Detlev Nitschke, 1935 | Impressionist painter

The German artist Detlev Nitschke is mainly known for his picturesque scenes and outdoor paintings (plein air), which he developed into designs for calendars and maps.

In 1954 he graduated from school as a lithographer.

He went on to continue his studies at Meisterschule Fur Druck and Graphik.

He later served as the director of a graphic company until 1969 when he opened his own studio.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Guernsey, 1883

Between late summer and early autumn of 1883, Pierre-Auguste Renoir spent over a month on the Channel Island of Guernsey, lodging at no. 4 of George Road, St. Peter Port.

The beach of Moulin Huet, and the nearby bay at the east end of the island's rocky south coast within walking distance from his lodgings, provided the inspiration for approximately fifteen paintings, including Rochers de Guernesey avec personnages (plage à Guernesey), alongside Moulin Huet Bay, Guernsey (in the National Gallery, London) and Enfants au bord de la mer Guernsey (in the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania).

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Rochers de Guernesey avec personnages (plage à Guernesey), 1883 | Christie's

Hayley Lever| Impressionist painter

Richard Hayley Lever (1876-1958) was an Australian-American painter, etcher, lecturer and art teacher.

His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics and the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Richard Hayley Lever was born and brought up in Adelaide, Australia.

He trained as an artist there under the guidance of James Ashton, an English born seascape artist whose son he was later to befriend in St Ives. In 1894 he set sail to Europe to finish his art studies.

Whilst in Paris he studied the human figure under Rene-Francois-Xavier Prinet but showed a natural inclination for open-air subjects and marine pictures.

Fred Appleyard (1874-1963)

Fred Appleyard was a British artist known for his landscape paintings, portraits, classical subjects and allegorical compositions.

He had 41 works exhibited during his lifetime by the Royal Academy and painted the mural Spring Driving Out Winter in the Academy Restaurant.

Appleyard was born in Middlesbrough, England on 9 September 1874, the son of Isaac Appleyard, an iron merchant. His uncle was the sculptor John Wormald Appleyard.

Claude Monet | Woman in the Garden, Sainte-Adresse, 1867

This is a very early Impressionist work by the group's leader, Claude Monet.

The sunlight which floods the paintings of the Impressionists - who did most of their painting out of doors, directly from nature - here plays the central role.

Monet spent his childhood in Le Havre, which he periodically visited.

The Le Coteaux estate at Sainte-Adresse near Le Havre belonged to Monet's cousin, Paul-Eugene Lecadre.

Settling here in the summer of 1867, the artist painted several landscapes in the garden of the estate, of which "Woman in the Garden" is of central importance.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) | Woman in the Garden, Sainte-Adresse France, 1867 | Source: © State Hermitage Museum

10 Masterpieces of the Musée d’Orsay

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Bal du moulin de la Galette, 1876

This painting is doubtless Renoir's most important work of the mid 1870's and was shown at the Impressionist exhibition in 1877.

Though some of his friends appear in the picture, Renoir's main aim was to convey the vivacious and joyful atmosphere of this popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre.

The study of the moving crowd, bathed in natural and artificial light, is handled using vibrant, brightly coloured brushstrokes.

The somewhat blurred impression of the scene prompted negative reactions from contemporary critics.

This portrayal of popular Parisian life, with its innovative style and imposing format, a sign of Renoir's artistic ambition, is one of the masterpieces of early Impressionism. | © Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919) | Bal du moulin de la Galette, 1876 | Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Camille Pissarro | La charcutiére, 1883

Like 'The Little Country Maid', this painting was executed while the artist lived near Pontoise, north-west of Paris.

During the 1880s he became interested in painting rural market scenes, several of which were based on the markets at Pontoise and its neighbouring villages.

Such subjects allowed Pissarro to combine the study of the human figure with depictions of outdoor scenes of everyday rural life.

Although he wrote to his son Lucien that he wished the painting to have a 'certain naive freshness', hence the light and informal brushstrokes, the central figure of the 'charcutière' was painted from the model and the pose carefully studied.

Camille Pissarro | La charcutiére, 1883 | Tate Gallery

Juliette Wytsman | Impressionist painter

Juliette Wytsman (1866-1925) was a Belgian impressionist painter.

She was married to painter Rodolphe Wytsman.

Her paintings are in the collections of several museums in Belgium.

Wytsman was born as Juliette Trullemans on 14 July 1866 in Brussels, in Belgium.

She first studied under Henri Hendrickx at the Bischoffsheim Institute in Brussels.

Salon des Indépendants, Paris 1884

Since 1884, the Salon des Indépendants has played a key role in the history of world art.

Salon des Indépendants, annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, held in Paris since 1884.

In the course of revolutionary developments in painting in late 19th-century France, both artists and the public became increasingly unhappy with the rigid and exclusive policies of the official Salon, an exhibition held sporadically between 1667-1737 and annually thereafter by the Académie Royale de Peinture, which had maintained almost total control over the teaching and exhibition of art since about 1661.

Edgar Degas | Repasseuses | Musée d'Orsay

Gustave Caillebotte | Les Jardiniers, 1877

Exhibited publicly only once in the past century and a half, Gustave Caillebotte’s (1848-1894) Les Jardiniers is a celebrated early example of the artist’s garden compositions, which was rediscovered in the 1990s, having remained in the same family collection for over a hundred years.

Painted in 1877, the scene depicts the well-appointed kitchen garden at the Caillebotte family’s country home in the village of Yerres, about 20 kilometers southwest of Paris.

The artist was a teenager when his parents acquired the property as a summer residence, drawn by the grand, Neo-Classical style house and extensive grounds that stretched down to the banks of the nearby river Yerres.

Gustave Caillebotte | Les jardiniers, 1875 | Christie's

Nydia Lozano, 1947 | Ladies with flowers

Nydia Lozano felt from a very young age, to her town of Alginet, the inclination to capture on paper her impressions of the countryside and the towns of Valencia.

His church towers and family faces interested Jose Espert, the first person to tell him what painting was and probably the only one who could talk to him about painters like Sargent in the early sixties.

He saw that Nydia’s path was already drawn and helped her follow him.

Otto Pippel | Impressionist painter

German painter Otto Eduard Pippel (1878-1960) was one of the most important Impressionists in Southern Germany.

As the son of German parents who had emigrated to Lodz, Pippel enrolled at the School of Applied Arts in Straßburg in 1896 with the express wish to become an interior decorator and a decorative painter.

He had to interrupt his studies shortly afterwards, however, as he was drafted into the Russian army for four years.

Andre Kohn, 1972 | Ladies and hats

André Kohn, Russian painter, was born in Stalingrad, but was raised in the southernmost region of the Former Soviet Union near the Caspian Sea.

He spent the first 12 years of his life surrounded by nature before moving with his family to Moscow in 1984.

The precise convergence of three dynamic forces-culture, environment and talent-combined to produce one of the most collected figurative painters on the American art scene today.

Anna Boch | Post-impressionist painter

Anna Boch participated in the Neo-Impressionist movement.

Her early works used a Pointillist technique, but she is best known for her Impressionist style which she adopted for most of her career.

A pupil of Isidore Verheyden, she was influenced by Théo van Rysselberghe whom she met in the artistic group, Les XX.

Anna-Rosalie Boch (1848-1936), known as Anna, was a Belgian painter, art collector, and the only female member of the artistic group, Les XX.

Frantz Charlet | Impressionist painter

Frantz Charlet (1862-1928) was a Belgian painter, etcher and lithographer.

An Impressionist, he was one of the founding members in 1882, with James Ensor and Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) of the group Les XX.

It is one of the first painters in Belgium to look for brighter colours and a spontaneous touch, thus becoming closer French Impressionists.

Charlet studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1872-1873 and again from 1876-1881; among his fellow pupils there were Eugène Broerman, François-Joseph Halkett, Théo van Rysselberghe and Rodolphe Wytsman, and his teacher was Jean-François Portaels.

Joaquín Sorolla to Clotilde: “You are my flesh, my life and my brain”..

Clotilde García Castillo (1865-1929) married Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Spanish Realist/Impressionist painter, 1863-1923) at the age of 23 and they ended their days together.

The painter died six years before her, in 1923.

Clotilde donated all her assets to the State for the foundation of a museum in honour of her husband's work - the family home where the Sorolla Museum stands today.

Joaquín Sorolla | Clotilde seated on the Sofa (Clotilde sentada en un sofá), 1910 | Museo Sorolla, Madrid

Of all the portraits Sorolla painted of his wife, this is probably the most successful and is a fundamental work within the context of his artistic production.

The viewer is presented here with a refined lady, reflecting her social status and so mirroring her husband’s professional success.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida | Clotilde seated on the Sofa, 1910 | Museo Sorolla

Joaquín Sorolla, lo Spagnolo della Bella Époque

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) è stato un pittore Spagnolo, un luminare nel regno dell'arte, maestro della luce, del colore e dello spirito vibrante della Spagna.

Annoverato fra i rinnovatori della pittura spagnola in chiave impressionista, è tra i pittori più prolifici, con un catalogo di più di 2.200 opere.

Joaquín Sorolla nacque a Valencia in Spagna il 27 febbraio 1863.

Rimasto orfano di entrambi i genitori a soli due anni d'età fu allevato nella famiglia di una zia materna insieme alla sorella Eugenia.

Manifestò presto la sua attitudine al disegno.

Claude Monet | Woman Seated under the Willows, 1880

A woman sits among loosely painted, crescent-shape blades of emerald and lemon-lime green grass, under tall trees in this vertical scene.

The brushstrokes are unconnected and visible, so many of the details difficult to make out.

Facing our left almost in profile, the woman’s form is suggested with thick strokes of eggshell white, periwinkle blue, mint green, and deep pink.

We get the impression of a light-colored dress that pools around her hips and legs, and a hat atop dark hair. Her face is painted with an area of blush peach.

Claude Monet | Woman Seated under the Willows, 1880 | National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Bay of Naples, 1881

The corner of the balcony visible at lower left in this composition indicates Renoir’s vantage point overlooking the bay of Naples.

His position afforded an iconic view of the harbor with the volcano Mount Vesuvius in the background, wafting smoke into the sky.

Inspired by the southern Italian light, Renoir painted another version of this vista at a different time of day (The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.).

James Duncan, a wealthy sugar refiner, purchased the present work in 1883, making it the first Impressionist picture acquired by a Scottish collector.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Bay of Naples, 1881 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Paul Molda | Impressionist painter

Paul Molda (Pavel Ioan Popescu) was born in 1884, in Negulești, Tecuci, Galați county, and died in 1955, in Bucharest.

He attended the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest and the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice.

He painted both landscapes and portraits and restored the painting of several churches.