Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille (L’Eté), 1880

Renoir’s Jeune fille (L'Eté) is a pretty pastel fantasy: a plump brunette wears a breezy white chemise and a fashionable straw hat, festooned with a thick blue ribbon.

This Impressionist goddess of summer, nestled in a flowering meadow, has adorned her hat with freshly plucked blooms.

She leans towards the viewer with a sweet, languid look, her lips gently parted.

The sensuality of her expression is underscored by the casual exposure of her bare shoulder, arms and décolleté.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille (L’Eté), 1880 | Christie's

Antonio Zoppi | Grandpa plays the accordion for Grandma

Antonio Zoppi (1860-1926) was an Italian painter, mostly of genre and costume scenes, as well as landscapes.

He was born and resident in Novara. In 1881 at Milan he exhibited: Paggio del secolo XVI.

In 1881 at Rome he exhibited: Fate la carità e In vino laetitia.

To other exhibitions he sent: Winter Sun; Dolci ricordi; Il nonno; Adele; Study of a head; A landscaper of Tobacco; and Savoy and Winter Morning.

Antonio Zoppi | Grandpa plays the accordion for Grandma / Il Nonno suona la fisarmonica per la Nonna | Simpson Galleries, Houston, Texas

Sir John Everett Millais | Ophelia, 1851-1852

The scene depicted is from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene VII, in which Ophelia, driven out of her mind when her father is murdered by her lover Hamlet, falls into a stream and drowns:

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds

Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;

Sir John Everett Millais | Ophelia, 1851-1852 | Tate Britain, London

Paul-Louis Delance | Allegorical / History painter

Paul-Louis Delance (1848-1924) was a French painter and educator.

He is known for his allegorical and genre scene paintings early in his career, and his religious, and landscape paintings later in his career.

Paul-Louis Gustave Delance was born on March 14, 1848, in Paris, France.

His grandfather was Comte Joseph van Roosebeck from Belgium.

Van Gogh's starry skies

"At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky.

It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens.

If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance.

And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky" - Vincent van Gogh, Letter to Wilhelmina van Gogh, the sister, written 9 and 16 September 1888 in Arles.

Vincent van Gogh | Starry Night Over the Rhône, 1888 | Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Jean-André Rixens | Orientalist painter

Jean-André Rixens (1846-1925) was a French painter, known for his classical scenes and portraits.

He was born in Saint-Gaudens. His father was a master shoemaker.

After completing his basic education, he was enrolled in 1860 at the École supérieure des beaux-arts de Toulouse.

He paid for his tuition there and supported himself by painting commercial signs and making copies of artworks.

Paul Emil Jacobs | Orientalist painter

Paul Emil Jacobs (1802-1866) was a German painter, noted for Orientalist themes, portraits and figures.

Jacobs, son of the philologist Frederick Jacobs, received his art training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and first became known for his painting of Mercury and Argus (from Classical mythology).

In 1824 he went to Rome, where he attracted critical attention by painting "The Raising of Lazarus".

In 1836 he made a series of historical paintings at the Welfenschloss in Hannover.

Jehan-Georges Vibert | Academic painter

Jehan Georges Vibert or Jean Georges Vibert (1840-1902) was a French academic painter.

He was born in Paris, the son of engraver and publisher Théodore Vibert, and grandson of the influential rose-breeder Jean-Pierre Vibert.

He began his artistic training at a young age under the instruction of his maternal grandfather, engraver Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet.

Vibert was more interested in painting than engraving and entered the studio of Félix-Joseph Barrias and eventually the École des Beaux-Arts when he was sixteen.

Louis Béroud (1852-1930)

Louis Béroud (1852-1930) was a French painter, a student of Léon Bonnat, renowned for his detailed and realistic works, often depicting interior scenes of famous museums, including the Louvre.

Some of his paintings are visible at the Musée Carnavalet and The Louvre in Paris.

He was awarded the medal of honour at the Salon in 1882 and won the bronze medal at the Universal.

Wilhelm Leibl | Genre painter

Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl (1844-1900) was a German realist painter of portraits and scenes of peasant life.

Leibl was born in Cologne, where his father was the director of the Cathedral choir.

He was apprenticed to a locksmith before beginning his artistic training with the local painter Hermann Becker in 1861.

He entered the Munich Academy in 1864, subsequently studying with several artists including Carl Theodor von Piloty.

Claude Monet | Nazi looting / Il saccheggio nazista

Under the Nazi regime, both in Germany from 1933 and in German-occupied countries until 1945, Jewish art collectors of Monet were robbed by Nazis and their agents.

Several of the stolen artworks have been returned to their rightful owners, while others have been the object of court battles.

In 2014, during the spectacular discovery of a hidden trove of art in Munich, a Monet that had belonged to a Jewish retail magnate was found in the suitcase of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of one of Hitler's official dealers of looted art, Hildebrand Gurlitt.

Claude Monet | Fécamp, bord de mer

Emily Dickinson | Marzo: Mese di attesa / March: Month of expectation, 1877

Marzo: mese di attesa.

Le cose che ignoriamo -

E le persone del nostro presagio

Sono in cammino -

Ci sforziamo di fingere fermezza -

Come si deve, ma la gioia solenne

Claude Monet | Strada Romana at Bordighera | Museum Barberini

Cecil van Haanen | Genre painter

Cecil van Haanen (1844-1914) was a Vienna-born Dutch portrait and genre painter, whose significant work was centred at Venice.

Van Haanen was the son to landscape painter Remigius Adrianus Haanen (1812–1894) and Emilie Mayer von Alsó-Rußbach.

He received early artistic training from his father and Friedrich Schilcher, and from April 1854 was educated at the pre-school of the Vienna Academy under Peter Johann Nepomuk Geiger.

Carl von Marr | Genre painter

Carl von Marr (1858-1936) was an American-born German painter whose work encompassed religious and mythological subjects, genre and portraits.

He was also a professor of art in Munich.

He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

He was a pupil of Henry Vianden in Milwaukee, of Martin Schauß in Weimar, of Karl Gussow in Berlin, and subsequently of Otto Seitz at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

His first work, Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, received a medal in Munich.

Grazia Deledda (Nobel Prize) | While the east wind blows, 1905

Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda (1871-1936) was an Italian writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 "For her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island [i.e. Sardinia] and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general".

She was the first Italian woman to receive the prize, and only the second woman in general after Selma Lagerlöf was awarded hers in 1909.

While the East Wind Blows

A short story by Grazia Deledda published on the official website of the Nobel Prize

From the collection I giuochi della vita, 1905

Translated by Anders Hallengren

Mentre soffia il levante (Original text)

Karl Raupp | Crossing Lake Chiemsee in a storm under the aegis of a guardian angel

Luigi Russolo | Futurist painter

Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo (1885-1947) was an Italian Futurist painter, composer, builder of experimental musical instruments, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises (1913).

Russolo completed his secondary education at Seminary of Portograuro in 1901, after which he moved to Milan and began gaining interest in the arts.

He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of noise music concerts in 1913-14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921.

He designed and constructed a number of noise-generating devices called Intonarumori.

Auguste Rodin | L'Adieu / Farewell, 1898

The Farewell or The Convalescent / L'adieu - is composed of Camille Claudel with short hair (1884) and two independent hands added in front of her face, the work attests to Rodin's passion for assemblages, evident in both his narrative and portraiture registers.

By placing her head and hands on a block of plaster, Rodin shed light on his thoughts about pedestals.

The construction causes Camille's face to stand out slightly from the plaster block and conveys a sense of slow absorption that contributes to the melancholy of the composition.

Auguste Rodin | L'Adieu /Farewell, 1898 | Musée Rodin, Paris

John George Todd | Genre painter

Henry George Todd (1847-1898) was an English artist active in Suffolk.

Henry was the son of George Todd (1820-1904), a painter and decorator and grainer to whom he became apprenticed.

In 1865 he attended art school and later progressed onto the Royal College of Art.

After a period working in his father's decoration and gilding business in Bury St Edmund's when both Henry and his father George exhibited their works in the Todd's St Andrew's Street North shop.

Oscar Wilde | Se non avessimo amato / Ay! had we never loved

Se noi non avessimo amato,

Chi sa se quel narciso avrebbe attratto l'ape

Nel suo grembo dorato,

Se quella pianta di rose avrebbe ornato

Di lampade rosse i suoi rami!

Caspar David Friedrich | Ruins of the Oybin, 1835 | Hermitage Museum

Louis Wain | Postcard artist

Louis William Wain (1860-1939) was an English artist best known for his drawings of anthropomorphised cats and kittens.

Wain was born in Clerkenwell, London.

In 1881 he sold his first drawing and the following year gave up his teaching position at the West London School of Art to become a full-time illustrator.

He married in 1884 but was widowed three years later.

In 1890 he moved to the Kent coast with his mother and five sisters, and, except for three years spent in New York, remained there until the family returned to London in 1917.