George Elgar Hicks | Genre Victorian-era painter

George Elgar Hicks (13 March 1824 - 1914) was an English painter🎨 during the Victorian era.

He is best known for his large genre paintings🎨, which emulate William Powell Frith🎨 in style, but was also a society portraitist.

Born on 13 March 1824 in Lymington, Hampshire, George Elgar Hicks was the second son of a wealthy magistrate.

His parents encouraged Hicks to become a doctor and so Hicks studied medicine at University College from 1840-1842.

William Powell Frith (1819-1909)

William Powell Frith (1819-1909) was British painter.

The few pictures that made Frith's reputation are of contemporary subjects.

These started, tentatively, with a picture of a servant girl (c. 1853), which was engraved with the saleable title of Sherry Sir?

Frith produced his first ambitious modern-life subject: Life at the Seaside (or Ramsgate Sands, exh. RA 1854; London, Buckingham Pal., Royal Col.)..

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller | Genre / Orientalist painter

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (15 January 1793 in Vienna - 23 August 1865 in Hinterbrühl, Austria) was an Austrian painter and writer. Waldmüller was one of the most important Austrian painters of the Biedermeier period.

Career

In 1807 Waldmüller attended the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

He lived in Bratislava and, in 1811, he worked as a teacher of arts for the children of Count Gyulay in Croatia.

He returned to the Academy of Vienna and studied portrait painting.

In 1814 he married the singer Katharina Weidner, and subsequently went on tour with her, working as a set designer.

Michelangelo Buonarroti | Giunto è già 'l corso della vita mia | Sonetto 285

Giunto è già 'l corso della vita mia

Per tempestoso mar con fragil barca

Al comun porto , ov'a render si varca

Conto e ragion d'ogni opra trista e pia.

Frithjof Smith-Hald | Landscape painter

Frithjof Smith-Hald (1846-1903) was a Norwegian landscape painter.

From 1865-1870 he attended the Royal Drawing School (established in 1816) in the capital Christiania, and Johan Fredrik Eckersberg (1822-1870) Painting School in Border (established in 1859).

From 1871-1873 he moved to Karlsruhe in Germany, and taught with Hans Gude (1825-1903) who had gone there in 1864.

From 1873-1878 Smith-Hald was at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf where Gude had been from 1841. But he preferred Paris and moved there in 1878, and became Norway's most famous painter in Europe at the time.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: "Ho cercato di fare ciò che è vero e non ideale"

• "Of course one should not drink much, but often".

• "I paint things as they are. I don't comment".

• "Dipingo le cose come stanno. Io non commento. Io registro".

• "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return".

David Černý, 1967 | Metalmorphosis | Giant Rotating Heads

Metalmorphosis is a 14-ton water fountain that's shaped like a human head. On top of that, the sculpture is made with over 35 steel layers that can independently rotate 360 degrees to re-arrange its face and trip your brains out.

The mirrored water fountain is made by Czech sculptor David Černý and is located in Whitehall Technology Park in Charlotte, North Carolina.

James Smetham | The Dream, 1856

James Smetham (1821-1889), a Victorian painter and critic, is better remembered for his friendships with such Pre-Raphaelite figureheads as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Ruskin than for the short time in his career when he adopted their artistic ideology into his own aesthetic.

"The Dream" is a good example of Smetham’s take on the Pre-Raphaelite style as it sports many of its characteristic elements, including the arched format, meticulous finish, and moody intensity.

James Smetham | The Dream, 1856 | High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia