Antonio Donghi | Magic Realism painter

Antonio Donghi (March 16, 1897 - July 16, 1963) was an Italian painter of scenes of popular life, landscapes, and still life.

Born in Rome, he studied painting at the Instituto di Belle Arti from 1908 to 1916.

After military service in World War I he studied art in Florence and Venice, soon establishing himself as one of Italy's leading figures in the neoclassical movement that arose in the 1920s.

Possessed of an extremely refined technique, Donghi favored strong composition, spatial clarity, and populist subject matter.

Julio Romero de Torres | Symbolist painter

Julio Romero de Torres (1874-1930) was the son of Rafael Romero Barros, a painter and curator of what was then called the Museum of Painting in Cordoba.

He would be marked by family life which revolved around his father’s studio, the classrooms of the School of Fine Arts and Music Conservatory and the galleries of the museum, located in the same grounds as the family home.

This indisputably conditioned his future and was the backdrop to his first steps as a painter.

At the age of ten he began studying music and painting and was only fourteen and fifteen when he received prizes in the competitions organised by the Provincial School and the Athenaeum.

Ugo Celada | Magic Realism painter

Italian painter Ugo Celada da Virgilio (1895-1995) represented a real point of conjunction between Metaphysics, Magic Realism, New Objectivity and Novecento.

Ugo Celada was born in Mantua, in Cerese.

As a child he drew so well that he managed to convince his father to enrol him, at the age of only twelve, at the Royal School of Applied Art in Mantua, from which he passed, thanks to a scholarship, to the Brera Academy, where he particularly appreciated the lessons of the painter Cesare Tallone, the author of portraits painted with refined brushwork and of a remarkable expressiveness.

Adolfo Feragutti Visconti | Verist painter

Adolfo Feragutti Visconti (1850 in Pura, Canton Ticino - 1924 in Milan) was an Italian / Swiss painter, of eclectic styles and subjects, including orientalist themes, genre works and landscapes.

Orphan of father by the age of 16, Fergutti Visconti enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts when he was 18, where he studied with Luigi Bisi, and made his debut in 1873 as a perspective painter.

Attracted by the work of the Milanese Scapigliatura movement, he was one of the first members of the Famiglia Artistica.

Gustave Caillebotte | Dahlias, Garden at Petit Gennevilliers, 1893

A leader of the impressionist movement - a central exhibitor and organizing force for several of their exhibitions between 1876 and 1882 - Gustave Caillebotte was also an avid gardener.

Like his close friend Claude Monet, with whom he shared gardening expertise and exchanged tips, he created lush, vibrantly colored landscapes and translated them into paint on canvas.

This marvelous addition to the Gallery's singular impressionist collection celebrates his prized dahlias exploding in the foreground in front of his greenhouse and home.

Claude Monet and the Sea

Claude Monet | The Jetty a Le Havre, 1868

Claude Monet | The Manneporte (Étretat), 1883 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Monet spent most of February 1883 at Étretat, a fishing village and resort on the Normandy coast.

He painted twenty views of the beach and the three extraordinary rock formations in the area: the Porte d'Aval, the Porte d'Amont, and the Manneporte.

Edvard Grieg: "Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights.."

• "Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. I only wanted… to build dwellings for men in which they might feel happy and at home".

• "Artisti come Bach e Beethoven eressero cattedrali e templi sulle vette. Io ho voluto, come dice Ibsen in un suo dramma, "costruire dimore per gli uomini, dimore in cui essi possano sentirsi felici ed a proprio agio". In altre parole, ho trascritto la musica folcloristica della mia patria, ho cercato di ricavare un'arte nazionale da queste manifestazioni sinora non sfruttate dell'anima norvegese".

Auguste Rodin | Les Mains enlacees | Musée Rodin

Władysław Ślewiński | Post-impressionist painter

Władysław Ślewiński (1856, in Nowy Białynin - 1918, in Paris) was a Polish painter.

He was one of Gauguin's students and a leading artist of the Young Poland movement (a modernist period in Polish visual arts, literature and music, covering roughly the years between 1890 and 1918. It was a result of strong aesthetic opposition to the earlier ideas of Positivism. Young Poland promoted trends of decadence, neo-romanticism, symbolism, impressionism and art nouveau).

Biography

He was born to a landowning family and his mother died in childbirth.

His cousin, the painter Józef Chełmoński, noticed his artistic talent and advised his father to enroll him at the drawing school operated by Wojciech Gerson.

His father resisted at first, but finally agreed.