Claude Monet | La Grenouillère, 1869

During the summer of 1869, Monet⏩ and Renoir⏭ set up their easels at La Grenouillère, a boating and bathing resort on the Seine River, not far from Paris.

Monet noted on September 25,

"I do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouillère, for which I have made some bad sketches, but it is only a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting".

Among their various depictions of the subject, this composition closely resembles one by Renoir in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Francesco Guardi | Baroque Era / Veduta painter

Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), one of the outstanding Venetian landscape painters of the Rococo period.

Francesco and his brother Nicolò (1715-86) were trained under their elder brother, Giovanni Antonio Guardi. Their sister Cecilia married Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. By 1731 the brothers are recorded as collaborating in a bottega, half-studio and half-shop.

Pier Toffoletti, 1957 | Figurative painter

Italian painter Pier Toffoletti was born in the village of Torreano near Cividale in Northern Italy, surrounded by the art and antiquities of ancient Rome. Now he lives and works in Udine. Since he was a young boy, painting has been a passion and he drew inspiration from the tiles and frescos which were a part of his daily life.

In 1976 Pier earned a "Diploma di Maestro in Arte Applicata" (Certificate of Master in Applied Arts). While developing his unique medium and style he worked as Creative Director for his advertising agency, using his talented eye for developing and directing television commercials. Pier also worked with the Italian public broadcasting network (RAI) on a number of animation projects.

Frank Cadogan Cowper | The last of the Pre-Raphaelites

From: Christie's

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Frank Cadogan Cowper was born in 1877 at Wicken in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was rector. He studied art at the St John's Wood Art School and then spent five years in the Royal Academy Schools (1897-1902), before entering the Cotswold studio of Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911).

After six months working with this American muralist who, like his friend John Singer Sargent, had taken up residence in England, Cowper completed his artistic education by studying for a while in Italy.

Tamara de Lempicka's 120th Birthday

'Among a hundred paintings, you could recognize mine,

my goal was:

Do not copy. Create a new style...

colors light and bright,

return to elegance in my models'..

Tamara De Lempicka

Salvatore Quasimodo | Ora che sale il giorno / Now that the day rises..

Edvard Munch⏭ | Young woman on the veranda, 1924

Finita è la notte e la luna

si scioglie lenta nel sereno,

tramonta nei canali.

The night is over and the moon

melts slowly in cloudless sky,

sets into the canals.

Dan Beck, 1955 | The Dreamers | VideoArt

For American painter Dan Beck🎨, painting is "a balancing act between opposite ideas - direct observation and instinct, control and spontaneity, even between the literal and the symbolic.

It seems to me that although a painter is deeply involved with his own private investigation, his real aim is to communicate something that only the person looking at the painting really understands".

Salvatore Quasimodo | Ed e' subito sera / And suddenly it is evening

Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera.

Everyone stands alone at the heart of the world

pierced by a ray of sunlight,

and suddenly it is evening.