Karl Feiertag | Genre painter

Karl Holiday (1874, Vienna - 1944, Weidling) was an Austrian painter.

Karl Urlaub studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Franz Rumpler, Kasimir Pochwalski and Josef Mathias Trenkwald.

He worked in Vienna and Munich for various advertising companies and moved to Weidling with his wife.

Luigi Pirandello | Sogno di Natale, 1896

Sentivo da un pezzo sul capo inchinato tra le braccia come l'impressione d'una mano lieve, in atto tra di carezza e di protezione. Ma l'anima mia era lontana, errante pei luoghi veduti fin dalla fanciullezza, dei quali mi spirava ancor dentro il sentimento, non tanto però che bastasse al bisogno che provavo di rivivere, fors'anche per un minuto, la vita come immaginavo si dovesse in quel punto svolgere in essi.

Era festa dovunque: in ogni chiesa, in ogni casa: intorno al ceppo, lassù; innanzi a un Presepe, laggiù; noti volti tra ignoti riuniti in lieta cena; eran canti sacri, suoni di zampogne, gridi di fanciulli esultanti, contese di giocatori. . . E le vie delle città grandi e piccole, dei villaggi, dei borghi alpestri o marini, eran deserte nella rigida notte. E mi pareva di andar frettoloso per quelle vie, da questa casa a quella, per godere della raccolta festa degli altri; mi trattenevo un poco in ognuna, poi auguravo:

- Buon Natale - e sparivo. . .

Tiziano Vecellio | La Madonna di San Niccolò dei Frari, 1533-1535

Salvatore Quasimodo | Natale / Christmas

Natale. Guardo il presepe scolpito,

dove sono i pastori appena giunti

alla povera stalla di Betlemme.

Anche i Re Magi nelle lunghe vesti

salutano il potente Re del mondo.

Jacopo Tintoretto | The Madonna of the Stars, c. 1575-1585 | National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Ellen Thesleff | Expressionist painter

Ellen Thesleff (5 October 1869 - 12 January 1954) was an expressionist Finnish painter, regarded as one of the leading Finnish modernist painters.

Thesleff was born in Helsinki, the eldest daughter of five siblings and her father was an amateur painter.

She took private lessons and then, in 1887, studied for two years at the Finnish Art Society Drawing School (now known as the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts) with Gunnar Berndtson.

Harriet Backer | Impressionist painter

Biography from: Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, Norvegia

Harriet Backer inspired a new generation of artists.

In Backer’s family, art and culture were part of how the children were raised.

Her older sister Agathe was musically gifted and wanted to become a pianist.

She had to go abroad to learn, and Harriet became her sister's traveling companion.

Asta Nørregaard | Portrait painter

Asta Nørregaard (13 August 1853 - 23 March 1933) was a Norwegian painter who is best known for her portraits.

Nørregaard was born in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway.

She was the daughter of Hans Peter Nørregaard (1818–1872) and Elise Jacobine Hesselberg (1821–1853).

Pavel Mitkov, 1977 | Impressionist /Abstract painter

Award winning painter Pavel Mitkov, born in Sofia, Bulgaria, is the most successful and collected Bulgarian artist in the European connoisseur of art community in recent years.

Extremely talented, his philosophy of life pertains to wisdom unusual for his young age.

The paintings of Pavel Mitkov reflect not only his natural artistic talent, but also his passion for painting.

Galileo Chini | Art Nouveau painter

One of the leading players in the Art Nouveau style, or Liberty style as it is known in Italy, the Tuscan painter Galileo Chini (1873-1956) - who was also a graphic artist and a ceramicist) - occupies a unique place in the panorama of Italian art.

Born in Florence, Galileo Chini pursued his artistic studies in a sporadic, desultory manner, attending the Scuola Libera di Nudo at the city's Accademia di Belle Arti for a while, but without ever gaining any kind of diploma from it, he was to break off his studies in order to work as an artisan in the workshop of his uncle, a restorer and decorator.

Giuseppe Amisani | Belle Époque painter

Italian portrait painter of the Belle Époque Giuseppe Amisani (1881-1941) was an important figure in his lifetime, though almost entirely forgotten today - his name is not included in the principal works of reference in the twenty-first century.

He was a close contemporary of Umberto Boccioni and of Pablo Picasso, but completely ignored currents such as Futurism and Cubism which changed the face of fine art in the twentieth century, preferring to satisfy the tastes of his clients, who were the noble, rich and the famous of his time.

His reputation was for elegance and for the fresh colours of his palette.

A retrospective exhibition of his work at the Castello Sforzesco of Vigevano in the province of Pavia in 2008 was the first dedicated to him in fifty years.

Robert Armetta | Classical realist painter

Armetta has studied extensively throughout the United States and Europe, at schools including Columbus College of Art and Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Barnstone Studios, Atelier Lack, the Florence Academy of Art, the New York Academy of Art 1998 the Water Street Atelier.

He has exhibited widely, in both solo and group exhibitions, across the United States, at venues including the National Academy of Design, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the Susquehanna Museum of Art, Sotheby’s, the State University of New York at Farmingdale, St. John’s University, Messiah College, Arcadia Fine Art, John Pence Gallery, Century Gallery, and Seraphin Gallery.

La Belle Époque

La Belle Époque is a period of French and European history, usually considered to begin around 1871-1880 and to end with the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Occurring during the era of the Third French Republic, it was a period characterised by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity, colonial expansion, and technological, scientific, and cultural innovations.

In this era of France's cultural and artistic climate (particularly within Paris), the arts markedly flourished, with numerous masterpieces of literature, music, theatre, and visual art gaining extensive recognition.

Jean Béraud | Seaside Café, 1884 | The Clark Art Institute

Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant | Orientalist painter

Biography from: Christie's

Born in Paris into a Languedoc family, Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant (1845-1902) trained in Toulouse at the local Academie before moving to Paris in 1866.

He enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts and completed his training under the academic master Alexandre Cabanel.

His studies were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War and the young artist never resumed his formal training.

Instead, in the early 1870s he travelled to Spain, and fell under the spell of the Mudejar architecture of Andalucia.

Fanny Fleury | Academic painter

Fanny Laurent Fleury, known as Madame Fanny (1846-1923) was a French painter.

Fleury was born in Paris, France, and trained with Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran, Marie Durand and Jean-Jacques Henner.

She developed a reputation as a talented portraitist and painter of figure studies.

She also painted genre scenes and still life, which she exhibited at the Salons of Saint-Etienne and Dijon.

Jean-Jacques Henner | Academic painter

Jean-Jacques Henner (5 March 1829 - 23 July 1905) was a French painter, noted for his use of sfumato and chiaroscuro in painting figures, religious subjects and portraits.

Henner was born at Bernwiller (Alsace). He began his studies in art as a pupil of Michel Martin Drolling and François-Édouard Picot.

In 1848, he entered the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, and took the Prix de Rome with a painting of Adam and Eve finding the Body of Abel in 1858.

In Rome, he was guided by Flandrin, and painted four pictures for the gallery at Colmar among other works.

Juana Romani | Belle Époque painter

Biography from: Sotheby's

Born in Velletri, Italy, Joana Carolina Carlessimo, called Juana Romani, moved with her family as a young girl to Paris, where she first encountered painting as an art school model.

At age nineteen, Romani began her training as the pupil of Jean-Jacques Henner before becoming a student of Ferdinand Roybet, and later, his mistress.

Like Roybet, she chose historical subjects and painted many portraits of young, mysterious women in costume.

Ottilie Roederstein | Portrait painter

Ottilie Wilhelmine Roederstein (22 April 1859 - 26 November 1937) was a German-Swiss painter.

She was the long-time companion of Elisabeth Winterhalter, one of the first female doctors in Germany.

Roederstein was born in Zürich, Switzerland.

Gottardo Segantini | Divisionist painter

Biography from: The British Museum

Gottardo Guido Segantini (1882-1974) - Painter and etcher. The eldest son of the painter Giovanni Segantini.

Born in Pusiano near Brianza in the province of Como.Gottardo SegantiniHe moved with his family to Savognin in Switzerland in 1882 and to Maloja in 1894.

In 1899 Gottardo Segantini spent a few months at the Accademia di Brera before going on to Zurich to study engineering at the Technical University (now ETH) where he learnt the technique of etching, and began painting in 1902.

Jan Brueghel the Elder | Baroque painter

Biography from: The National Gallery, London

Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) was born in Brussels in 1568, the son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

He is said to have been taught in Antwerp by Pieter Goetkint and to have visited Cologne.

From 1589-1596 he worked in Italy, mainly in Naples, Rome, and Milan where he met one of his most important patrons, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, who remained a lifelong friend.