Sir Peter Lely | Study for a Portrait of a Woman, 1670

From: Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sketch provides a good example of Sir Peter Lely’s (Dutch-born English Baroque Era Painter, 1618-1680) working method, as one of the most successful portraitists in England in the second half of the seventeenth century.

Following the example of Van Dyck, Lely painted only the sitter’s head in his or her presence, sometimes laying in an outline for the pose and costume.

Camille Pissarro at the Museum Barberini

Camille Pissarro | Boulevard Montmartre, Twilight, 1897

In a series of fourteen paintings Camille Pissarro focused on the Boulevard Montmartre in the center of Paris.

From his room in the Grand Hôtel de Russie, with the opera building behind him, he had a view of the busy street on which twenty thousand carriages rattled by every day, past the expensive shops and the popular Café Tortoni.

This picture shows the boulevard with fresh green trees in springtime. | Source: © Museum Barberini

Ingrid Tusell, 1978 | Pittrice surrealista

Ingrid Tusell è un'artista nata a Barcellona ed ora vive in un vecchio mulino restaurato nel terreno montuoso di Teruel, in Spagna.

Ingrid dipinge donne che ricordano le forti guerriere indigene.

Il loro sguardo congelato e intenso permea un senso di conoscenza "ultraterrena" e di energia universale femminile.

Spesso crivellati di vita animale e vegetale, i soggetti femminili di Ingrid si fondono all'interno dei loro ambienti consentendo loro di avere una connessione simbiotica con la natura.

Dorothy Johnstone | Modern painter

Dorothy Johnstone (1892-1980) è stata una pittrice ed acquerellista Scozzese.

Johnstone è nata ad Edimburgo nel 1892 ed è cresciuta a Napier Road, vicino alla Gothic Mansion, Rockville.

Suo padre, il paesaggista George Whitton Johnstone RSA (1849-1901), incoraggiò il suo talento artistico ed all'età di 16 anni si iscrisse come studentessa all'Edinburgh College of Art.

Ha frequentato un corso con Ernest Stephen Lumsden dove ha rivelato il suo talento nella ritrattistica informale, un genere per il quale è diventata famosa.

Nel 1914 divenne membro del personale dell'Edinburgh College of Art.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Champ de bananiers, 1881

Starting in 1881 the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel regularly bought paintings from Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The painter then undertook all the trips he had previously been unable to afford and which would complete his artistic training.

His first trip took him to Algeria, in the footsteps of Delacroix whom he admired. Renoir's visual experience there was as intense as it had been for the older artist.

Seduced by the colours and the "incredible wealth" of nature here, he produced several pure landscapes, quite rare in his oeuvre. This field of banana trees is in the Essai garden in Hamma, created in 1832 in Algiers.

Francis Sydney Muschamp | Pittore di genere

Francis Sydney Muschamp was an British painter, the son of the landscape painter, Francis Muschamp (active 1865-1881).

The family moved to London in 1865, the year that Muschamp Sr. began to exhibit at the Royal Society of British Artists.

The younger Muschamp began to exhibit at the Royal Society of British Artists in 1870 and continued to exhibit his paintings at the major halls until 1903.

Anna Airy | War artist

Anna Airy (6 June 1882 - 23 October 1964) was an British oil painter, pastel artist and etcher. She was one of the first women officially commissioned as a war artist and was recognised as one of the leading women artists of her generation.

Early life

Airy was born in Greenwich, London, the daughter of an engineer, Wilfrid Airy, and Anna née Listing, and the granddaughter of the Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy.

Airy trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1899-1903, where she studied alongside William Orpen and Augustus John, and under Fred Brown, Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer.