Ken Howard OBE RA, 1932 | Impressionist painter

Ken Howard OBE RA is an British artist and painter. He was President of the New English Art Club from 1998-2003.

Life and art

Ken Howard was born in London. He studied at the Hornsey College of Art (1949-53) and the Royal College of Art (1955-58). In 1958 he won a British Council Scholarship to Florence.

He spent his National Service in the Royal Marines (1953-55). In 1973 and 1978 he was the Official War Artist to Northern Ireland, and 1973-80 worked in various locations, including Hong Kong, Cyprus and Canada with the British Army.

In 1983 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA).

August Macke | Expressionist painter

August Macke, (born January 3, 1887, Meschede, Germany-died September 26, 1914, Perthes-les-Hurlus, France) German painter who was a leader of Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”), an influential group of Expressionist artists.

Macke studied at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1904-1906. During his first trip to Paris in 1907 he was profoundly influenced by the work of the Impressionist painters, and he began to emulate their style, painting portraits in subtly dappled colours.

Thomas Seddon (1821-1856) | Pre-Raphaelite painter

Thomas Seddon was an British landscape painter associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who painted colourful and highly detailed scenes of Brittany, Egypt and Jerusalem.

Seddon was born in Aldersgate Street in the City of London, the son of a well-known cabinet-maker of the same name.

He was educated at a school conducted on the Pestalozzian system by the Rev. Joseph Barron at Stanmore, and then worked for his father until 1841, when he was sent to Paris to study ornamental art.

Garnet Ruskin Wolseley (1884-1967)

Garnet Ruskin Wolseley was a British landscape, figure and portrait painter. Born in London in 1884 he trained at the Bushey School of Painting winning a scholarship to Slade School of Fine Art.

He moved to Newlyn, Cornwall, in 1908 and became good friends with Harold and Laura Knight, the latter influencing his early work.

He painted mostly landscapes around Newlyn and the Lamorna Valley exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy.

Vincent van Gogh | Le pont de Trinquetaille, 1888

The fifteen months that Van Gogh spent at Arles in 1888-1889 represent a pivotal moment in his career, "the zenith, the climax, the greatest flowering of Van Gogh's decade of artistic activity", according to Ronald Pickvance.

Freed from the pressures of urban life and inspired by the brilliant Provençal light, the artist integrated the results of months of experimentation and produced one modern masterpiece after another. With its bold composition and expressive palette, "Le pont de Trinquetaille" epitomizes his mature style.

Anthony Hopkins: "Lascia andare le persone che non sono pronte ad amarti"..

"Let go the people who are not prepared to love you. This is the hardest thing you will have to do in your life and it will also be the most important thing. Stop having hard conversations with people who don't want change.

Stop showing up for people who have no interest in your presence. I know your instinct is to do everything to earn the appreciation of those around you, but it's a boost that steals your time, energy, mental and physical health".

Marc Chagall | La Promenade, 1917

Rose Barton RWS (1856-1929) | Watercolor painter

Rose Mary Barton RWS was an Anglo-Irish artist; a watercolourist who painted landscape, street scenes, gardens, child portraiture and illustrations of the townscape of Britain and Ireland.

Barton exhibited with a number of different painting societies, most notably the Watercolour Society of Ireland (WCSI), the Royal Academy (RA), the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), the Society of Women Artists and the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS).

Wassily Kandinsky | V - The psychological working of color

Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1910

Part II: About painting

To let the eye stray over a palette, splashed with many colours, produces a dual result. In the first place one receives a PURELY PHYSICAL IMPRESSION, one of pleasure and contentment at the varied and beautiful colours.

The eye is either warmed or else soothed and cooled. But these physical sensations can only be of short duration.

They are merely superficial and leave no lasting impression, for the soul is unaffected. But although the effect of the colours is forgotten when the eye is turned away, the superficial impression of varied colour may be the starting point of a whole chain of related sensations.

On the average man only the impressions caused by very familiar objects, will be purely superficial.

Wassily Kandinsky | Roses, 1993