Alphonse Maria Mucha | Master of Art Nouveau

Alphonse Mucha was born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1860 and moved to Paris in 1890 where he became the star of the poster-art movement under the patronage of the Sarah Bernhardt. After World War I he returned to Czechoslovakia and became the father of a slavic arts and crafts movement which combined elements of art nouveau with classic national themes. In addition to commercial art, jewelry design, interior decoration, sculpture and stage design, Mucha experimented with lettering and calligraphy to produce excellent source material for unique typefaces. Mucha's style is virtually synonymous with French Art Nouveau and he is one of the most imitated artists and designers of all time.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: "It's with my brush that I make love"

"People love to be nice, but you must give them the chance".

"Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art".

"The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion".

Jerome G. Parker | Portrait painter

A Central California native, Jerome Garth Parker comes from a family of artists and musicians. A quiet and introspective figure, Jerome is active in galleries in this beautiful region of his home state.

Figurative compositions, closely observed from life, comprise many of this artists rich work in oils and charcoal.

Though clearly inspired by the masters, Jerome's intriguing subjects nevertheless capture a certain contemporary view of life in the moment.

Antonio Ermolao Paoletti | Venetian flower sellers

Antonio Ermolao Paoletti (Venice, 1834-1912) was an Italian painter, mainly of Venetian genre scenes, recalling Bamboccianti life of children and women, as well as sacred fresco work for churches in the Veneto.

Antonio's father, Ermolao Paoletti, was a well known scholar and writer of Venice.

He wrote a much cited expansive guide to its architecture, monuments, artistic works, and customs.

He also wrote a dictionary of Venetian dialect. He was an engraver and painter, and was a professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice.

Pablo Picasso: "La pittura non è fatta per decorare gli appartamenti"

• "Quando uno inizia un ritratto e cerca per successive eliminazioni di trovare la forma pura... si finisce inevitabilmente con un uovo..."

• "Dipingere non è un'operazione estetica: è una forma di magia intesa a compiere un'opera di mediazione fra questo mondo estraneo ed ostile e noi."

• "Dipingo gli oggetti come li penso, non come li vedo."

• "I 40 anni sono quell'età in cui ci si sente finalmente giovani. Ma è troppo tardi."

Mary Jane Ansell, 1972

Mary Jane Ansell è stata finalista del prestigioso BP Portrait Award nel 2004, 2009, 2010 e 2012 e successivamente è stata incaricata dalla National Portrait Gallery di dipingere Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

Espone regolarmente con la Royal Society of Portrait Painters, è membro del CBPP Contemporary British Portrait Painters, vive nel Regno Unito ed espone a livello internazionale con recenti mostre collettive e personali a Londra, New York e Los Angeles.

Rabindranath Tagore | At the end of the day

I know, this day will come to an end

At the end of the day

Wanly smiling

The dying sun will look at my face

Bidding me its last farewell.

The flute will play by the side of the way

The cattle will graze on the banks of the river

Louis Apol | Winter landscape with sunset

Giuseppe De Nittis | Figura di donna, 1880

Giuseppe De Nittis (February 25, 1846 - August 21, 1884) was one of the most important Italian painters of the 19th century, whose work merges the styles of Salon art and Impressionism.

De Nittis exhibited twelve paintings in the Exposition Universelle of 1878, and was awarded a gold medal.

In that same year he received the Légion d’honneur.

Juan Gris | The reader, 1926

• "Cézanne made a cylinder out of a bottle. I start from the cylinder to create a special kind of individual object. I make a bottle - a particular bottle - out of a cylinder".

• "I try to make concrete that which is abstract".

• "No work which is destined to become a classic can look like the classics which have preceded it. In art, as in biology, there is heredity but no identity with the ascendants. Painters inherit characteristics acquired by their forerunners; that is why no important work of art can belong to any period but its own, to the very moment of its creation. It is necessarily dated by its own appearance. The conscious will of the painter cannot intervene".

Charles Ricketts R.A. | The Wise and Foolish Virgins, 1914

Elizabeth Forbes | Blackberry Gathering, 1912

Elizabeth Forbes was born in Canada and studied in New York and Munich.

In 1890 she married Stanhope Forbes.

Both painters were leading members of the group of artists who worked at Newlyn in Cornwall at the end of the 19th century, painting local outdoor subjects full of light and atmosphere using characteristic free brushwork.

Elizabeth Forbes | Blackberry Gathering, 1912 | Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Van Gogh | Portraits

Vincent van Gogh, known for his landscapes, seemed to find painting portraits his greatest ambition.

He said of portrait studies, "The only thing in painting that excites me to the depths of my soul, and which makes me feel the infinite more than anything else".

Vincent Van Gogh | The flowers

Vincent Van Gogh painted several versions of landscapes with flowers, as seen in View of Arles with Irises, and paintings of flowers, including Irises, Sunflowers, lilacs and roses.

Some reflect his interests in the language of color, and also in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints.

He completed two series of sunflowers: the first while he was in Paris in 1887, and the second during his stay in Arles the following year.

Francisco Goya | La duquesa de Abrantes, 1816

Doña Manuela Isidra Téllez-Girón y Alonso de Pimentel (1793-1838) era la figlia minore dei Duchi di Osuna (P00739) e sorella della Marchesa di Santa Cruz, anch'essa ritratta da Goya.

Nel 1813 sposò Don Ángel María de Carvajal y Fernández de Córdoba y Gonzaga (1793-1839), futuro VIII Duca di Abrantes (1816).

Come il resto dei suoi fratelli, ha ricevuto un'educazione illuminata dalla sua famiglia e tra i suoi hobby c'erano la musica ed il canto, come rivela Goya nel suo ritratto attraverso la partitura musicale.

Cesare Lapini (1848-1893) | Sorpresa

Agnolo Bronzino | Maria Magdalena, 1565

Mary Magdalene (Young Florentine Woman portrayed as the Magdalene) is an painting of about 1565 by the Florentine painter Agnolo Bronzino.

It is now in the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas.

Shoulder length representation of a young woman holding an alabaster ointment jar in her proper right hand.

She is blond, has a halo, and turns to the left.

She wears a green dress and a yellow scarf (identified as cangiant).

She has pearls in her hair.

Jean Metzinger | Woman with a Fan, 1913

Juan Gris | La chanteuse /La cantante, 1926

André Lhote | House by the Lake, 1925

Dante Gabriel Rossetti | Roman Widow, 1874

François Boucher | Head of a Young Girl, 1740-1750

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)

Maestro del sacro e del profano, Sandro Botticelli è stato descritto come un outsider nella corrente principale della pittura italiana, avendo egli un interesse limitato per molti degli aspetti associati alla pittura del Quattrocento, come l'ispirazione diretta all'arte classica e la rappresentazione realistica di anatomia umana, prospettiva e paesaggio.

Infatti, la sua formazione gli ha permesso di rappresentare questi aspetti della pittura, senza però lasciarsi omologare dallo scenario contemporaneo.

Claude Rogers (1907-1997) Eclipse at Blandford, 1952

Brita Nordencreutz (1899-1982) At the Piano, 1950

Augusto Giacometti | Il pioniere della pittura Astratta

Augusto Giacometti (1877-1947) fu un importante pittore Svizzero legato al liberty ed al simbolismo.

E' considerato un pioniere dell’arte astratta.

A lui si devono, inoltre, alcune particolari realizzazioni artistiche nell’ambito della pittura su vetro e della pittura murale monumentale.

Jean Metzinger | Seated Woman, 1919

Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (24 June 1883 - 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter**, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote a theoretical work on Cubism.

Odilon Redon | Mysterious Boat

William-Adolphe Bouguereau | Idylle: famille antique, 1860

At the time that Bouguereau painted Idylle: famille antique he was a rising star on the Paris art scene. After studying with the esteemed French Academic master François Picot, Bouguereau gained admittance to the hallowed halls of Paris' École des Beaux-Arts.
In 1849, he exhibited for the first time in the Paris Salon and the following year won the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome.

During his time in Italy, Bouguereau traveled extensively, studying the Renaissance masters** who inspired his early fascination with classical antiquity, as demonstrated by the present painting.

Alfred Henry Maurer | The Rendezvous, 1904-05

Diego Velázquez | An Old Woman Cooking Eggs, 1618

Old Woman Frying Eggs is a genre painting by Diego Velázquez, produced during his Seville period.

The date is not precisely known but is thought to be around the turn of 1618 before his definitive move to Madrid in 1623.

The painting is in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh.

Velázquez frequently used working-class characters in early paintings like this one, in many cases using his family as models; the old woman here also appears in his Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1618).

Van Gogh | Outskirts of Paris, 1886