Julie Delance-Feurgard (1859-1892)

Julie Delance-Feurgard was a student at the Académie Julian, where she became close friends with fellow artist Louise Breslau, who painted a portrait of her (now at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne in Switzerland).

She exhibited at the Salon between 1880-1888, earning honorable mentions for her work there and at the 1889 Exposition Universelle.

Her work received positive attention from critics. She married one of her teachers, Paul-Louis Delance, in 1886, and continued her career, which was cut short by her untimely death in 1892. | Source: © The Clark Art Institute

Orazio Borgianni | Baroque painter

Orazio Borgianni (6 April 1574 - 14 January 1616) was an Italian painter and etcher of the Mannerist and early-Baroque periods. He was the stepbrother of the sculptor and architect Giulio Lasso.

Borgianni was born in Rome, where he was documented in February 1604. He was instructed in the art of painting by his brother, Giulio Borgianni, called Scalzo.

The patronage by Philip II of Spain induced him to visit Spain, where he signed an inventory in January 1605.

He returned to Rome from Spain after April 1605 at the height of his career, and most of the work of his maturity was carried out 1605–16.

Legge di Murphy: "Non discutere mai con un idiota: la gente potrebbe non notare la differenza"!

Della Comitatologia | Capitolo Settimo

Legge di Old e Kahn

• L'efficienza di un comitato è inversamente proporzionale

al numero dei partecipanti e al tempo impiegato per raggiungere le decisioni.

Legge diShanahan

• La durata di una riunione aumenta col quadrato del numero dei presenti.

Legge dell'insignificanza

• Il tempo speso per ogni punto dell'ordine del giorno è sempre inversamente proporzionale

alla somma di denaro che il punto comporta.

Rene Magritte | The Art of Conversation, 1963

Édouard Manet | The Railway / La Ferrovia, 1873

With her back to us, a young girl stands looking through a fence. Facing us directly, a woman sits with a small dog in her lap and a book in her hand.

Billowing steam from an unseen train obscures the center background, but the edge of a bridge juts out at right, identifying the setting as Gare Saint-Lazare - Paris’ busiest train station and emblem of the city’s unsettling 19th-century makeover. Beyond depicting the modern city, The Railway disturbingly suggests how people experienced it.

Pinned against a long black iron fence, these fashionably dressed female figures are physically cut off from the railroad beyond and also seem estranged from each other: facing in opposite directions, they are absorbed in their individual activities. Manet offers us no clues to their relationship, even as we viewers seem to interrupt the woman reading.

She looks up at us directly with an expression that is neutral and guarded - the characteristic regard of one stranger encountering another in the modern metropolis.

Frédéric Chopin: "Play Mozart in memory of me!"

Frédéric François Chopin (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano.

He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".

All of Chopin's compositions include the piano.

Most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces, and some 19 songs set to Polish lyrics.

His piano writing was technically demanding and expanded the limits of the instrument, his own performances noted for their nuance and sensitivity.

His major piano works also include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, the instrumental ballade (which Chopin created as an instrumental genre), études, impromptus, scherzos, preludes, and sonatas, some published only posthumously.

Maria Wodzińska | Portrait of Frédéric Chopin, 1836 | National Museum Warsaw

Dennis Miller Bunker | Impressionist painter

Dennis Miller Bunker (November 6, 1861 - December 28, 1890) was an American painter and innovator of American Impressionism. His mature works include both brightly colored landscape paintings and dark, finely drawn portraits and figures.

One of the major American painters of the late 19th century, and a friend of many prominent artists of the era, Bunker died from meningitis at the age of 29. Bunker was born in New York City to Matthew Bunker, the secretary-treasurer of the Union Ferry Company, and his wife, Mary Anne Eytinge Bunker (sister of illustrator Sol Eytinge Jr.).

In 1876 he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York and the National Academy of Design.

By 1880 he was participating in the annual exhibitions of the National Academy, the American Watercolor Society, and the Brooklyn Art Association.

George Sand: "L'intelletto cerca, il cuore trova"

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1 July 1804 - 8 June 1876), best known by her pen name George Sand, was a French novelist, memoirist and journalist.

One of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, being more renowned than both Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era.

• "Art is a demonstration of which nature is the proof".

• "Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life".

• "La vita assomiglia ad un romanzo più spesso di quanto i romanzi assomiglino alla vita".

• "I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one".

• "Ho un oggetto, un compito, lasciatemi dire la parola, una passione. La professione dello scrittore è violenta e quasi indistruttibile".

Auguste Charpentier | Portrait of George Sand, 1838 | Musee Carnavalet (detail)

Lettere d'amore di Franz Kafka a Felice Bauer

"L'amore non è un problema, come non lo è un veicolo: problematici sono soltanto il conducente, i viaggiatori e la strada"

- Franz Kafka.

Kafka rifiutava la carnalità e la sua stessa corporeità. Egli stesso racconta il disgusto per il proprio corpo quando il padre accompagnandolo in piscina lo costringeva a denudarsi.

Lo stesso senso di ripugnanza egli lo esprimeva nei confronti dell'amore sessuale che descrive ad esempio ne "Il castello" come qualcosa di sporco e che riduceva l'uomo all'animalità.

Nella sua vita Kafka ebbe tre relazioni, maggiormente epistolari.

La più significativa rimase la relazione con la Felice Bauer (1887-1960), una steno-dattilografa prussiana d'origini ebraiche, la donna che liberò la forza creatrice di Kafka.

Franz Kafka, lo scrittore boemo, tra i maggiori del Novecento, incontrò Felice Bauer a Praga, in casa dell'amico Max Brod, la sera del 13 agosto del 1912.

Lui aveva 29 anni e lei 25, arrivata a Praga per lavoro.