The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (509 page)

Weissenbruch , Hendrik Johannes
(1824–1903)
. Dutch landscape and marine painter, a pupil of
Schelfhout
and one of the outstanding artists of the
Hague School
. His work is distinguished by its subtle handling of tone and feeling for atmosphere. His cousin
Johannes (Jan) Weissenbruch
(1822–80) painted town views in the detailed manner of 17th-cent. artists such as
Saenredam
.
Wentworth , Richard
.
Werefkin , Marianne von
.
Werenskiold , Erik
(1855–1938).
Norwegian painter and graphic artist. He was one of the leading personalities in Norwegian art, the friend of numerous writers and intellectuals and a symbol of national culture. His work included landscapes, in which he showed an affectionate yet unsentimental approach to his native land, portraits of many of the leading Norwegians of his day (
Henrik Ibsen
, NG, Oslo, 1895), and book illustrations. After the turn of the century he was influenced by
Cézanne
.
Werff , Adriaen van der
(1659–1722)
. Dutch painter of religious and mythological scenes and portraits, active mainly in Rotterdam. He combined the precise finish of the Leiden tradition (learned from his master Eglon van der
Neer
) with the classical standards of the French Academy and became the most famous Dutch painter of his day, winning international success and earning an enormous fortune.
Houbraken
, writing in 1721, considered him the greatest of all Dutch painters and this was the general critical opinion for about another century. He is now considered an extremely accomplished, rather sentimental and repetitive minor master. Van der Werff also worked as an architect in Rotterdam, designing elegant house façades. His brother,
Pieter van der Werff
(1655?–1722), was his principal pupil and assistant, imitating Adriaen's style closely and making many copies of his work.
Wesselmann , Tom
(1931– )
. American painter, one of the best-known exponents of
Pop art
. He frequently incorporates in his work elements of
collage
and
assemblage
(using household objects such as clocks and television sets), bringing representation and reality together to create a tension or ambiguity between the real world and the world of art. He often favours aggressively sexual subjects and is best known for his continuing series
Great American Nude
(began 1961), in which the nude becomes a depersonalized sex symbol set in a realistically depicted commonplace environment. He emphasizes the woman's nipples, mouth, and genitals, with the rest of the body depicted in flat, unmodulated colour. In other works he isolates parts of the body still further, as in his
Smoker
series, in which the mouth—often depicted on a huge scale—becomes a provocatively erotic symbol.

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