Giovanni Boldini | Genre painter

Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931)🎨 was an Italian genre🎨 and portrait painter, hu enjoyed a long and successful artistic career.

Boldini's nervous, sketch-like manner, in many ways anticipating the art of the 20th century.

In 1933, Time Magazine once referred to this painter, who was also a friend of John Singer Sargent🎨 and Degas🎨, as the "Master of Swish".

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm | Patron of the Arts

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (January 5, 1614-November 20, 1662) was an Austrian military commander, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1647-1656 and a patron of the arts.

When he assumed the government of the Spanish Netherlands, Leopold Wilhelm, being a great lover of art, employed several painters from the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke, including the great Dutch painter David Teniers the Younger, who he not only employed as a painter but as keeper of the collection of pictures he was then forming.

With the rank and title of "ayuda de camara", Teniers took up his abode in Brussels shortly after 1647.

Carolus-Duran | Academic painter

Charles Auguste Émile Durand, known as Carolus-Duran (Lille 4 July 1837 - 17 February 1917 Paris), was a French painter and art instructor. He is noted for his stylish depictions of members of high society in Third Republic France.

Carolus-Duran studied at the Lille Academy and then at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

In 1861, he traveled to Italy and Spain for further study, especially devoting himself to the pictures of Velázquez.

His dramatic painting Murdered, or The Assassination (1866), was one of his first successes, and is now in the Lille museum.

Abiodun Olaku, 1958 | Waterscape/Cityscape painter

Born in Lagos in Lagos, Nigeria, Abiodun Olaku has his roots in Abeokuta, Ogun state. In his third decade of avid, dedicated and progressive art practice since graduating from the prestigious Yaba College of Technology, Lagos as a painter in 1981, under the supervision and guidance of Prof. Yusuf Grillo, Kolade Oshinowo and late Dr. Isiaka Osunde. Abiodun Olaku has crystallized into one of the ‘exclusive’ masters of his generation.

Nikita Manokhin, 1989 | Palette knife painter

Nikita Manokhin Anatolyevich was born in Mariupol, Donetsk region, Ukraine, in the artists` family.

In 2005 graduated from the Mariupol City Lyceum, language faculty, English speciality.

In 2011 graduated from the Architectural faculty of Donbass National Academy of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

- 'I was born in a small town of Mariupol in Ukraine, in the artists' family. I must admit, I didn't have any affection to arts or painting during my first years. Painting was quite a difficult discipline for me at school, I didn't attend any professional painting classes then. Foreign languages were much more interesting for me, so eventually in 2005 I finished Mariupol City Lyceum, English language faculty.

Archip Ivanovič Kuindži | Landscape painter

Архип Иванович Куинджи ([1842-1910) is considered one of the most talented Russian landscape painters of his generation.

Born in Ukraine, he was associated during the second half of the 1870s with a group of Russian Realist painters known as the Wanderers.

In the 1890s, he was hired to teach landscape painting at the Academy of Fine Arts but was later dismissed for sympathizing with student agitators.

Mosè Bianchi | Genre/Macchiaioli painter

Mosè Bianchi (Monza, 1840-1904) was an Italian painter and printmaker.

Bianchi's family moved from Monza to Milan and he enrolled at the Brera Academy.

Having interrupted his studies to serve in the second war of independence, he returned to attend the school of painting directed by Giuseppe Bertini.

François-Auguste Ravier | Romantic landscape painter

François-Auguste Ravier (1814 - 1895) was born in Lyons in 1814. His father, a confectioner, wanted him to pursue a career as a notary, and the young Ravier went off to Paris in 1832 to study law. His spare time was taken up with drawing and painting, and he has been said to have attended the studios of Jules Coignet (1798-1860) and Aligny (q.v.). But according to Nathalie Favier, an expert on this painter, it is possible that Ravier received advice from a number of artists without having pursued any traditional artistic training. In 1837-38 he painted in the Paris area, in the forest of Fontainebleau, and in the Dauphiné and the Bugey, a region to the east of Lyons. In Royat, in 1839, he met Corot (q.v.), whom he revered the most. Between 1840-1847, no doubt following Corot's advice, Ravier went on a number of lengthy trips to Italy to draw and paint in the Roman countryside.