Charles Courtney Curran | Lady with a Bouquet (Snowballs) 1890

The genre painter Charles Courtney Curran is best known for his canvases depicting beautiful ladies in pleasant settings.

Here, a young woman–the artist’s wife Grace Wickham Curran - arranges a bouquet of snowballs, pausing to take in their sweet fragrance.

The small scale of the painting matches the intimacy of the moment.

Her delicate features, light green shawl and blossom-like hat equate her to a flower, suggesting that she is as lovely and dainty as the blooms she savors. Curran’s choice of flower is likely a deliberate one.

At the time this work was painted, bouquets were used to convey messages, with each flower having a specific symbolic meaning.

According to the Victorian "language of flowers", the snowball symbolized thoughts of heaven, adding an air of Christian piety to this work. | © Birmingham Museum of Art

Charles Courtney Curran | Lady with a Bouquet, 1890 | Birmingham Museum of Art

Raymond Thibésart (1874-1968) | Impressionist painter

Raymond Thibésart was born into an affluent family in the town of Troyes (France), the historical capital of the Champagne region. Shortly afterwards, the family moved to Enghiens-les-Bains, an attractive spa town to the North of Paris.

It was here that they met the Boggios, a charismatic family who had just emigrated from Venezuala; Emilio Boggio, a talented Impressionist painter, became Thibésart's long-standing mentor and friend, encouraging his early promise and providing him with his first art lessons.

Peter Brown (Pete the Street), 1967

Peter Edward Mackenzie Brown is a British Impressionist painter popularly known as "Pete the Street" from his practice of working on location in all weathers.

He is best known for his depictions of street scenes and landscapes. He loves working 'in the thick of it' painting the streets of Varanasi to Toronto and closer to home in Barcelona, Paris, London and his adopted home city of Bath.

He insists on working directly from the subject refusing to use photographic reference.

Abbott Fuller Graves (1859-1936)

Nato a Weymouth, nel Massachusetts, Abbott Fuller Graves è stato un influente pittore di Boston noto per le sue scene di giardini floreali e nature morte.

Sebbene gran parte del suo lavoro, in linea con lo stile della Boston School, descriva gli argomenti in modo realistico, le sue pennellate spesse ed impastate i dipinti luminosi e colorati illuminati dal sole mostravano la sua accettazione dell'impressionismo.

Nel 1884 andò a Parigi e in Italia e si concentrò sulla pittura di nature morte, lavorando spesso con il suo buon amico Edmund Tarbell, anche lui artista di Boston. Graves e Tarbell abitarono insieme in Europa, dove entrambi studiarono pittura di nature morte.

Max Agostini (French, 1914-1997)

Max Michel Agostini, of Corsican origin from his grandparents, was born in 1914.

He discovered his talent for Impressionistic painting while studying at the Paris Beaux-Arts School.

Drafted into the French army for five years during the Second World War, Max-Agostini was a prisoner of war for three years.

During the postwar years, he was already recognized as an excellent portrait and landscape artist in Châteauroux, where he lived for several years.

Later, he moved to Gargilesse in the Berry region, and to Provence. He died in January 1997, but painted his greatest canvases just a few days just before his hospitalization.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)

Camille Pissarro, in full Jacob-Abraham-Camille Pissarro, painter and printmaker who was a key figure in the history of Impressionism.

Pissarro was the only artist to show his work in all eight Impressionist group exhibitions; throughout his career he remained dedicated to the idea of such alternative forums of exhibition.

Franz Skarbina | Pittore impressionista

Franz Skarbina (1849-1910) è stato un pittore impressionista Tedesco, disegnatore, incisore ed illustratore.

Nato a Berlino, era figlio di un orafo di Zagabria.

Dal 1865-1869, ha studiato all'Accademia delle arti prussiane.

Dopo la laurea, ha trascorso due anni come tutor alle figlie del conte Friedrich von Perponcher-Sedlnitzky (1821-1909), durante il quale ha viaggiato a Dresda, Vienna, Venezia, Monaco, Norimberga e Merano.

Camille Corot (1796-1875) | Lo stile

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot Corot è una delle figure più significative della pittura di paesaggio. Le sue opere, infatti, attingono a piene mani dalla tradizione neoclassica e, al contempo, anticipano le innovazioni en plein air dell'Impressionismo.

Claude Monet, nel 1897, avrebbe detto di lui: «Qui c'è un solo grande maestro: Corot. Non siamo nulla nei suoi confronti, nulla».

Né il suo contributo nella pittura di figura è meno importante: Edgar Degas, altro noto pittore impressionista, preferiva le sue figure rispetto ai suoi paesaggi, e in tal senso Corot esercitò un'influenza che traspare persino nelle tele di Pablo Picasso. Nella sua vita eseguì più di tremila dipinti ed era considerato dai contemporanei come uno dei massimi paesaggisti mai esistiti, a lato di nomi illustri come Claude Lorrain, John Constable e J. M. W. Turner.