The Giverny Art Colony, 1885-1915

Between 1885 and 1915, the village of Giverny attracted more than 350 artists (Americans accounted for the majority) from at least eighteen countries around the world (including Argentina, Australia, Canada, Great Britain and Poland) - transforming from a sleepy community to a vibrant and important Artists' Colony.

The presence of master Claude Monet (known to the American artists through both Parisian and American exhibitions), who settled in the village in 1883, attracted a small band of artists, including Theodore Robinson, Willard Metcalf, Louis Ritter, Theodore Wendel and John Leslie Breck.

John Leslie Breck | Garden at Giverny, 1887-91

Louis Ritter (1854-1892)

Born: 1854, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America.

Died: 1892, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.

Biography

Louis Ritter’s landscape paintings of scenes in Europe and on the New England coast demonstrate the influence of new trends in European art that were just beginning to infiltrate American painting in the 1870s and 1880s.

Born in Cincinnati, he studied at the McMicken School of Design in 1873-74.

In 1878 he went to Munich, Germany, like many of his fellow compatriots, to enroll in the prestigious Royal Academy of Munich, where he won a silver medal in drawing.

Ritter studied with influential American painter and teacher Frank Duveneck, a native of the Cincinnati area.

Rupert Bunny | Colorist / Symbolist painter

Australian painter Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny (1864-1947) was one of the most successful expatriate artists of his generation.

No other Australian artist achieved the critical acclaim that he enjoyed in Paris. An erudite painter of ideal themes, and the creator of the most ambitious Salon paintings produced by an Australian, Bunny is an exotic in the history of Australian art.

An exhibition, Rupert Bunny artist in Paris, curated by Deborah Edwards, Senior Curator of Australian Art, will honour the work of this great Australian artist.

The exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales will showcase more than 85 of his most significant paintings, many unseen in Australia, including works from the Musée d’Orsay and Fonds national d’art contemporain in Paris and private lenders including Kerry Stokes, Jeffrey Archer and Dame Elisabeth Murdoch.

George Underwood, 1947 | Fantasy painter

George Underwood was born in Bromley Kent. George Underwood joined Beckenham Art School in 1963. At art school George Underwood became more and more interested in music. As a result he pursued a career in the music world.

Along with life long friend David Bowie he made one record -The King Bees- and also a solo record under the name Calvin James. After deciding that the music business was not for him, George returned to art studies and then worked in design studios as an illustrator. Initially he specialised in fantasy, horror and science fiction book covers.

Many of George Underwood's colleagues in the music business asked him to do various art works for them. This led to George becoming a freelance artist. Art work for the first T Rex album and later David Bowie’s Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust album covers established him as a leading and creative art illustrator.

Leonardo da Vinci | Del color verde fatto dalla ruggine di rame

Trattato della Pittura - Parte seconda | Capitoli 186-216

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

186. Dell'accompagnare i colori l'uno con l'altro, in modo che l'uno dia grazia all'altro.

187. Del far vivi e belli i colori nelle tue pitture.

188. De' colori delle ombre di qualunque colore.

189. Delle varietà che fanno i colori delle cose remote o propinque.

190. In quanta distanza si perdono i colori delle cose integralmente.

191. In quanta distanza si perdono i colori degli obietti dell'occhio.

192. Colore d'ombra del bianco.

193. Qual colore farà ombra piú nera.

194. Del colore che non mostra varietà in varie grossezze d'aria.

195. Della prospettiva de' colori.

Lawton Silas Parker | Painter of Giverny Art Colony

Lawton Silas Parker (1868-1954) was an American impressionist painter. A farm-boy from Kearney, Nebraska, Lawton Silas Parker began his training at the Art Institute of Chicago as a teenager.

In 1888, he went to Paris, where he met the stringent entrance requirements for the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts; he later transferred to the Académie Julian, a favorite among American art students.

One of Parker’s paintings was juried into the Paris Salon exhibition of 1890.

In the following decade, he led a peripatetic life that included further study at the Art Students League in New York City and in Paris; teachings stints in St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Paris, and Beloit, Wisconsin; and work on commissioned portraits and a mural.

Eugene de Blaas | Pittore di genere

De Blaas, Eugenio - Nacque ad Albano (Roma) il 24 luglio 1843 dal pittore austriaco Carl von Blaas e da Agnese Auda, italiana.

Carl (Manders, Tirolo, 1815-Vienna 1894), che era stato chiamato in Italia nel 1832 dallo zio Francesco Purtscher di Eschenburg per frequentare l'accademia di Venezia, fu dal 1837 a Roma dove venne in contatto con il circolo dei Nazareni e ritornò a Vienna nel 1851; dall'estate 1856 fu a Venezia come professore presso l'accademia; ritornò definitivamente a Vienna nel 1866.

Un suo ritratto del figlio Eugenio a 5 anni è stato esposto a Vienna nel Belvedere superiore nel 1985.

Il de Blaas, dapprima allievo dei padre all'accademia di Venezia, si formò successivamente a Roma (nel 1862 vinse il pensionato; Marini, 1905, p. 249). Chiese e ottenne nel 1888 la cittadinanza italiana, stabilendosi a Venezia (Il Gazzettino, 12 febbr. 1931).

Leonardo da Vinci | Come il buon pittore ha da dipingere l'uomo e la sua mente

Trattato della Pittura - Parte seconda | Capitoli 169-185

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

169. Del modo d'imparar bene a comporre insieme le figure nelle istorie.

170. Del porre prima una figura nell'istoria.

171. Del collocar le figure.

172. Modo del comporre le istorie.

173. Del comporre le istorie.

174. Varietà d'uomini nelle istorie.

175. Dell'imparare i movimenti dell'uomo.

176. Come il buon pittore ha da dipingere due cose, l'uomo e la sua mente.

Salvador Dali | Drawing

Drawing is perhaps one of the most natural and rudimentary activities we undertake as humans. As soon as we get our hands on something that leaves a mark, we begin to draw.

In art, it is considered a fundamental skill to master. For Salvador Dalí drawing was both a means and an end.

Meaning, a lot of what we have that count as “drawings” from Salvador Dalí are studies for much larger works, they are representations of his thought process, his creativity shifting and growing, and an insight to his unique perspective of the world.

Daniel Del Orfano | Romantic Cityscapes

Daniel Dell'Orfano is an American painter, known for working in the Romantic Figurative style.

Born and raised on Long Island, New York, Daniel Del Orfano decided to stay close to his roots and attend Dowling College in Oakdale, NY, where he received his BFA in Art Education.

After teaching at the prestigious Knox Boarding School, Daniel took a position in the public school system where he taught art to children of all ages.

Though extremely rewarding, this was not his true calling, and Daniel decided to divert his energy from teaching to art to creating art.

Leonardo da Vinci | Del figurare le grandezze delle cose dipinte

Trattato della Pittura - Parte seconda | Capitoli 146-168

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

146. Del modo di condurre in pittura le cose lontane.

147. Come l'aria si deve far piú chiara quanto piú la fai finire bassa.

148. A fare che le figure spicchino dal loro campo.

149. Del figurare le grandezze delle cose dipinte.

150. Delle cose finite, e delle confuse.

151. Delle figure che sono separate, acciocché non paiano congiunte.

152. Se il lume deve esser tolto in faccia alle figure, o da parte, e quale dia piú grazia.

Leonardo da Vinci | Come si deve figurare una battaglia

Trattato della Pittura - Parte seconda | Capitolo 145

Il Testo Integrale

Farai prima il fumo dell'artiglieria mischiato infra l'aria insieme con la polvere mossa dal movimento de' cavalli de' combattitori; la qual mistione userai cosí: la polvere, perché è cosa terrestre e ponderosa, e benché per la sua sottilità facilmente si levi e mischi infra l'aria, nientedimeno volentieri ritorna in basso, ed il suo sommo montare è fatto dalla parte piú sottile; adunque il meno sarà veduta, e parrà quasi del color dell'aria.

Il fumo che si mischia infra l'aria polverata, quando piú s'alza a certa altezza, parrà oscure nuvole, e vedrassi nelle sommità piú espeditamente il fumo che la polvere. Il fumo penderà in colore alquanto azzurro, e la polvere trarrà al suo colore.

Hermann Seeger | Genre painter

Hermann Seeger (1857-1945) was a German genre and landscape painter. Seeger was also known as a talented engraver. Seeger was born as the son of master tailor Carl Seeger and his wife Henriette, born Meyer, on October 15, 1857.

After the Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871, a prisoner French officer lived with Hermann's parents and gave him an ink box.

In 1875 Hermann Seeger graduated from high school, then he studied philology in Halle. During his studies he became a member of the Fridericiana Halle in 1878-79.

Tony Robert-Fleury | Academic painter

Tony Robert-Fleury (1 September 1837 - 8 December 1911) was a French painter, known primarily for historical scenes. He was also a prominent art teacher, with many famous artists among his students.

Biography

He was born just outside Paris, and studied under his father Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury and under Paul Delaroche and Léon Cogniet at the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris.

His first painting at the Salon de Paris, in 1866, was a large historical canvas, titled Varsovie, Scene de l'Insurrection Polonaise, recalling the events of 8 April 1861 in Warsaw, when Russian troops quenched riots by force. In the following year, his "Old Women in the Place Navone, Rome" was purchased by the Musée du Luxembourg.

Leonardo da Vinci | Come si deve figurare una notte

Trattato della Pittura - Parte seconda | Capitoli 106-144

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

106. Precetto, che il pittore non s'inganni nell'elezione della figura in che esso fa l'abito.

107. Difetto de' pittori che ritraggono una cosa di rilievo in casa a un lume, e poi la mettono in campagna ad altro lume.

108. Della pittura e sua divisione.

109. Figura e sua divisione.

110. Proporzione di membra.

111. Del fuggire le calunnie de' giudizi varî che hanno gli operatori della pittura.

112. De' movimenti e delle operazioni varie.

Sherree Valentine Daines, 1956 | Modern Impressionist painter

Sherree Valentine Daines was born in Effingham, Surrey. She was not always an artist, at 18 she began work as a legal secretary in London. Realising the quality of the idle sketches she drew on her legal pads, it became clear that she had a talent for drawing.

Valentine Daines studied fine art at Epsom School of Art for 4 years, leaving in 1980. It was during her time at art school that she developed an interest in painting figures.

After graduating, she spent the first summer in Cornwall, painting villages, harbours and beaches and most of all the people. She has also been known to paint the busy streets of London, especially showing passers by hailing cabs, looking around markets or leaving the theatre.

Robert Fowler | Victorian painter

Robert Fowler (1853-1926) was an Scottish artist who painted mythological scenes and landscapes. Fowler was born in Anstruther, Fife, and was brought up mainly by his uncle and aunt while his parents were away on business. He showed a very early aptitude for art, starting first with pencil drawings then moving on to painting and clay modelling.

His family moved to Liverpool and Fowler went to school at Liverpool College. At the age of 16, he found employment in a commercial office where his talent for art was recognised by his employer, who encouraged Fowler's parents to send him to art school.

Fowler went to London to study at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and the South Kensington Schools.

Leonardo da Vinci | Del massimo difetto de' pittori..

Trattato della Pittura - Parte seconda | Capitoli 79-105

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

79. Ordine del disegnare.

80. Del ritrarre di naturale.

81. Del ritrarre una qualunque cosa.

82. Come deve essere alto il lume da ritrarre di naturale.

83. Quali lumi si debbono eleggere per ritrarre le figure de' corpi.

84. Delle qualità del lume per ritrarre rilievi naturali o finti.

85. Del ritrarre i nudi.

Leonardo da Vinci | Dell'imitare pittori

Trattato della Pittura - Parte seconda | Capitoli 54-78

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

54. Del giudizio del pittore.

55. Discorso de' precetti del pittore.

56. Precetto del pittore.

57. Precetti del pittore.

58. Dell'essere universale nelle sue opere.

59. Precetto.

60. Precetti del pittore.

61. Precetto intorno al disegno dello schizzare storie e figure.

62. Dell'operatore della pittura e suoi precetti.

63. Modo d'aumentare e destare l'ingegno a varie invenzioni.

64. Dello studiare insino quando ti desti, o innanzi tu ti dormenti nel letto allo scuro.

Gabriel Mark Lipper | Figurative painter

Gabriel Mark Lipper: "I love to paint. I’ve been blessed by timing. To be alive right now for this chapter in arts history is a phenomenal gift. Classicism, once pronounced “dead” is reemerging with a new contemporary vitality. The gifts of modernism: color, form, and abstraction, are now being seamlessly integrated with the craftsmanship and techniques of the past".

Gabriel Lipper’s work addresses the growing schism between Self and Other. Many of his paintings appear plastic both in surface and in content.

His emphasis on technique and application of oil paint serve as a classical anchor for his otherwise often vacuous contemporary subjects.

This dualism is borne out of an obsession with craftsmanship and a visceral response to the cannibalistic decadence of the new millennium.

Eugenè Burnand (1850-1921) | Naturalist painter

Eugène Burnand was a prolific Swiss painter and illustrator from Moudon, Switzerland.

Born of prosperous parents who taught him to appreciate art and the countryside, he first trained as an architect but quickly realised his vocation was painting.

He studied art in Geneva and Paris then settled in Versailles.

In the course of his life he travelled widely and lived at various times in Florence, Montpellier, Seppey (Moudon) and Neuchâtel.

Claudio Bravo Camus | Hyperrealist painter

Claudio Bravo Camus (November 8, 1936 – June 4, 2011) was a Chilean hyperrealist painter.

He was greatly influenced by Renaissance and Baroque artists, as well as Surrealist painters such as Salvador Dalí.

He lived and worked in Tangier, Morocco, beginning in 1972. Bravo also lived in Chile, New York and Spain.

He was known mainly for his paintings of still lifes, portraits and packages, but he had also done drawings, lithographs, engraving and figural bronze sculptures.

Claudio Bravo Camus was born in Valparaíso, Chile.

Edward Willis Redfield | Impressionist painter

Among the New Hope impressionists painters, Edward Willis Redfield (1869-1965) was the most decorated, winning more awards than any American artist except John Singer Sargent.

Primarily a landscape painter, Redfield was acclaimed as the most "American" artist of the New Hope school because of his vigor and individualism. Redfield favored the technique of painting En Plein Air, that is, outdoors amidst nature.

Alejandro Decinti, 1973

Chilean-Italian painter Alejandro DeCinti is a painter born in Santiago de Chile.

He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the University of Chile. Since 2001 he is based in Spain.

He was awarded with the Scholarship for Academic Excellence in the 1991 admission process to Chilean universities.

First prize in the Arte en Vivo competition in 1994 and the Fundación Arte y Autores Contemporáneos postgraduate scholarship in 2001.

Chilean Art History and Sitemap

Chilean art refers to all kinds of visual art developed in Chile, or by Chileans, from the arrival of the Spanish conquerors to the modern day. It also includes the native pre-Columbian pictorial expression on modern Chilean territory.

Pre-Columbian art

Ceramics were the greatest artistic contribution of the northern peoples. These examples of Diaguita ceramics show this people's fascination with geometric figures.

Prehistoric painting in Chile, also called pre-Columbian Chilean painting, refers to any type of painting or painting technique used to represent objects or people during the period before the Spanish conquest.

Developed prior to the existence of written sources, study of this period is based on the material remains and vestiges of the cultures that developed.

Mario Irarràzabal | La Mano del Desierto / The Hand of the Desert, 1992

Carolina Landea, 1960 | Moments

Chilean painter Carolina Landea residing in the small coastal village of Cachagua, Chile, Carolina's paintings are stories of life; capturing moments, landscapes and the people who weave a certain magic through the spaces between.

Born in Santiago de Chile, Carolina spent part of her childhood and teen years in Spain where she began her training in the art world as a student of Jose Luis Azparren, a professor at the San Fernando Academy of Madrid. On her return to Chile, she continued her studies with Reinaldo Villasenor and Edwardo Vilches.

Émile Bernard | Symbolist painter

Émile Bernard (1868-1941) was a French painter known for his involvement in the Cloisonnism movement - a post-Impressionist style defined by flat, bold planes and dark contours - as well as his contributions to Synthetism.

Émile Henri Bernard was born in Lille, France in 1868. As his younger sister was quite sick and required his parent’s full attention, Bernard was raised by his grandmother, who owned a laundry in Lille; she was an early supporter of Bernard’s interest in art. In 1878, Bernard’s family moved to Paris, which allowed him to attend the Collège Sainte-Barbe.

In the early 1880s, Bernard began studying at the École des Arts Décoratifs, experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism alongside fellow artists Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. However, Bernard was soon suspended from the school for being overly expressive in his painting; so, instead, Bernard took to exploring Brittney by foot.

Max Leenhardt (1853-1941)

Michel Maximilien Leenhardt was a French painter, known for landscapes, history paintings and genre scenes.

Biography

His father was a bank manager. In 1872, he entered the "École supérieure des beaux-arts de Montpellier", where he studied with the history and genre painter, Ernest Michel. During his time there, he made a study trip to Austria.

In 1877, together with his cousin, Eugène Burnand, he went to Paris, where he studied briefly at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts with Alexandre Cabanel.

Gulyás László, 1960 | Le ballerine

Nato a Budapest, il pittore ungherese Laszlo Gulyas si è diplomato all'Accademia di Belle Arti ed Arti Applicate con una laurea in grafica pubblicitaria e dal 1983 al 1987 è stato studente presso il College of Fine Arts, specializzandosi in riproduzione grafica.

Laszlo ha continuato i suoi studi come studente dell'Accademia di Belle Arti tra il 1983-il 1987.

L'artista ha sviluppato il suo mondo individuale di immagini e ha acquisito le tecniche pittoriche dei primi maestri della pittura sotto l'influenza dell'arte universale di Rembrandt.

Cloisonnisme (1888-1894)

Introduction and History

In French painting, the term "cloisonnism" (after the French for "partition") describes a style of expressionism associated, in particular, with Emile Bernard (1868-1941), Louis Anquetin (1861-1932) and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903).

Based on a two-dimensional pattern, featuring large patches of bright colour enclosed within thick black outlines, in the manner of medieval cloisonné enamelling or stained glass, the word Cloisonnism was first coined in 1888 by the art critic Edouard Dujardin.

One of the lesser known modern art movements, albeit an influential style of Post-Impressionist painting, the distinctive characteristics of Cloisonnism were its areas of pure colour (devoid of most shading or 3-D modelling effects) which gave it a strong two-dimensional appearance.

Émile Bernard

Paul Cézanne | Corrispondenza con Émile Bernard

Aix, 27 giugno 1904

Mio caro Bernard,

ho ricevuto la vostra del... che ho lasciato in campagna. Se ho tardato a rispondervi, è perché sono soggetto a disturbi cerebrali, che mi impediscono di agire liberamente. Resto sotto l'urto delle sensazioni e, malgrado l'età, inchiodato alla pittura.

Il tempo è bello, ne approfitto per lavorare; bisognerebbe fare dieci buoni studi, e venderli cari, visto che gli amatori ci speculano sopra.

Ieri è arrivata qui una lettera indirizzata a mio figlio, che la signora Brémond [la governante di Cézanne] ritiene sia vostra; gliel'ho inviata in rue Duperré 16, Parigi, IX distretto. Sembra che Vollard abbia dato qualche giorno fa una serata danzante, in cui si è molto gozzovigliato. C'era tutta la giovane scuola, sembra, Maurice Denis, Vuillard eccetera. Si sono incontrati Paul e Joachim Gasquet. Credo che la cosa migliore sia lavorare molto. Voi siete giovane, realizzate e vendete.

Hua Chen, 1952 | Impressionist Figurative painter

Hua Chen was born in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Between the years of 1973-1976, Chen earned a Bachelors Degree of Fine Art from the Anhui Teacher's University, Anhui, China.

He then went on to attain a Master of Fine Art Degree in sketching, watercolor and oil painting from the Central Institute of the Fine Arts in Beijing, China.

Chen has earned several titles and awards including Chairman of Anhui Oil Painting Research Association in China and is a member of the Artists Association of China.

Paul Cézanne | Figure e Lettere

Durante la sua vita il pittore Paul Cézanne ha tenuto molta corrispondenza - oltre 250 lettere, scritte a familiari, amici, colleghi artisti e mercanti, e che abbracciano le principali figure culturali della fine del XIX secolo.

Corrispondenza con Émile Bernard (French Symbolist painter, 1868-1941)

Aix en Provence, 15 aprile 1904

Caro signor Bernard,

"quando riceverete questa mia, avrete molto probabilmente già ricevuto una lettera dal Belgio, o almeno lo spero, indirizzata in rue Boulegon. Sono felice della testimonianza di simpatia artistica che avete voluto gentilmente offrirmi con la vostra lettera.

Permettetemi di ripetere quello che vi dicevo qui: trattare la natura secondo il cilindro, la sfera, il cono, il tutto posto in prospettiva, in modo che ogni lato di un oggetto o di un piano si diriga verso un punto centrale.

Lord Frederic Leighton | Victorian-era painter

Frederic Leighton, Baron Leighton, also called Sir Frederic Leighton, Baronet (born Dec. 3, 1830, Scarborough, Yorkshire, Eng.-died Jan. 25, 1896, London), academic painter of immense prestige in his own time.

After an education in many European cities, he went to Rome in 1852, where his social talents won him the friendship of (among others) the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, the French novelist George Sand, and the English poet Robert Browning.

Leighton’s painting Cimabue’s Madonna, shown at the Royal Academy’s exhibition in 1855, was bought by Queen Victoria.

Nicolae Vermont | Genre painter

Nicolae Vermont 1866-1932 was one of the masters of Romanian Realist painting and one of the most interesting painters, muralists and draftsmen of his time, as many viewed him as an associate of Stefan Luchian.

He was a prolific and surprisingly innovative artist, with a strong, original style and manner and quite a broad choice of subjects, but he preferred landscapes and still lifes.

Vermont was one of the most interesting and influential voices of his generation, marking and changing the landscape of Romanian painting, as he always tried to offer something more, something new, to challenge rules and themes, to offer the viewer an artistic experience that was strikingly beautiful and shockingly fresh and alive. A great master and a great name.

Alexander Sheversky | Figurative painter

Striking a harmonic balance between classical composition and modern disposition an original oil painting by Alexander Sheversky speaks to an appreciation for the vocation to contemporary realism. Each canvas is stately and monumental, extolling the virtues of discipline and emotion styled by the foremost of his teachers - Rembrandt and Vermeer.

The interplay of light and shadow and especially Sheversky’s inherent understanding of light bring a life to the painting that resonates and lives before the viewer.

Whether it is a figurative study or a still life its own existence is captured by the emotive values of light itself that the artist exhibits, thus embodying the living, omnipresent nature of the subject. And so a Sheversky painting espouses a marriage of the meticulous detail of classical technique to that which is clean, modern, and conceptually crisp.

Joe Bowler (1928-2016)

Born in Forest Hills, New York in 1928, Joe began to draw when he was three. His first illustration for a national magazine was published by Cosmopolitan when he was nineteen.

While working as an apprentice at the prestigious Charles E. Cooper Studios, Inc. he had the opportunity to learn the craft from some of the finest artists in the profession.

At Cooper Studio, Joe was inspired by the illustrations he saw being done by the top artists in the field.

During the day Joe’s time was spent cleaning palettes and brushes, matting paintings and running errands.

James Nelson-Lewis, 1953

Before deciding to dedicate full time to painting, James Nelson Lewis has had years of professional experience as an illustrator, art director, designer, and University art instructor.

His painting is influenced by those experiences and time spent painting on location "en plein air".

The result is a sense of order, balanced by spontaneity and energetic palette knife and brushwork, direct and intuitive a poetic synthesis of simplification and expression.

Dora Wahlroos | En plein air painter

Anna Dorothée (Dora) Wahlroos (19 December 1870, Pori – 21 March 1947, Kauniainen) was a Finnish painter who participated in the painting movement en plein air towards the end of the 19th century.

Biography

She was born in Pori to province land surveyor Johan Henrik Wahlroos and Dorothée Augusta Henrietta Fehn.

She studied at the Turku Drawing School in 1886–1888 and under Victor Westerholm in 1889–1890. She was one of the artists who joined Westerholm in the artists colony at Önningeby on the island of Åland.

She was accepted to the Finnish Art Society in 1890–1891, where her class was taught by Gunnar Berndtson. In the Fall of 1890 she got engaged to sculptor Emil Wikström.

The two went to study together at Paris in 1891–1892.

Carlton Alfred Smith | Genre painter

Carlton Alfred Smith, RBA RI ROI (1853-1946) was a British watercolourist, oil painter and genre artist who often made images of cottage interiors showing domestic life and figures in cottage interiors in a romantic manner towards the end of the nineteenth century.

He was the son of a steel engraver and spent some of his early years being educated in France.

The artist also studied at the Slade School of Art, winning gold and silver medals.

He became one of the most technically accomplished watercolorists of the late Victorian period.

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)

The Blue Rider was a German Expressionist movement that was established in December 1911 by Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Gabriele Münter.

Painters Kandinsky and Marc worked on an almanac in which they showed their artistic conceptions. The title of the almanac, which then became the name of the group, Der Blaue Reiter - The Blue Rider, came from the painting by Kandinsky.

His Blaue Reiter Blue Rider was an adventure in the simplification and stylization of forms and the connection between music and painting.

Wassily Kandinsky | The Blue Rider

Marianne Stokes (1855-1927) | Victorian painter

Marianne Stokes, born Marianne Preindlsberger, was an Austrian painter. She settled in England after her marriage to Adrian Scott Stokes (1854-1935), the landscape painter, whom she had met in Pont-Aven. Stokes was considered one of the leading women artists in Victorian England.

Biography

Preindlsberger was born in Graz, Styria. She first studied in Munich under Lindenschmit, and having been awarded a scholarship for her first picture, Muttergluck, she worked in France under Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852–1929), Colin and Gustave Courtois (1853-1923).

Maurice Denis | Les Nabis Group

Even today Maurice Denis' (1870-1943) place in the history of art remains unspecified. Known as the "Nabi of the beautiful icons", he is celebrated alongside Vuillard and Bonnard as one of the most importan Nabi painters, a founder of the movement and its brilliant theoretician.

Everyone remembers his famous dictum of 1890 when he was twenty years old and unknown. "Remember that a painting – before being a battle horse, an anecdote of some sort is essentially a flat surface covered with colours, put together in a certain order".

Wassily Kandinsky | VII - Teoria della Pittura

Lo spirituale nell'arte, 1910

Seconda parte: La Pittura

Dalla natura della nostra armonia si deduce che oggi non si può costruire una teoria compiuta, creare un basso continuo in pittura. Questi tentativi condurrebbero in pratica allo stesso risultato dei cucchiaini di Leonardo, che citavamo prima. Ma sarebbe imprudente affermare che in pittura non esisteranno mai regole fisse, princìpi paragonabili al basso continuo, e che qualsiasi regola condurrebbe inevitabilmente all'accademismo.

Anche la musica ha una sua grammatica: una grammatica che si modifica nel tempo, come ogni cosa vivente, ma che è sempre stata utile, come una specie di vocabolario.

Wassily Kandinsky | Pond in the park

Wassily Kandinsky | VIII - L'Opera d'Arte e l'Artista, 1910

Lo spirituale nell'arte, 1910

Seconda parte: La Pittura

La vera opera d'arte nasce "dall'artista" in modo misterioso, enigmatico, mistico.

Staccandosi da lui assume una sua personalità, e diviene un soggetto indipendente con un suo respiro spirituale e una sua vita concreta.

Diventa un aspetto dell'essere. Non è dunque un fenomeno casuale, una presenza anche spiritualmente indifferente, ma ha come ogni essere energie creative, attive.

Wassily Kandinsky | Delicate tension, 1923

Maria Wiik (1853-1928)

Maria Catharina Wiik was a Finnish painter.

She worked principally with still life, genre, landscape paintings and portraits. Wiik was born in Helsinki.

She was the daughter of architect Erik Johan Wik (or Wiik) (1804-1876) and his wife Gustava Fredrika Meyer.

She was born and grew up in Brunnsparken and attended the Swedish language school Svenska fruntimmersskolan in Helsingfors. She then studied drawing with art professor Adolf von Becker.

Encouraged by her family, she studied art during 1874-1875 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

Hovsep Pushman | Orientalist painter

Hovsep Pushman [Armenian: Յովսէփ Փուշման] (1877-1966) was an American artist of Armenian background. He was known for his contemplative still lifes and sensitive portraits of women, often in exotic dress.

He was most closely associated during his lifetime with the Grand Central Art Galleries, which represented him from its opening in 1922 until his death in 1966.

Life

Hovsep Pushman was born and grew up in the town of Dikranagerd in the Ottoman Empire, where his family, originally "Pushmanian", was in the carpet business. Pushman showed artistic ability early, and at age 11 was the youngest student ever admitted to Istanbul's Imperial School of Fine Arts.

In 1896, Pushman's family emigrated to Chicago, where he studied Chinese culture, immersing himself in Asian art, and began to teach at the age of 17. He then moved to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian under Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Tony Robert-Fleury and Adolphe Déchenaud.