarer portraits, on the other hand, are notably direct and more in the Netherlandish tradition (
Antoine Anselme and his Family
, Musées Royaux, Brussels, 1577).

 
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