Gioacchino Toma | Genre painter

Gioacchino Toma (24 January 1836 - 12 January 1891) was an Italian art instructor and painter, noted primarily for historic, realistic and genre subjects in a Romantic style.

Toward the end of his life, Toma authored his autobiography, Memories of an Orphan (Ricordi di un Orfano, Giannini and Figli, 1886) relating a series of memories to his son, Gustavo: his difficult childhood; his tenacity; his desire for redemption; and his civil and political commitment.

Arthur Claude Strachan | British Cottages

Predominantly a landscape and cottage painter in watercolour, Arthur Claude Strachan (1865-1935) was born in Edinburgh on 15th March 1865, the son of George Strachan, an architect, and his wife, Mary (née Dalrymple).

He studied art in Liverpool and later travelled throughout the UK painting the country landscapes.

Between 1885-1929 he exhibited in London and in the provinces and also showed four works at the Royal Academy.

The whole Strachan family moved to Liverpool some time in the 1880s.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Come ti amo? / How Do I Love Thee?

Come ti amo? Lascia che conti tutti i modi.

Ti amo con la profondità, la vastità, l'altezza

che l'anima mia raggiunge quando smarrita tocca i confini

dell'essere e della grazia ideale.

Harriet Hosmer | Clasped Hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Harvard University, Cambridge

Gabriel von Max | Romantic / Symbolist painter

Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max (23 August 1840 – 24 November 1915) was a Prague-born Austrian painter.

He was born Gabriel Cornelius Max, the son of the sculptor Josef Max and Anna Schumann.

He studied between 1855 and 1858 at the Prague Academy of Arts with Eduard von Engerth.

His studies included parapsychology (somnambulism, hypnotism, spiritism), Darwinism, Asiatic philosophy, the ideas of Schopenhauer, and various mystical traditions.

The spiritual-mystical movement was emphasized by the writings of Carl du Prel, and the Munich painter Albert Keller was also an influence.

Thérèse Schwartze | Self-portrait, 1888 | Uffizi Gallery

The artist presents herself by citing a well-known precedent: Sir Joshua Reynolds, who in his youthful self-portrait of 1749 portrays himself while making a screen with one hand over his eyes and holding the tools of his trade in the other.

After an initial apprenticeship with his father, Thérèse studied at the Rijksakademie, in Munich and in Paris.

Returning to Amsterdam she opened a very active studio, receiving important commissions and awards.

Claude Monet at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Claude Monet | Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875

From: National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

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From low on a hillside, we look up at a light-skinned woman and boy standing in tall grass against a sunny blue sky in this vertical painting.

The woman stands at the center of the composition, and the moss-green parasol she holds over her head almost brushes the top edge of the canvas.

Her body faces our left but she turns her head to look at us.

Her long dress is painted largely with strokes of pale blue and gray with a few touches of yellow.

Her voluminous skirts swirl around her legs to our left.

Lovis Corinth | Impressionist / Expressionist painter

Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) was a German artist and writer whose mature work as a painter and printmaker realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism.

Corinth studied in Paris and Munich, joined the Berlin Secession group, later succeeding Max Liebermann as the group's president.

His early work was naturalistic in approach.

Corinth was initially antagonistic towards the expressionist movement, but after a stroke in 1911 his style loosened and took on many expressionistic qualities.

His use of color became more vibrant, and he created portraits and landscapes of extraordinary vitality and power.

Corinth's subject matter also included nudes and biblical scenes.

Frank Holl R.A. | Victorian painter

Francis Montague Holl RA (London 4 July 1845 - 31 July 1888 London) was an British painter, specializing in somewhat sentimental paintings with a moment from a narrative situation, often drawing on the trends of social realism and the problem picture in Victorian painting.

He was also, especially in his later years when the demand for social realism slackened, a portrait painter, mostly of official-type portraits of distinguished and therefore elderly men, including members of the royal family.

He died in his early 40s, which some contemporaries attributed to overwork, as he had been very busy in the last twenty years of his life.