Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) | Quotes

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance

Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, one of the fathers of the modern short story.

• "I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt".
• "I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth".
• "You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government".

Elin Danielson-Gambogi | Naturalist painter

Elin Kleopatra Danielson-Gambogi (3 September 1861 - 31 December 1919) was a Finnish painter, best known for her realist works and portraits. Danielson-Gambogi was part of the first generation of Finnish women artists who received professional education in art, the so-called "Painter sisters' generation".

The group also included Helene Schjerfbeck.

Early life and studies

Elin Danielson was born in the small village of Noormarkku, near the city of Pori in Western Finland to Karl Danielson and Rosa Amalia Danielson.

Her early years were however spent at Ilmajoki as her father attempted farming there. Because of the Finnish famine of 1866–68, the farm failed. After being forced to sell the farm, her father Karl shot himself.

Her mother Rosa returned to Noormarkku with her two daughters.

Ramón Casas i Carbó | Il pittore modernista

Ramón Casas i Carbó (1866-1932) è stato un pittore Spagnolo, famoso per i suoi ritratti e caricature della buona società di Barcellona, Madrid e Parigi.

Divenne famoso anche per i suoi quadri sulle rivolte sociali.

Fu anche disegnatore grafico e cartellonista pubblicitario, mezzi con cui diffuse il movimento modernista.

Figlio di una famiglia benestante, il padre aveva fatto fortuna a Cuba e la madre proveniva da una ricca famiglia, rivelò presto la sua inclinazione per l’arte.

Andre Kohn, 1972 | Dancers

Andre Kohn is one of the most collected figurative painters on the American art scene today.

He followed his apprenticeships with a classical art education at the University of Moscow where he studied with members of the last great generation of Russian Impressionists. He fondly remembers the majesty of the University.

Diego Velázquez | Life and Artworks

Velázquez (1599-1660) was born in Seville in southern Spain, at that time an important city with a thriving artistic community.

At the age of eleven, Velázquez was apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco, Seville's most significant artist and art theorist.

From Pacheco, Velázquez learned the technical skills of drawing and painting, still-life and portraiture and soon surpassed his master.

Francis Bacon | Expressionist painter

Born to an British family in Dublin on 28 October 1909, Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was the second of five children of Christina Firth, a steel heiress, and Edward Bacon, a race-horse trainer and former army officer. His childhood, spent at Cannycourt, County Kildare, was blighted by asthma from which he suffered throughout his life.

With the outbreak of war in 1914, his father took the family to London and joined the Ministry of War; they divided the post-war years between London and Ireland. Bacon repeatedly ran away from his school in Cheltenham (1924-6).

After his authoritarian father, repelled by his burgeoning homosexuality, threw him out of the family home for wearing his mother’s clothes, Bacon arrived in London in 1926 with little schooling but with a weekly allowance of £3 from his mother.

Henri Rousseau | Post-Impressionist painter

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910) was a French post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner.

He was also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer), a humorous description of his occupation as a toll and tax collector.

He started painting seriously in his early forties; by age 49, he retired from his job to work on his art full-time.

Ridiculed during his lifetime by critics, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality.

Rousseau's work exerted an extensive influence on several generations of avant-garde artists.

Edoardo Tofano | Genre / Romantic painter

Edoardo Tofano (Naples, 1838 - Rome, 1920) was an Italian painter.

He painted historic, genre and Orientalist themes.

He began his studies at the Albertina Academy of Turin, but completed studies at the Accademia Clementina of Bologna.

He then returned to Naples where he became a follower of the Realism of Domenico Morelli.

At the age of 23 (1861), he was recruited as an instructor at the Art Institute of Naples, a post he held till 1864.