Ivan Shishkin /Ива́н Ши́шкин | Landscape painter

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin, (1832-1898), one of the most popular landscape painters of Russia. His paintings of wooded landscapes led his contemporaries to call him "tsar of the woods".

Shishkin was the son of a merchant.

He studied art with a characteristic thoroughness, first at the School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Moscow (1852-56) and then at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1856-60).

Cayley Robinson | Symbolist painter and illustrator

Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862-1927) was a British painter🎨 of idyllic scenes and domestic interiors, decorator and illustrator.

Born 18 August 1862 at Brentford, Middlesex. Studied at St John's Wood and the R.A. Schools; lived on a yacht painting realistic sea pictures 1888-90; studied at the Académie Julian in Paris 1890-2.

The influence of Burne-Jones🎨 and Puvis de Chavannes🎨, and that of Fra Angelico🎨 after a visit to Florence in 1898, caused him to adopt a more decorative manner.

Emanuele Cavalli | The Roman School

Emanuele Cavalli (1904-1981) was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Roman School.

He was also a renowned photographer, who experimented with new techniques since the 1930s.

Son of Apulian landowners, Cavalli moved to Rome in 1921 and there he became a student of Italian painter Felice Carena, also attending the local art college.

Do Fournier, 1951 | Les Nabis reminiscence

French Artist Do Fournier was born in the ancient town of Guerande, Brittany, France.

She began her career as a successful illustrator, and in 1984 changed her focus to the creation of her own paintings.

Her works were so well received, that numerous prestigious exhibitions were mounted in her native France, and she has frequently been invited to exhibit at the Salon d’Automne, Paris.

Georges de La Tour | The penitent Magdalene, 1640

With its extreme contrasts of candlelight and shadow, pared-down geometry, and meditative mood, this painting exemplifies La Tour’s painting at its most accomplished and characteristic.

These visual qualities were a powerful countertrend to Baroque painting’s typical pomp and showiness.

A native of the duchy of Lorraine in eastern present-day France, La Tour was indebted to Caravaggesque painting, but tended toward even more simplified forms.

The quiet atmosphere of this painting perfectly fits the subject, Mary Magdalen, who renounced the pleasures of the flesh for a life of penance and contemplation.

She is shown with a mirror, symbol of vanity; a skull, emblem of mortality; and a candle that probably references her spiritual enlightenment. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Penitent Magdalene, 1640 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Camposanto Monumentale in Pisa

The Camposanto or Monumental Cemetery in Pisa is a historical edifice at the northern edge of the Cathedral Square in Pisa, Italy."Campo Santo" can be literally translated as "holy field", because it is said to have been built around a shipload of sacred soil from Golgotha, brought back to Pisa from the Fourth Crusade by Ubaldo de' Lanfranchi, archbishop of Pisa in the 12th century. A legend claims that bodies buried in that ground will rot in just 24 hours. The burial ground lies over the ruins of the old baptistery of the church of Santa Reparata, the church that once stood where the cathedral now stands.
The term "monumental" serves to differentiate it from the later-established urban cemetery in Pisa.

Odilon Redon: "True art lies in a reality that is felt"

• "Black is the most essential of all colors. Above all, if I may say so, it draws its excitement and vitality from deep and secret sources of health... One must admire black. Nothing can debauch it".

• "True art lies in a reality that is felt".

• "The fundamental grey which differentiates the masters, expresses them and is the soul of all colour. My originality consists in putting the logic of the visible to the service of the invisible".

Emma Ekwall [1838-1925]

Emma Ekwall-Scheutz was the first Swedish woman - painter, received the Royal Medal. She was born on January 18, 1838. After graduating from the Academy of Painting, where she studied from 1865-1870, lived for a time in Munich and Leipzig. She painted mostly portraits of their children, floral still lifes and genre scenes. She died in 1925 in Stockholm.