William Bouguereau | La magliaia, 1873

Subito dopo che Adolphe William Bouguereau (1825-1905) completò Tricoteuse, nel 1874, Goupil trasferì il dipinto nella loro galleria all'Aia e lo vendette alla famiglia Poortman.

Il Tricoteuse è rimasto nei Paesi Bassi da allora e con la stessa famiglia per quasi un secolo.

Senza dubbio con l'aiuto del suo potente commerciante, Goupil, Bouguereau era stato acquisito da molti collezionisti nei Paesi Bassi in quel momento.

Il Tricoteuse avrebbe sicuramente contribuito alla reputazione di Bouguereau ai massimi livelli della società olandese.

L'immagine di una contadina in costume italiano, è uno dei primi esempi sul tema della maglieria, a cui ritorna per tutta la sua carriera.

Claude Monet | Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1865-1866

From: Musée d’Orsay, Paris

This fragment, there is a second also in the Musée d'Orsay, is one of the remaining parts of the monumental Luncheon on the Grass by Monet.

The work was started in the spring of 1865 and measured over four metres by six.

It was intended to be both a tribute and a challenge to Manet whose painting of the same title had been the subject of much sarcasm from the public as well as the critics when it was exhibited in the Salon des Refusés in 1863.

But the project was abandoned in 1866, just before the Salon where Monet intended to show it, opened.

Sonia Delaunay | Mother of Abstraction

From: MoMa, The Museum of Modern Art

"We are...only at the beginning

of color research (full of mysteries

still to be discovered)...."

Sonia Delaunay-Terk (13 November 1885 - 5 December 1979)

Red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet: these color combinations were vital to the artistic practice and theory of Sonia Delaunay-Terk, whose vast body of work-paintings and drawings, prints and illustrations, textiles and furnishings, clothing and accessories-enthralled its earliest viewers, users, and wearers.

While living in Paris in the 1910s, Delaunay-Terk and her husband, Robert Delaunay, began to explore the visual properties of contrasting colors-colors opposite one another on the color wheel.

Franck Gérard, 1969 | AI retro creations

Franck Gérard is a self-taught French visual artist living and working in Angers, France who worked creating computer graphics for architecture for over 20 years.

He began presenting geometric abstract artworks on Instagram in 2020.

With 190,000 followers in 3 years Franck Gérard is recognised as an innovative visual artist.

Anton Romako | Genre painter

Anton Romako was an Austrian painter.

Romako painted a large number of landscape scenes (for example from the Bad Gastein), influenced by the Barbizon school, but is known mostly for his portraits and historical scenes.

His early works display the influence of Biedermeier realism, while the late works are painted in a nervous expressionist style which disturbed his contemporaries.

Francine Van Hove, 1942 | Modern painter

Francine Van Hove is a contemporary French painter.

Born in Saint-Mandé (Seine, France), she studied in Paris and received a Fine Arts degree with qualifications to teach in secondary schools.

After teaching one year at Lycee de Jeunes Filles in Strasbourg, she resigned from her position and decided to come back to Paris in 1964 where she now lives and continues to paint.

Robert Völcker | Romantic painter

Robert Völcker Robert Volcker (1854-1924) was a German visual artist who was born in Dohna, near Pirna, in Saxony.

He learned under Ferdinand Pauwels (Belgian history painter, 1830-1904) at the Dresden Academy.

He then moved to Munich, where he died in 1924.

Camille Claudel | Study of Left Hand, 1889

Did you know many of Auguste Rodin's statues' hands and feet were modeled by Camille Claudel (1864-1943) while she worked in his studio?

A common friend wrote in 1898 that many of her hands and feet are "preserved with great care by her teacher as pieces of the rarest perfection".

A stunning artist in her own right, Claudel impressed Rodin and many others for her incredibly expressive and life-like sculptures.

This bronze study of a left hand by Claudel, while tiny, holds immense detail and vitality.

Camille Claudel | Study of Left Hand, 1889 | Collection Xavier Eeckhout, Courtesy Galerie Malaquais