Jakub Schikaneder | Impressionistic nocturnes

Jakub Schikaneder (1855-1924) came from the family of a German customs office clerk.

Despite the family's poor background, he was able to pursue his studies, thanks in part to his family's love of art; an ancestor was Urban Schikaneder, the elder brother of the librettist Emanuel Schikaneder.

After having completed his studies in Prague and Munich 1871-1879, Schikaneder, alongside Emanuel Krescenc Liška, was involved in the furnishing of the royal box in the National Theatre in Prague; however, this work was lost in a fire in 1881.

Émile Lecomte-Vernet | Orientalist painter

Émile Vernet-Lecomte, born Charles Émile Hippolyte Lecomte (1821-1900) was a French painter, best known for his Orientalist works.

He came from a family of illustrious painters.

His great-grandfather was Claude Joseph Vernet and his father was the battle painter, Hippolyte Lecomte; who was himself the son-in-law of Carle Vernet, and the nephew of Horace Vernet.

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) | Still Lifes

Odilon Redon🎨's work represent an exploration of his internal feelings and psyche.

He himself wanted to "place the visible at the service of the invisible"; thus, although his work seems filled with strange beings and grotesque dichotomies, his aim was to represent pictorially the ghosts of his own mind. Redon🎨 also describes his work as ambiguous and undefinable:

"My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined".

Odilon Redon | Symbolist / Colorist painter

Odilon Redon🎨 (born April 20, 1840, Bordeaux, France - died July 6, 1916, Paris) French🎨 Symbolist painter, lithographer and etcher of considerable poetic sensitivity and imagination, whose work developed along two divergent lines.

His prints explore haunted, fantastic, often macabre themes and foreshadowed the Surrealist🎨 and Dadaist movements.

His oils and pastels, chiefly still lifes with flowers, won him the admiration of Henri Matisse🎨 and other painters as an important colourist.

Kay Boyce | Figurative painter

British painter and illustrator Kay Boyce was born in Sheffield.

As a child she would often spend hours at a time drawing on rolls of wallpaper; this was the beginning of her passion for art.

Kay studied illustration at Wrexham College before working as a freelance illustrator. She produced editorial work for Women s Weekly, Bella, My Weekly, Sunday Express and Woman's Own.

Her illustration work has carried her through to major book publishers such as Hodder and Staughton, Wadsworth Romantics, Mills and Boon and Mandarin.