Lizzie Riches, 1950 | Magical realism painter

Lizzie is a Londoner by birth though growing up near Epping Forest gave her an enduring love of the natural world.

Childhood visits to the National Gallery awakened a passion for painting and visiting Audley End at the age of five began a lifelong interest in Elizabethan Portraiture.

A hopeless student at Art School, Lizzie preferred to develop her own style by going back to study the paintings she had loved as a child.

She joined London’s Portal Gallery in 1976, exhibiting with them in Chicago, New York and Paris and continuously in London ever since. Portal introduced Lizzie to The Red Dot Gallery, close to her home in Norfolk, in 2011.

Niccolò Cannicci | Genre painter

Niccolò Cannicci (1846-1906) was an Italian painter🎨, who painted urban and rural views, often depicting the intersection of the urban and industrial landscape with the rural and pastoral.

He was born in Florence. He began his studies in design at Academy of Fine Arts of Florence under professors Marrubini and Pollastrini, and from there moved to the studio of professor Antonio Ciseri.

He then was influenced by the school of the Macchiaioli🎨.

He moved to San Gemignano.

He painted mainly landscapes and genre paintings🎨 of peasant life and animals.

Vittorio Matteo Corcos | Genre painter

A Reassessment of Corcos, Sensuality and Subtlety Intact

- The New York Times, article by Roderick Conway Morris A Reassessment of Corcos, Sensuality and Subtlety Intact, Oct. 7, 2014

The Jewish community of the Tuscan seaport of Livorno produced two notable artists whose lives spanned the 19th and 20th centuries: Vittorio Corcos and Amedeo Modigliani.

Corcos enjoyed a long and prosperous international career, dying at the age of 74 in 1933. Modigliani🎨 struggled to sell his work and died little known at the age of 35 in 1920.

But whereas Modigliani🎨 is now one of the most famous of 20th-century artists, Corcos, outside of Italy at least, is virtually forgotten. One reason is that Corcos’s uninspiringly conventional society and royal portraits have obscured the fact that he also produced some genuinely idiosyncratic images.

Vittorio Matteo Corcos | An Elegant Lady in a Pink Hat and Dress, 1888

Vittorio Matteo Corcos (1859-1933) was an Italian painter, known for his portraits.

Many of his genre works depict winsome and finely dressed young men and women, in moments of repose and recreation.

He was born to Jewish parents, in Livorno. He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence under Enrico Pollastrini.

Between 1878-1879 he worked under Domenico Morelli in Naples.

Giovanni Battista Lombardi | Ruth, 1864

Commissioned in 1859 by contessa Marietta Mazuchelli Longo, Lombardi's Ruth was the first of the artist's Old Testament subjects; a series which also included his Rebecca, Deborah, Susanna and Sulamite.

Lombardi's reputation had been built on his sensitive and innovative memorial sculpture, which he produced with his brother Giovita, in the studio in Rome which they set up in 1852.

The contessa Longo was a long-time supporter of Lombardi and indeed had previously commissioned a funerary monument to her deceased husband from the artist.