Sir Cedric Morris | Post-Impressionist painter

Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet (11 December 1889 - 8 February 1982) was a British artist, art teacher and plantsman.

He was born in Swansea in South Wales, but worked mainly in East Anglia.

As an artist he is best known for his portraits, flower paintings and landscapes.

Painting style

Cedric Morris had a distinctive and often rather primitive post-Impressionist style, and painted portraits, landscapes and very decorative still lifes of flowers and birds.

In his analysis of Morris's paintings, Richard Morphet has suggested that the "unusual force of Cedric's paintings derives from the projection of the subject through a dynamic economy in combination with an acute sense of pictorial realism".

Dod Procter | Figurative painter

Dod Procter, born Doris Margaret Shaw, RA (1890-1972) was an English artist, and the wife of the artist Ernest Procter.

Her painting Morning was bought for the public by the Daily Mail in 1927.

Procter and her husband attended art schools in England and in Paris together, where they were both influenced by Impressionism and the Post-Impressionism movements.

Eva Bagge (Swedish, 1871-1964)

Eva Bagge (15 December 1871 - 6 November 1964) was a Swedish painter who studied first in Sweden and then made study trips to Rome and Paris.

Remembered in particular for her farm scenes and interiors, she did not reach her peak until 1941 when works based on her approach to late 19th-century Realism attracted attention at her solo exhibition in a Stockholm gallery.

Such was the interest that they were soon exhibited in Munich and Berlin. Several Swedish art museums, including Stockholm's Nationalmuseum, have works by Bagge in their collections.

Born on 15 December 1871 in Stockholm, Eva Bagge was the daughter of the printing press director Per Olof Bagge (1833-1872) and his wife Henrika Ottiliana née von Fieandt. She was the youngest of the family's three children and the cousin of artist Elisabeth Bagge.

William Henry Gore | Genre painter

William Henry Gore RI (1857-1942) was an British painter and watercolourist of the late Victorian period to the early Twentieth Century.

He is known for his rural landscapes of his native Berkshire and for his Genre paintings of children and animals.

Gore was in the tradition of late Victorian Romanticism and Naturalism that flourished in the period before the turn of the Twentieth Century but which quickly became unfashionable in the aftermath of the Great War and the social and political changes that followed.

Sir Peter Lely | Baroque painter

Sir Peter Lely (1618 -1680) was a painter of Dutch origin whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.

Lely was born Pieter van der Faes to Dutch parents in Soest in Westphalia, where his father was an officer serving in the armed forces of the Elector of Brandenburg.

Lely studied painting in Haarlem, where he may have been apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber.

He became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1637.

Heide Presse, 1958 | Romantic painter

Heide E. Presse was born in Heidelberg, Germany, and grew up in Louisiana.

Born with a natural artistic talent into a family with no other artistically inclined members, Presse had no formal art instruction until college. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in design from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas in 1980.

She worked as a commercial artist in Texas, but now calls Florida home with her husband and son.

In 1990, she decided to focus exclusively on painting, working in watercolor first, and more recently oil.

Her works have been recognized internationally and have been exhibited in many national exhibitions, including the exhibition of the American Painting Association.

Cristiano Banti | Macchiaioli painter

Cristiano Banti (4 January 1824 - 4 December 1904) was an Italian genre and landscape painter. He was a leading figure in the Macchiaioli movement of Tuscany.

Banti was born into a middle class family in Santa Croce sull'Arno. A scholarship enabled him to study at the Accademia di belle arti di Siena with Francesco Nenci.

At this time, he worked in the Neo-Classical style and produced what is perhaps his best-known work, Galileo Facing the Inquisition.

In 1854, he moved to Florence and became an habitué of the Caffè Michelangiolo, an important meeting place for local artists.

It was here that he had his introduction to the Macchiaioli movement.

Theodor von Hörmann | Impressionist / Genre painter

Theodor von Hörmann (1840-1895) is regarded as the first and only Austrian impressionist painter.

He was born on December 13, 1840 in Imst in Tyrol. He set out to pursue a career as a military officer and taught gymnastics, fencing and freehand drawing in various military schools.

In 1869 Hörmann’s first artistic attempts began with copies of color prints.

He soon turned to painting in oil. In 1872, already 33 years old and totally self-taught, Hörmann began art studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Eduard von Lichtenfels.

Among his classmates were the younger students Hugo Darnaut and and Hugo Charlemont. Hörmann gained access to Emil Jakob Schindler, the most important Austrian landscape painter of the period.

Timoleon Lobrichon | Genre painter

Timoléon Marie Lobrichon (1831-1914) was a French genre scenes and portrait painter.

He received a formal artistic training with François Edouard Picot at the Paris Beaux-Arts Academy.

In 1859, he started exhibiting at the French Artists Salon and was awarded a first class medal in 1868. Lobrichon became one of the most sought after and praised painter for his portraits of children.

George Sand racconta Chopin

"Lei era appoggiata al pianoforte, e il suo sguardo ardente come brace era su di me. La mia anima aveva trovato un porto.

Mi prese una sorta di languore, nondimeno mi ritirai dal pianoforte con soggezione.

L’ho rivista in seguito altre volte nel suo salotto, con persone dell'aristocrazia francese.

Poi un’altra volta che si trovava sola.

Mi ama, Aurora è un nome magico. La notte è sparita".

Con queste parole, il compositore polacco Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) descriveva nel suo diario, il 10 ottobre 1838, l'incontro a Parigi con la scrittrice Francese George Sand, orgoglioso di essere oggetto non solo del desiderio, ma anche delle attenzioni e delle tenerezze di una donna che, a Parigi, era già considerata una celebrità.

Eugène Delacroix | Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand, 1838 (unfinished)

Eugène Girardet | Pittore orientalista

Eugène Alexis Girardet (1853-1907) è stato un pittore orientalista Francese di origini svizzere.

Veniva da una famiglia ugonotta svizzera.

Suo padre era l'incisore Paul Girardet.

I suoi fratelli, Jules, Léon, Paul Armand, Théodore e Julia Antonine (1851-1921), divennero tutti artisti.

Legge di Murphy: "Il governo si espande fino ad assorbire tutti i redditi e poi ancora un po'!"

Della Murfologia Applicata alla Contabilità | Capitolo Ottavo

Illusione di Frothingham

• Il tempo è denaro

Legge di Crane

• Niente è gratis.

Prima legge di Parkinson

• Il lavoro si espande fino ad occupare tutto il tempo disponibile;

più è il tempo e più il lavoro sembra importante e impegnativo.

Seconda legge di Parkinson

• Le spese aumentano fino a raggiungere le entrate.

Legge di Parkinson sulla dilazione

• La dilazione è la forma più letale di diniego.

Legge di Wiker

• Il governo si espande fino ad assorbire tutti i redditi e poi ancora un pò.

Vincent van Gogh | Sower at Sunset, 1888 | Kröller-Müller Museum

Karl von Blaas | Academic Classicism painter

Karl von Blaas (28 April 1815 in Nauders - 19 March 1894 in Vienna) was an Austrian painter known for his portraits and religious compositions executed on canvas as well as in the form of frescoes.

Karl Von Blaas was born to a peasant family at Nauders in the Tyrol on 28 April 1815.

He is best known as a history painter and painter of portraits. His first art lessons were in Innsbruck, where he received an education as a writer.

But he was more interested in art, and so, like many painters at the time, he aspired to visit Italy to realize his goal of an in-depth art education. His uncle, a judge in Verona, recognized his talent and gave him financial support for study in Venice, which he undertook in 1832.

Theodor Josef Ethofer | Genre painter

Theodor Josef Ethofer (October 29, 1849 in Vienna - Leopoldstadt; † October 24, 1915 in Baden near Vienna) was an Austrian painter, known for Figure, genre and Austrian native costume painting.

Theodor Ethofer studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Carl Wurzinger.

He spent the period from 1872-1887 in Italy, visiting Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Sicily, Spain and Tunis, among other places. After a stay in Vienna, he settled in Salzburg in 1898, where he owned a studio in the Künstlerhaus.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Wave / L'Onda, 1882

Each summer between 1879 and 1882 Pierre-Auguste Renoir traveled to Wargemont near Dieppe on the Normandy coast to visit his friend and patron Paul Bérard.

Renoir and Bérard, a banker and French diplomat, had met in 1878, when the artist was still struggling to find collectors for his Impressionist canvases.

Renoir and Bérard quickly formed a bond, leading to numerous commissioned portraits of the financier’s children and affording the artist a comfortable place to go for the summer well removed from the oppressive heat of Paris.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Wave, 1882 | Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, United States