Life and Career
Little is known for certain about his life, particularly his early years. Only one work by Feke, a portrait of a child, is datable before 1741. In that year he moved to Boston, where he painted Family of Isaac Royall (1741), a group portrait which borrows its composition from John Smibert’s The Bermuda Group (1729). Feke's works also show the influence of John Wollaston.
From 1741 until 1750, Feke worked in Boston, Newport, Rhode Island, and Philadelphia, painting wealthy merchants and landowners. The latest record of his activities is August 26, 1751; suggestions by Feke's early biographers that he died in Barbadoes or Bermuda have not been substantiated.
Feke's paintings are known for their sobriety and uniformity, but also for their rich colours and painterly boldness.
Read more about this topic: Robert Feke
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“On wings of morning our prayers and devotions are soaring.
All of creation awakens, the Maker adoring.
Join in the song. Harmonies blending along,
Vigor and life now restoring.”
—Jane Parker Huber (b. 1926)
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)