Canaletto | St Mark's Square, Venice - The drawing room of Europe

St Mark's Square, is the principal public square of Venice, Italy, where it is generally known just as la Piazza ("the Square").

All other urban spaces in the city (except the Piazzetta and the Piazzale Roma) are called campi ("fields").

The Piazzetta ("little Piazza/Square") is an extension of the Piazza towards San Marco basin in its south east corner.

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) | Drawing

Edgar Degas🎨, born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was a French artist🎨 famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers.

He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism🎨, although he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist.

Vladimir Gusev, 1957 | Figurative painter

Russian painter Владимир Гусев was born in the Moscow region. The first teacher of drawing and painting in Vladimir was his father, an artist Sergey Gusev.

But becoming a creative young artist connected with his studies at Moscow State Art Institute VI Surikova, from which he graduated in 1981.

Department of Painting. Gusev teachers at the institute were honored artist of the RSFSR Professor Tsyplakov VG and Associate Professor Zabelin VN In 1983. Gusev, VS was admitted to the Union of Artists.

Stojan Milanov, 1963 | Impressionist painter

Serbian painter Stojan Milanov has been a professional painter since 1985 and member of The Applied Artists and Designers Association of Serbia - ULUPUDS since 2005.

In 2005, he was awarded "Artist of the Year" by Simic Galleries, California.

His themes are human figure and urban landscape, technique oil on canvas.

Graduated from the University of Architecture in Belgrade.

He has participated in many collective exhibitions and art meetings.

Wendy Ng | Abstract / Realist painter

"Painting in the traditional form gives me the opportunity to experiment with the qualities of the paint, the juxtaposition of patterns and textures, to achieve a play of balance and to create rich and inviting paintings" - Wendy Ng.

Chinese born artist Wendy Ng got her education in the United States, Belgium and the United Kingdom and currently based in Australia. Her heart has always desired to study art. She was trained in Art and Design at The Wimbledon School of Art, UK, with a Graphic Design and Illustration background in advertising and publishing.

She paints in the traditional form but takes her ideas further by experimenting with patterns and textures creating a balance between Real-life Art and Abstract Art.

Michael Carson, 1972

Influenced by the paintings of Toulouse Lautrec🎨, John Singer Sargent🎨, Norman Rockwell🎨, Malcolm Liepke🎨, and Milt Kobayashi, Michael Carson is primarily a figurative Artist who likes to tell a story.

His figures usually find themselves in bars, nightclubs, cafes, and jazz clubs; even at home in intimate settings.

Stanislav Plutenko, 1961 | Surrealist painter

Stanislav V. Plutenko was born in Russia. Plutenko studied at the Moscow University of National Economy, taking lessons in painting from private masters. In 1984 he created his first works.

From 1985-1990 he did designer's work in commercial advertising and joined UNESCO's guild of graphic artists in 1991.

In 1997 he was rewarded with the Grand Prix of the «Golden Brush» exhibition.

Samuel Morse (1791-1872) | American inventor and painter

Known today primarily as the inventor of the telegraph, Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791-1872) began his career as a painter.

Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, he attended Yale University, graduated in 1810, and moved to Boston.

There he became the private pupil and friend of the painter Washington Allston, who introduced him to a traditional program of study that encompassed drawing, anatomy, and art theory.

With Allston’s encouragement, Morse went to London, where he met Benjamin West and was accepted as a student at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Morse’s first major painting there, The Dying Hercules (1812-1813, Yale University Art Gallery), earned high praise.

Returning home in 1815, full of optimism and national pride, Morse confronted an artistic climate unfavorably disposed to history painting in the grand manner and was forced to turn to portrait painting for financial support.

Throughout the late 1810s and 1820s, he painted portraits of clients in cities and towns along the Atlantic seaboard.

Van der Vaart and Wissing | Queen Anne, when Princess of Denmark,1685

Title: Queen Anne, when Princess of Denmark;

Artists: Willem Wissing (Dutch painter🎨, 1656-1687), Jan van der Vaart (Dutch painter🎨, 1647-1721)

Current location: National Galleries of Scotland.

Queen Anne (1665-1714) - Princess of Denmark, Reigned 1702-1714 - was the last of the Stuart dynasty to occupy the British throne.

Shown here aged eighteen, seductively dressed and posed in a sumptuous interior, her reign was dominated by war with the French and her failure to produce an heir.

Robert Philipp (1895-1981) | Impressionist painter

Robert Philipp was an American painter🎨 influenced by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and known for his figures, still lifes, and portraits of attractive women and Hollywood stars.

Noted art critic Henry McBride called Philipp one of America's top six painters of his generation.

He was an instructor of painting at the Art Students League of New York for 33 years, the American artist Itshak Holtz was a student of Philipp.

James Sant RA | Portrait / Genre painter

James Sant CVO RA (1820-1916) was a British painter specialising in portraits and known particularly for images of women and children and artistic exploration of the symbolism of childhood.

He was a member of the Royal Academy.

George Sant and Sarah Sant were also artists and are believed to have been his brother and sister.

Benjamin Lacombe, 1982 | Pop surrealism painter

Benjamin was born in Paris. In 2001, he attended the école Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Paris where he pursued his artistic education.

In addition to his studies, he worked as an advertising and animated movie artist before completing his first comic series at the age of 19, along with a few other illustrated books.

His final project «Cherry and Olive», which he has both written and illustrated, became his first children’s book and was published in France by Les éditions du Seuil in March 2006.

The following year, it was released by Walker Books (USA) and nominated one of the top 10 children’s books for the year 2007 in the U.S.A. by the prestigious weekly news magazine Time.

David Walker, 1976 | Portrait / Street Art

David Walker is a London-based portraitist who creates color-explosive portraits using spray paint in the form of street art.

Working in portraiture and using only spray paint David's ability to capture his subject in his trademark multi-layered style has seen him invited to exhibit all over the world and his work becoming highly collectible.

Using self-enforced constraints such as a 'no brushes rule' David is pushing the medium in his own unique direction and challenging preconceptions.

Anastasia Vostrezova, 1981 | Ballet Dancers

Russian painter🎨 Анастасия Вострецова works in a variety of genres: portrait, landscape, still-life. Anastasia's true creativity is evident in her scenes of Russian everyday life, festivals and portraits. The characters presence of mood and soul are delicately transferred on her canvas.

Her works are characterised by the constant search of the illusive language of the soul and the painting culture that changes constantly.

Anastasia Vostrezova /Анастасия Вострецова was born in a family of artists. She spent all of her childhood in Moscow and in Pereslavl-Zalesski where her family had a summer house.

Catherine Alexandre | Surrealist painter

Catherine-Marie Alexandre, painter whose reputation in France and abroad is well established, studies in Fine Arts, National Diploma in painting.

Diploma in contemporary jewelry design. First prize in a fashion design competition.

Easel painting, illustration for advertising and publishing. Currently, paints and writes.

- "When I was two years old, my parents peut a pencil in my hand, that I have never let it go since.

At the end of my secondary school studies, I went to Art'School, where I have obtained my NATIONAL DIPLOMA of PAINTING".

Claude Monet | Flowers and Fruit, 1869

Title: Still Life with Flowers and Fruit;

Artist/Maker: Claude Monet🎨 (French, 1840-1926);

Place: France (Place Created);

Date: 1869;

Medium: Oil on canvas;

Dimensions: 100.3 × 81.3 cm (39 1/2 × 32 in.);

Current location: Getty Center J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Although painted in his studio, this still life shows the influence of the outdoor experiments that Claude Monet undertook in the summer and fall of 1869, while he was living at Bougival on the Seine River.

Stas Sugintas, 1969

Stanislavas Sugintas was born in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Education:

1980-1984 - Vilnius Middle Art School, Lithuania.

1986-1993 - Academy of Fine Arts of Belarus, Minsk Took general courses in painting, drawing and composition.

Sugintas is member of the "Maison des Artists", France and member of the Union of Designers, Belarus.

Blanche Hoschedé-Monet (1865-1947)

Blanche Hoschedé Monet was a French painter🎨 who was both the stepdaughter and the daughter-in-law of Claude Monet🎨.

The only child in the Hoschedé-Monet household to become interested in art, Blanche began painting at the age of eleven and developed a fond relationship with Claude Monet. She visited his studio as well as Édouard Manet's🎨.

By the time she was 17 years old, she was Monet's assistant and only student, often painting en plein air alongside him, painting the same subject with the same colors.

Fernand Toussaint (1873-1956) | Portrait and Figure

Post-Impressionist painter Fernand Toussaint 🎨 was equally at ease painting in all categories, from landscapes and seascapes to beautiful bouquets and still lifes, but it is in his intimate portraiture and genre paintings that we discover, according to Mario de Monchi, Toussaint as the “incontestable master of the grace and charm of the woman”.

His classical artistic schooling in drawing gave his work a certain precision, but it was Toussaint’s travels and friendships, notably in Paris and London, that influenced his choice of palette and the tender sensuality with which he endowed the paintings he most loved creating, his portraits of women.

Fabio Fabbi (1861-1906) | Orientalist painter

Fabio Fabbi one of the most famous and commercially successful Italian artists🎨 of the Orientalists.

Fabio Fabbi was born in Bologna, Italy in 1861. As a young man, he enrolled at the Academia Di Belle Art in Florence and studied sculpture and painting in the 1880s, winning prizes in both categories. After his studies, he traveled to Paris, Munich, and finally Egypt. Upon his return to Italy, he dedicated himself solely to painting and was honored with the distinction of professorship at the Academia.

Patrice Murciano, 1969 | Pop Portrait painter /Sculptor

French painter and sculptor Patrice Murciano* has had a huge rise to fame because of his amazing and very different creative style.

Murciano was born in Belfort in 1969 and then moved to Montpellier when very young.
For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by Murciano see:

• Patrice Murciano, 1969 | Pop painter / Sculptor🎨

Mihály Von Munkácsy | Genre painter

Mihály Von Munkácsy (1844-1900), Hungarian painter, whose real name was Michael (Miska) Leo Lieb, was the third son of Michael Lieb, a collector of salt-tax in Munkács, Hungary, and of Cäcilia Röck.

He was born in that town on the 20th of February 1844. In 1848 his father was arrested at Miskolcz for complicity in the Hungarian revolution, and died shortly after his release; a little earlier he had also lost his mother, and became dependent upon the charity of relations, of whom an uncle, Röck, became mainly responsible for his maintenance and education.

Carl Milles | The Hand of God, 1950

The Hand of God was one of Swedish sculptor🎨 Carl Milles' (1875-1955) last works before his death.

A small man is standing on a large hand.

He is looking upwards and his body is tense, with fingers splayed. The man is balancing on the index finger and thumb of the large hand, a feat that seems difficult enough in itself, but his exertion is of another nature.

Wilhelm von Gegerfelt (1844-1920) Venedig

Swedish painter Wilhelm von Gegerfelt painted landscapes with motifs from Venice, Brittany, Swedish coastal landscapes and from Gotland in Sweden.

Gegerfelt studied at the Royal Danish Academy from 1861-1863, at the Royal Swedish Academy from 1864-1867, and thereafter in Düsseldorf until 1872.

He then went to Paris where he developed a new technique joining Alfred Wahlberg as one of the first Swedes to represent the Modern Breakthrough in Nordic art.

Robert Papp | Illustrator

Robert Papp is an illustrator from America who loves to draw and paint.

Each month, Robert's work is viewed by over 1.7 million people thanks to the kind folks at Cooks Illustrated Magazine who feature his art on their covers.

Traditionally trained at DuCret School of Art in New Jersey he has spent years producing hundreds of works for book covers, children's books, and advertising.

Eric Wallis, 1968 | Pittore impressionista

Eric K.Wallis è nato in Arizona.

Ha iniziato la dipingere ad olio all'età di sette anni insieme a suo padre, Kent R. Wallis, grazie al quale Eric divenne un bambino prodigio. Ha vinto molti premi durante gli anni di scuola.

Iscritto alla Utah University, ha passato molto tempo a disegnare schizzi con la compagnia di danza moderna della stessa università’.

La sua carriera professionista parte nel 1990 mentre era ancora iscritto al college.

Moussin Irjan, 1977

Moussin Irjan is an artist born in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan.

Winner of the Moscow international competition of painting "Russian Art Week". Awarded🎨 1st place in the foreign versions of the jury.

In the category of "Profi" nomination "Realistic painting" competitive work: "Girl Clown", oil on canvas, 40x40 cm. Professional activities since 2007.

Education:

From 1992-1995 studied at the Art College of the Alma-Ata.

From 1995-1999 studied at the Academy of Arts of Repin in St. Petersburg.

From 2001-2004 studied at the Art School "RHoK" in Brussels.

From 2006-2007 studied at the Academy of Arts in Antwerp.

Cayetano de Arquer Buigas (1932-2012)

Cayetano de Arquer Buigas🎨 (January 11th, 1932-September 13, 2012) was and stands as perhaps one of the most emblematic inheritors of 19th-century Catalan and French Impressionist style🎨 (seen in artists such as Ramón Casas and Eduard Degás🎨). With his elegant, restrained color palette and compelling balance between composition and subject choices, Buigas’s output has afforded him the status of a beloved, enduring master.

Luigi Bechi (1830-1919) | Genre painter

Luigi Bechi was an Italian painter🎨, born in Florence. As a young Italian patriot, he joined in the war for independence.

In the campaign of 1859 against Austria, he joined as a simple soldier in the artillery in the fifth army corps and in 1866, he fought with Garibaldi in the Trentino, and was wounded and made prisoner in the Battle of Bezzecca.

He trained under Giuseppe Bezzuoli and Enrico Pollastrini in Florence.

Stojan Milanov, 1963 | Abstract painter

Stojan Milanov was born in Belgrade.

He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade and has been painting since 1985.

He is a member of the Association of Fine and Applied arts of Serbia.

Since 1985, he has been professionally engaged in painting, a member of The Association of Applied Arts Artists and Designers of Serbia (ULUPUDS) and The Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS), freelance artist.

Thomas Danthony, 1988 | Surreal Spaces

Born in Montpellier, in the South of France, Thomas Danthony is a designer and illustrator based in London.

Danthony graduated from a Master in Product Design. He dedicates himself to illustration after moving to London. Since then, Thomas Danthony as freelance for the Press and for advertising on difference projects, for european but also american clients such as Google, Arte, Netflix or Liberty.

German Aracil, 1965 | Figurative painter

Spanish artist🎨, German Aracil was born in Alicante. In 1985 he began his studies at the San Carlos School of Fine Art in Valencia, Spain.

Aracil's first one-man show was held in his home town of Alicante, followed in 1990 by exhibitions in New York, Miami, USA. Subsequently, German Aracil has exhibited his work with great success in Spain, Portugal, Japan, Germany, France, South America and the USA.

Martin Llamedo, 1980 | Figurative painter

Martin Llamedo was born in Argentina, where he currently lives and paints. At a young age he studied ceramic and sculpture with Hector Alves.

During his time at the university he was taught by Domingo Florio, Carlos Carmona, Alfredo Portillos, Julio Flores, Salvador Constanzo, and art theory by Castillo, Magaz, Dragosky and Laurenzi.

Plein Air painting style

Renoir🎨 - Monet🎨 painting in his garden at Argenteuil, 1873

En Plein Air painting, in its strictest sense, the practice of painting landscape pictures out-of-doors; more loosely, the achievement of an intense impression of the open air (French: plein air) in a landscape painting.

Until the time of the painters of the Barbizon school in mid-19th-century France, it was normal practice to execute rough sketches of landscape subjects in the open air and produce finished paintings in the studio. Part of this was a matter of convenience.

Before the invention of the collapsible tin paint tube, widely marketed by the colour merchants Winsor Newton in 1841, painters purchased their colours in the form of ground pigment and mixed them fresh with an appropriate medium such as oil.

Giovanni Lomi (1889-1969) | Post-Macchiaioli painter

Italian painter🎨 and a great operatic singer Giovanni Lomi (1889-1969) was born in Livorno, where he lived since his childhood in economic straits.

Orphaned at a young age, after a period spent at the Institute G. Lomi Paesaggio rustico Giovanni Pascoli, was entrusted to a peasant family, where he held various jobs, but he could not surrender to his passion for design, that became his purpose in life.

Flemish Art History and Sitemap

Peter Paul Rubens | Old Woman and Boy with Candles, 1616-1617

Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century, gradually becoming distinct from the painting of the rest of the Low Countries, especially the modern Netherlands.

In the early period, up to about 1520, the painting of the whole area is (especially in the Anglophone world) typically considered as a whole, as Early Netherlandish painting.

This was dominated by the Flemish south, but painters from the north were also important.

Slava Groshev, 1967

Russian painter🎨 Слава Грошев is quite simply an outstanding artist producing masterworks that should grace any serious collection of art. A Moscow native Слава Грошев trained both there and in Montreal, Canada.

Ever since he has been producing work on a range of subjects, including not only religious themes, but more traditional landscapes and realist figure work that often comes with a twist.

Auguste Toulmouche (1829-1890)

Auguste Toulmouche was a French painter🎨 known for his luxurious portraits of Parisian women.

Auguste Toulmouche was born in Nantes to Émile Toulmouche, a well-to-do broker, and Rose Sophie Mercier.

He studied drawing and sculpture locally with the sculptor Amédée Ménard and painting with the portraitist Biron before moving to Paris in 1846 to study with the painter Charles Gleyre.

He was said to be one of Gleyre's favored students, and he exhibited his first paintings at the Paris Salon in 1848 when he was just 19.

Hans Thoma | The Twelve Months

Hans Thoma | January

Born in the Black Forest to a family of manual laborers, German painter, Hans Thoma (1839-1924) studied lithography in Basel in 1853, and after 1855 worked in Furtwangen with a miniaturist, painting watches and jewelry cases.

He entered the Karlsruhe Kunstschule in 1858 where his teachers included Ludwig Des Coudres, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, and Hans Canon. His major interest during this period was landscape.

Gustav Pope (1831-1910) | Victorian era painter

Gustav Pope was a British painter🎨 of Austrian origin. Active in the Victorian era, he incorporated several styles on his work, but in his mature style he showed influences of the second wave of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Jeanne Saint Chéron, 1973 | Ballet dancers

French painter🎨 Jeanne Saint Chéron is self-taught. His inspirations are mainly drawn from the horse world, fascinated by both the explosive power and the refined elegance of the animal.

Rich in symbols, touching fantasy and allegory his work can be summarized in the equestrian art where animal. This is the art of transporting us beyond appearances.

Roberto Ferri, 1978 | Via Crucis

Roberto Ferri is an Italian artist🎨 and painter from Taranto, Italy, who is deeply inspired by Baroque painters🎨 -Caravaggio in particular- and other old masters of Romanticism, the Academy and Symbolism.

In 1996, he graduated from the Liceo Artistico Lisippo Taranto, a local art school in his hometown.

Pierre Grisot (1911-1995) | Ballet dancers

Pierre Grisot was born in Paris. He was a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and exhibited frequently in Paris, in particular at the Salon des Independants and with the group of The Paris School, showing together with the contemporary artists Vlaminck🎨, Raoul Dufy🎨 and Villon.

Léon Zeytline (1885-1962) | Paris painting

Léon Zeytline / Леон Цейтлин was a Russian painter🎨 whom moved from Moscow to the capital of France at the beginning of the 20th century.

He started depicting daily life of Paris during the 1920's, illustrating the numerous and famous squares and boulevards, such as the "Boulevard de l'Opéra" and "Les Champs Elysées" for example.

Swiss Art History and Sitemap

Alberto Giacometti | Surrealist/Existentialist/Figure sculptor

Switzerland lies at the crossroads of several major European cultures. Three of the continent's major languages, German, French and Italian, are national languages of Switzerland, along with Romansh, spoken by a small minority.

Therefore, Swiss culture is characterized by diversity, which is reflected in a wide range of traditional customs. The 26 cantons also account for the large cultural diversity.

Edgar Degas | Art Quotes

• "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see".
• "L'arte non è ciò che vedi, ma ciò che fai vedere agli altri".
• "Bisogna rifare dieci volte, cento volte lo stesso soggetto. Niente, in arte, deve sembrare dovuto al caso".
• "Do it again, ten times, a hundred times. Nothing in art must seem to be an accident, not even movement".

Paul Jones (1921-1997) | Flowers of May

Paul Jones is an Australian painter who has painted these beautiful botanical illustrations in a manner very reminiscent of Thornton’s Temple of Flora.

His watercolor paintings are widely held in museum collections and included in several interesting exhibits linked below, at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Smithsonian in Washington DC and he is considered one of the finest botanical artists of the last 150 years.

Henri Fantin-Latour | Fleurs et fruits, 1865

Henri Fantin-Latour | Fleurs et fruits, 1865 | Musée d’Orsay

Contemporaneamente alla sua attività di ritrattista, Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) realizza un numero cospicuo di nature morte.

Negli anni sessanta del XIX secolo, quest'ultime esercitano un ruolo fondamentale nella carriera dell'artista.

È proprio in Inghilterra, paese dove Fantin-Latour abitualmente risiede, che questi trova un numero considerevole di estimatori delle sue composizioni raffiguranti fiori e frutta, il che comporta un susseguirsi di acquisti e commesse in grado di assicurare al pittore un successo commerciale che, fino a quel momento, il suo lavoro non gli ha permesso di raggiungere.

George Lundeen, 1948 | Figurative sculptor

Born and raised in Holdrege, Nebraska, George W. Lundeen, American sculptor, went to college at Hastings and then to the University of Illinois, where he studied with Frank Gallo, a realist sculptor.

He then spent a year on a Fulbright-Hays Scholarship in Florence, Italy, where the works of Old Masters inspired his ambition to sculpt for a living.

Today Lundeen lives and works in Loveland, Colorado, presiding over a family of sculptors, including his wife, a younger brother, a sister-in-law and a cousin.

Gil Bruvel, 1959 | Stainless Steel sculptures

A word from Gil Bruvel🎨...

“I am artist because it is the conduit to release the ideas and visuals I carry daily. Since I was a little boy I have pursued my own exploration rooted in the unconscious mind and nurtured with daily practice using a variety of mediums of artistic expression. My artistic process developed organically from my father's cabinet shop to the stainless steel sculptures I create today.