Claude Monet | Figures / Portraits

• I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint...
• No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
• Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.
• I have never had a studio, and I do not understand shutting oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no.
• I do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouillere for which I've done a few bad rough sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.

Peder Severin Krøyer | Midsummer Eve bonfire on Skagen's beach, 1906

The painting includes many of the Skagen Painters: Krøyer's daughter Vibeke, mayor Otto Schwartz and his wife Alba Schwartz, Michael Ancher, Degn Brøndum, Anna Ancher, Holger Drachmann and his 3rd wife Soffi, the Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén and Marie Krøyer.

This picture was Krøyer’s last large figure painting.
Peder Severin Krøyer (1851-1909)** gathers all the representatives of the artist colony, members of the town’s bourgeoisie, as well as some of the residents of Skagen, in a large circle around the Midsummer eve bonfire on Skagen Sønderstrand.

The painting is a tribute to the artist colony in Skagen, but it is the first time Krøyer depicts the local population together with the artists.

There are still clear differences between the two groups, because the artists and the bourgeoisie are placed on the lighter, left side of the picture, while most of the residents are placed on the darker, right side.

Albrecht Altdorfer | The Battle of Alexander at Issus, 1529

The Battle of Alexander at Issus is a 1529 oil painting by the German artist** Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480-1538), a pioneer of landscape art and a founding member of the Danube school.
It portrays the 333 BC Battle of Issus, in which Alexander the Great secured a decisive victory over Darius III of Persia and gained crucial leverage in his campaign against the Persian Empire.
The painting is widely regarded as Altdorfer's masterpiece, and is one of the most famous examples of the type of Renaissance** landscape painting known as the world landscape, which here reaches an unprecedented grandeur.

William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)

William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849 - October 25, 1916) was an American painter**, known as an exponent of Impressionism** and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.

Chase won many honors** at home and abroad, was a member of the National Academy of Design, New York, and from 1885-1895 was president of the Society of American Artists.

He became a member of the Ten American Painters after John Henry Twachtman died.

Édouard Manet: "I need to work to feel well"

⦁ There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.

⦁ No one can be a painter unless he cares for painting above all else.

⦁ Color is a matter of taste and of sensitivity.

Frank Duveneck (1848-1919) Siesta

Frank Duveneck (October 9, 1848 - January 3, 1919) was born in Covington, Kentucky, outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1848. He received his formal training in Munich at the Bavarian Royal Academy during the early 1870s, and established his own school there in 1878. The following year, Lizzie Boott and her father Francis, both expatriate artists from Boston, were among Duveneck’s students. Through the early 1880s Duveneck courted Miss Boott, who lived with her father at the Villa Castellani in Bellosguardo, outside of Florence.

He also traveled extensively during this period, from Munich to Florence, England and possibly the United States.

Édouard Manet: "Color is a matter of taste and sensitivity"

• "Color is a matter of taste and sensitivity".

• "Every new painting is like throwing myself into the water without knowing how to swim.".

• "I paint as I feel like painting; to hell with all their studies".