Alison Friend, 1973

Alison Friend is a British artist, born in Doncaster, South Yorks.

Her paintings are inspired by nature and her cheeky sense of humour.

Dreamy delicate brush strokes abound every canvas where she captures the secret lives of animals. Every character comes to life on canvas whether having a lolly or a gin.

Alison Friend graduated from Nottingham Trent University in 1996 with a degree in Fine Art specialising in Printmaking.

Jane Graverol | Surrealist painter

Jane Graverol (1905-1984) was a Belgian surrealist painter of French extraction.

Life

Jane Graverol was born in Ixelles on 18 December 1905 to Alexandre Graverol and Anne-Marie Lagadec.

After a traditional education, she enrolled in the Brussels Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in 1921, where she was taught by Jean Delville and Constant Montald.

Reinaldo Arenas | My Lover The Sea / Io sono quel bambino....

Io sono quel bambino con la faccia tonda e sporca,

che in ogni angolo ti infastidisce

con il suo "mi dai una monetina"?

Io sono quel bambino con la faccia tonda e sporca, certamente non voluto, che da lontano

contempla gli autobus, in cui gli altri bambini ridono

forte, e fanno salti molto grandi.

Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky | At the Door of the School | The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

150 years of the First Impressionist Exhibition, 1874-2024

150 years ago, on April 15, 1874, a group of artists called the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. organized an exhibition in Paris that launched the movement called Impressionism.

Its founding members included Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, among others.

Thirty-one artists had gathered to hold their own art fair, outside the official Salon, in a declaration of independence that marked the birth of a groundbreaking art movement.

Claude Monet | Impression, Sunrise, 1872 | Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet

Joan Llimona | Romantic painter

Joan Llimona i Bruguera (1860-1926) was a Spanish artist who rose to popularity at end of the Romantic movement in Europe.

Llimona was a key contributor to the modernist movement.

Despite his brief life, Llimona made a lasting impact on the modernist movement in European art during the early 20th century.

Marcel Rieder | Academic painter

Marcel Rieder (1862-1942) was a French painter.

He was born in Thann. Rieder came from a distinguished family in Alsace; his grandfather Jean Jacques Rieder (1778-1852) was a minister of the Temple Neuf Protestant church in Strasbourg.

Marcel Rieder studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

He became a member of the Société des Artistes Français in 1894, and exhibited almost every year until 1939 in the Salon de Paris.

Marco Ricci | Baroque painter

Marco Ricci (1676-1730) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.

Early years

He was born at Belluno and received his first instruction in art from his uncle, Sebastiano Ricci, likely in Milan in 1694-6.

He left for Venice with his uncle in 1696, but had to flee the city.

He visited Rome, where he was for some time occupied in painting perspective views.

John Keats | Ode on a Grecian Urn / Ode su un'Urna Greca, 1819

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

Alfred Elmore | A Greek Ode | Christie's