Lord Frederic Leighton | Victorian-era painter

Frederic Leighton, Baron Leighton, also called Sir Frederic Leighton, Baronet (born Dec. 3, 1830, Scarborough, Yorkshire, Eng.-died Jan. 25, 1896, London), academic painter of immense prestige in his own time.

After an education in many European cities, he went to Rome in 1852, where his social talents won him the friendship of (among others) the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, the French novelist George Sand, and the English poet Robert Browning.

Leighton’s painting Cimabue’s Madonna, shown at the Royal Academy’s exhibition in 1855, was bought by Queen Victoria.

Nicolae Vermont | Genre painter

Nicolae Vermont 1866-1932 was one of the masters of Romanian Realist painting and one of the most interesting painters, muralists and draftsmen of his time, as many viewed him as an associate of Stefan Luchian.

He was a prolific and surprisingly innovative artist, with a strong, original style and manner and quite a broad choice of subjects, but he preferred landscapes and still lifes.

Vermont was one of the most interesting and influential voices of his generation, marking and changing the landscape of Romanian painting, as he always tried to offer something more, something new, to challenge rules and themes, to offer the viewer an artistic experience that was strikingly beautiful and shockingly fresh and alive. A great master and a great name.

Alexander Sheversky | Figurative painter

Striking a harmonic balance between classical composition and modern disposition an original oil painting by Alexander Sheversky speaks to an appreciation for the vocation to contemporary realism. Each canvas is stately and monumental, extolling the virtues of discipline and emotion styled by the foremost of his teachers - Rembrandt and Vermeer.

The interplay of light and shadow and especially Sheversky’s inherent understanding of light bring a life to the painting that resonates and lives before the viewer.

Whether it is a figurative study or a still life its own existence is captured by the emotive values of light itself that the artist exhibits, thus embodying the living, omnipresent nature of the subject. And so a Sheversky painting espouses a marriage of the meticulous detail of classical technique to that which is clean, modern, and conceptually crisp.

Joe Bowler (1928-2016)

Born in Forest Hills, New York in 1928, Joe began to draw when he was three. His first illustration for a national magazine was published by Cosmopolitan when he was nineteen.

While working as an apprentice at the prestigious Charles E. Cooper Studios, Inc. he had the opportunity to learn the craft from some of the finest artists in the profession.

At Cooper Studio, Joe was inspired by the illustrations he saw being done by the top artists in the field.

During the day Joe’s time was spent cleaning palettes and brushes, matting paintings and running errands.

James Nelson-Lewis, 1953

Before deciding to dedicate full time to painting, James Nelson Lewis has had years of professional experience as an illustrator, art director, designer, and University art instructor.

His painting is influenced by those experiences and time spent painting on location "en plein air".

The result is a sense of order, balanced by spontaneity and energetic palette knife and brushwork, direct and intuitive a poetic synthesis of simplification and expression.

Dora Wahlroos | En plein air painter

Anna Dorothée (Dora) Wahlroos (19 December 1870, Pori – 21 March 1947, Kauniainen) was a Finnish painter who participated in the painting movement en plein air towards the end of the 19th century.

Biography

She was born in Pori to province land surveyor Johan Henrik Wahlroos and Dorothée Augusta Henrietta Fehn.

She studied at the Turku Drawing School in 1886–1888 and under Victor Westerholm in 1889–1890. She was one of the artists who joined Westerholm in the artists colony at Önningeby on the island of Åland.

She was accepted to the Finnish Art Society in 1890–1891, where her class was taught by Gunnar Berndtson. In the Fall of 1890 she got engaged to sculptor Emil Wikström.

The two went to study together at Paris in 1891–1892.

Carlton Alfred Smith | Genre painter

Carlton Alfred Smith, RBA RI ROI (1853-1946) was a British watercolourist, oil painter and genre artist who often made images of cottage interiors showing domestic life and figures in cottage interiors in a romantic manner towards the end of the nineteenth century.

He was the son of a steel engraver and spent some of his early years being educated in France.

The artist also studied at the Slade School of Art, winning gold and silver medals.

He became one of the most technically accomplished watercolorists of the late Victorian period.

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)

The Blue Rider was a German Expressionist movement that was established in December 1911 by Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Gabriele Münter.

Painters Kandinsky and Marc worked on an almanac in which they showed their artistic conceptions. The title of the almanac, which then became the name of the group, Der Blaue Reiter - The Blue Rider, came from the painting by Kandinsky.

His Blaue Reiter Blue Rider was an adventure in the simplification and stylization of forms and the connection between music and painting.

Wassily Kandinsky | The Blue Rider