Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Joie de vivre

"To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty!

There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them" - Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

William Henry Gore | Pittore romantico

William Henry Gore RI (1857–1942) è stato un pittore ed acquerellista inglese vissuto tra la fine dell'epoca vittoriana e l'inizio del XX secolo.

È noto per i suoi paesaggi rurali del Berkshire, sua terra natale, e per i suoi piccoli dipinti di genere, raffiguranti bambini ed animali.

Gore si collocava nella tradizione del tardo Romanticismo e Naturalismo vittoriano, fioriti nel periodo a cavallo tra l'inizio del XX secolo, ma che rapidamente divennero fuori moda all'indomani della Grande Guerra e dei successivi cambiamenti sociali e politici.

Salvatore Quasimodo | Estate / Summer

Cicale, sorelle, nel sole

con voi mi nascondo

nel folto dei pioppi

e aspetto le stelle.

Peder Severin Krøyer | Summer Evening at Skagen Beach, The Artist and his Wife, 1899

Vincent van Gogh | Garden with Courting Couples, 1887

Van Gogh called this sunny park scene 'the painting of the garden with lovers'.

Couples in love are strolling under the young chestnut trees and sitting along the winding paths.

He used a free variation on the technique of the Pointillists.

Essential Facts:

Title: Garden with Courting Couples: Square Saint-Pierre

Date: Paris, May 1887

Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: 75.0 cm x 113.0 cm

Current location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Václav Brožík | Pittore accademico

Václav Brožík (1851-1901) è stato uno storico dell'arte, considerato il più grande pittore accademico Ceco.

Nel 1896 divenne il primo, e finora unico artista Ceco, a diventare membro dell'Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Václav Brožík studiò dal 1868 presso l'Accademia di Belle Arti di Praga sotto Emil Lauffer.

Nel 1871 si trasferì per poter proseguire i suoi studi all'Accademia di Dresda e dal 1873 all'Accademia di Monaco di Baviera, dove fu influenzato in particolare da Carl Theodor von Piloty.

Frederick Morgan ROI | Genre painter

Frederick Morgan ROI (1847-1927) is known mostly for his romantic and sentimental paintings of children in the same style as his contemporary Arthur John Elsley.

His paintings achieved great popularity in his lifetime and were widely published.

He exhibited with the Royal Academy and was a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI).

Morgan's paintings are exhibited at many art galleries and museums including the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth.

His Turn Next was used to advertise Pears' Soap and is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.

Elli Michler | Ti auguro Tempo

Non ti auguro un dono qualsiasi,

ti auguro soltanto quello che i più non hanno.

Ti auguro tempo, per divertirti e per ridere;

se lo impiegherai bene potrai ricavarne qualcosa.

Anton Dieffenbach | Pittore di genere

Anton Heinrich Dieffenbach (1831-1914) è stato un pittore paesaggista e di genere Tedesco, noto per i suoi ritratti di bambini.

Si trasferì a Strasburgo con i suoi genitori nel 1840 e prese lezioni da un artista locale di nome Charles Duhamel.

Grazie alla raccomandazione di Duhamel, poté recarsi a Parigi e studiare con lo scultore James Pradier.

Fabio Cipolla | Orientalist painter

Fabio Cipolla (1852-1935) was a distinguished Italian painter of genre scenes and "costume paintings".

He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and his works were published in various periodicals.

He made his first appearance at the exhibitions in Milan in 1879 and in Turin in 1880, and in the following years he developed the adoption of a mannered narrative realism on genre subjects.

Fabio Cipolla lived and worked in Rome all his life.

Nikolai Belsky | Genre painter

Russian painter Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky (1868-1945) painted mostly genre paintings, especially of the education of peasant children, portraits, and impressionistic landscapes studies.

Bogdanov was born in the village of Shitiki in Smolensk Governorate in 1868, then he added to his surname "Belsky" in accordance with the name of the Uyezd where he was born.

He studied at the elementary school where his teacher was Sergey Rachinsky, then studied icon-painting at the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra in 1883, modern painting at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1884 to 1889, and at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg from 1894 to 1895.

Adolf von Becker | Something for the Cat, 1882

Adolf von Becker (1831-1909) was a Finnish genre painter and art professor of German descent, one of the first Finnish artists to study in Paris, who taught many of the young artists of the Golden Age of Finnish Art.

Becker was born in Helsinki, where he began his artistic studies at the newly founded Finnish Art Society Drawing School; he also studied law.

In 1853, he completed his law degree and became a trainee at the Court of Appeals in Turku.

Adolf von Becker | Something for the Cat, 1882 | Paris Salon, 1882 | Finnish National Gallery

Tomaso Albinoni | Oboe concerto in D minor op. 9

"Oboe Concerto in D minor" has long been regarded as one of the finest concertos composed for the instrument.

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (1671-1751) was an Italian composer of the Baroque era.

His output includes operas, concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments, sinfonias, and solo cantatas.

While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is known today for his instrumental music, especially his concertos.

Samuel Scott | London, a view of the Thames and Old Westminster Bridge looking towards Westminster Abbey

Vincenzo Migliaro | Mercato del pesce a Porta Capuana, 1893

Vincenzo Migliaro (1858-1938) was an Italian painter born in Naples.

After learning the art of wood carving at courses held by the Società Centrale Operaia Napoletana and working in the studio of Stanislao Lista, Migliaro enrolled in 1875 at the Naples Institute of Fine Arts, where his masters included Domenico Morelli.

Eugenia Gapchinska, 1974 | Lisa and her Dreams

Evgeniya Hennadiyivna Haptschynska, internationally known as Eugenia Gapchinska / Євгенія Гапчинська, was born on November 15, 1974 in Kharkiv.

She is the fifth child in the family. At the age of five, she went to school.

At the age of 13, she became a student at Kharkiv Art College.

Graduate of the Institute of Industrial Arts in Kharkiv, Eugenia Gapchinska is doing her internship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg (Germany).

Hugues Merle | The Forgotten, 1850

Hugues Merle (1822–1881) has long been associated with his friend and possible rival, William Bouguereau (1825-1905).

Merle was just two years older than Bouguereau, and their thematic and artistic concerns and meticulous degree of finish resulted in comparison from critics and collectors alike.

Merle began exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1847 and went on to become to teacher of Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau, Bouguereau's wife and a talented painter in her own right.

Hugues Merle | The Forgotten, 1850 | Sotheby's

Jules Breton | The painter of peasant life

Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (1827-1906) was a 19th-century French naturalist painter.

His paintings are heavily influenced by the French countryside and his absorption of traditional methods of painting helped make him one of the primary transmitters of the beauty and idyllic vision of rural existence.

He was one of the best known painters of his period in his native France as well as England and the United States.

Jules-Breton | The Song of the Lark, 1884 | Art Institute of Chicago

William Bouguereau / Franz Liszt | Liebestraum (Dreams of Love)

Liebesträume (German for Dreams of Love) is a set of three solo piano nocturnes (S.541/R.211) by Franz Liszt published in 1850.

Originally the three Liebesträume were conceived as lieder after poems by Ludwig Uhland and Ferdinand Freiligrath.

In 1850 two versions appeared simultaneously as a set of songs for high voice and piano, and as transcriptions for piano two-hands.

Franz Liszt | Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor, S.244/2, is the second in a set of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies by composer Franz Liszt, published in 1851, and is by far the most famous of the set.

The Hungarian-born composer and pianist Franz Liszt was strongly influenced by the music heard in his youth, particularly Hungarian folk music, with its unique gypsy scale, rhythmic spontaneity and direct, seductive expression.

These elements would eventually play a significant role in Liszt's compositions.

Josef Nikolaus Kriehuber | Portrait of Franz Liszt, 1846

Nikolai Sverchkov | Equine painter

Nikolai Yegorovich Sverchkov / Николай Егорович Сверчков (1817-1898) was a Russian painter who specialized in genre and hunting scenes with horses.

He was also a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts.

His father was an Imperial groom and coachman. As a child, he worked with his father and began drawing animals.

Impressed with his work, his parents arranged for him to take lessons at the Imperial Academy of Arts with the battle painter, Alexander Sauerweid, from 1827 to 1829.