Henri Le Sidaner's 157th Birthday

French painter🎨 Henri Eugène Augustin Le Sidaner (1862-1939) was born 157 years ago on this day - August 7th 1862, into a French family, in Port Louis, Mauritius.

He studied under Alexandre Cabanel🎨 until 1885 and was introduced to the work of Edouard Manet🎨 who influenced Le Sidaner’s artistic development.

Henri Le Sidaner was one such individual: a contemporary of the Post-Impressionists who painted in dots but was not a Pointillist🎨; revelled in complementary colours but was not a Fauve; and drew a veil of dreams over reality but was not a Symbolist🎨, or only briefly.

He was, as his friend the critic Gabriel Mourey described him, "a sort of mystic who has no faith".

Walter Ernest Webster (British, 1878-1959)

Walter Ernest Webster RI ROI RP (17 November 1877 - 30 April 1959) was a British figure and portrait painter. He also worked as an illustrator.

Webster was born on 17 November 1877.

His parents were Robert Walter Waithman Webster (born c. 1853), a salesman, and Mary Lowe (born c. 1856), the daughter of bookkeeper Edwin Lowe.

He was baptised in Manchester Church of England Cathedral on 10 January 1878.

Paul Delvaux (1897-1994) | Surrealist painter

Paul Delvaux (23 September 1897 - 20 July 1994) was a Belgian painter🎨 noted for his dream-like scenes of women, classical architecture, trains and train stations, and skeletons, often in combination.

He is often considered a surrealist, although he only briefly identified with the Surrealist movement🎨.

He was influenced by the works of Giorgio de Chirico🎨.

Hjalmar Munsterhjelm | Moonlight paintings

Magnus Hjalmar Munsterhjelm (19 October 1840, Tuulos - 2 April 1905, Helsinki) was a Finnish landscape painter.

Munsterhjelm was born at Toivoniemi Manor of Tuulos, Finland.

He was the son of Gustaf Riggert Munsterhjelm (1806-1872) and his wife and Mathilda Charlotta Eleonora von Essen (1818-1895).

His father first sent him to the Turku Maritime School.

In the early 1860s, he studied art at Düsseldorf with Werner Holmberg (1830-1860) and Oswald Achenbach (1827-1905) and at Karlsruhe under Hans Gude.

Jaroslav Seifert / Vladimir Volegov: "Prima che asciughino quei due o tre baci"

Prima che asciughino quei due o tre baci

sulla fronte

e qui e lí,

ti chinerai per bere

acqua d’argento dallo specchio,

e se nessuno ti starà a guardare

ti toccherai le labbra con la bocca.