Ron Hicks, 1965 | Historia de un Amor

Ron Hicks masterfully guides viewers into the emotional realm of art.

His paintings draw viewers into the very personal worlds of stolen kisses, handwritten letters and mysterious bedroom scenes.

"I open a dialogue for a story, and it’s up to the viewer to interpret it", Hicks says.

Just as he employs muted tones - often grays - to render his paintings.

His more traditional style, with influences including 17th century Dutch masters, blends representational art and impressionism, yet the ideas and stories within his paintings convey a much more contemporary feel.

Laurits Tuxen | Skagen painter/sculptor

From: Art Museums of Skagen

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Laurits Regner Tuxen was brought up in Copenhagen. As the son of a naval officer, he originally wanted to be a marine artist. When training at the Royal Danish Academy of fine Arts, he and Peder Severin Krøyer were considered to be the most talented students.

Tuxen first visited Skagen in 1870, and he returned several times during the 1870s. More than 20 years would pass before he returned in 1901.

During that time Tuxen trained as a painter in Paris together with Peder Severin Krøyer and he was one of the co-founders of the Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler, which was established as an alternative to the academy.

Tuxen became a popular portrait painter and travelled a lot due to commissions from the royal courts of Europe.

Sir Cedric Morris | Post-Impressionist painter

Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet (11 December 1889 - 8 February 1982) was a British artist, art teacher and plantsman.

He was born in Swansea in South Wales, but worked mainly in East Anglia.

As an artist he is best known for his portraits, flower paintings and landscapes.

Painting style

Cedric Morris had a distinctive and often rather primitive post-Impressionist style, and painted portraits, landscapes and very decorative still lifes of flowers and birds.

In his analysis of Morris's paintings, Richard Morphet has suggested that the "unusual force of Cedric's paintings derives from the projection of the subject through a dynamic economy in combination with an acute sense of pictorial realism".

Dod Procter | Figurative painter

Dod Procter, born Doris Margaret Shaw, RA (1890-1972) was an English artist, and the wife of the artist Ernest Procter.

Her painting Morning was bought for the public by the Daily Mail in 1927.

Procter and her husband attended art schools in England and in Paris together, where they were both influenced by Impressionism and the Post-Impressionism movements.

Eva Bagge (Swedish, 1871-1964)

Eva Bagge (15 December 1871 - 6 November 1964) was a Swedish painter who studied first in Sweden and then made study trips to Rome and Paris.

Remembered in particular for her farm scenes and interiors, she did not reach her peak until 1941 when works based on her approach to late 19th-century Realism attracted attention at her solo exhibition in a Stockholm gallery.

Such was the interest that they were soon exhibited in Munich and Berlin. Several Swedish art museums, including Stockholm's Nationalmuseum, have works by Bagge in their collections.

Born on 15 December 1871 in Stockholm, Eva Bagge was the daughter of the printing press director Per Olof Bagge (1833-1872) and his wife Henrika Ottiliana née von Fieandt. She was the youngest of the family's three children and the cousin of artist Elisabeth Bagge.

William Henry Gore | Victorian Genre painter

William Henry Gore RI (1857-1942) was an British painter and watercolourist of the late Victorian period to the early Twentieth Century.

He is known for his rural landscapes of his native Berkshire and for his Genre paintings of children and animals.

Gore was in the tradition of late Victorian Romanticism and Naturalism that flourished in the period before the turn of the Twentieth Century but which quickly became unfashionable in the aftermath of the Great War and the social and political changes that followed.

Sir Peter Lely | Baroque painter

Sir Peter Lely (1618 -1680) was a painter of Dutch origin whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.

Lely was born Pieter van der Faes to Dutch parents in Soest in Westphalia, where his father was an officer serving in the armed forces of the Elector of Brandenburg.

Lely studied painting in Haarlem, where he may have been apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber.

He became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1637.

Heide Presse, 1958 | Romantic painter

Heide E. Presse was born in Heidelberg, Germany, and grew up in Louisiana.

Born with a natural artistic talent into a family with no other artistically inclined members, Presse had no formal art instruction until college. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in design from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas in 1980.

She worked as a commercial artist in Texas, but now calls Florida home with her husband and son.

In 1990, she decided to focus exclusively on painting, working in watercolor first, and more recently oil.

Her works have been recognized internationally and have been exhibited in many national exhibitions, including the exhibition of the American Painting Association.