Michael Alford, 1958 | Figurative painter

Michael Alford is a British figurative artist known for an expressive painting style that fuses classical technique with a modern sensibility. He lives and works in London.

Michael’s painting is diverse, reflecting his interest in a range of different subjects and ways of seeing. He paints contemporary cityscapes, street scenes, landscapes, figures and portraits.

He is also a muralist and war artist.

Rosa Bonheur | Realist painter

Rosa Bonheur (born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur; 16 March 1822 - 25 May 1899) was a French artist known best as a painter of animals (animalière). She also made sculpture in a realist style.

Her paintings include Ploughing in the Nivernais, first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1848, and now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and The Horse Fair (in French: Le marché aux chevaux), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1853 (finished in 1855) and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Hermann Hesse | Sono una stella / I am a star / Ich bin ein Stern

Sono una stella del firmamento

che osserva il mondo, disprezza il mondo

e si consuma nel proprio ardore.

Io sono il mare di notte in tempesta

il mare urlante che accumula nuovi

peccati e agli antichi rende mercede.

Abdullah Evindar

Edward Henry Potthast | Along the Mystic River, 1925-1927

From: Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

In a letter written shortly before his death the American painter Edward Henry Potthast (1857-1927) recalled that he spent most of his summers "along the New England coast-Annisquam, Gloucester and Provincetown. Of late years I have been going to the Maine coast".

To the list of places visited along the eastern coastline of the United States, Potthast might have added Noank, Connecticut, on the Mystic River, where he also sketched and is probably the subject of this painting.

Edward Henry Potthast's paintings along the northern shoreline of the United States are markedly different from his joyful scenes of New York City's beaches.

Al Saralis | Pittore figurativo

Il pittore Britanico di origine greca Al Saralis è nato e cresciuto in una città mineraria gallese nella Rhymney Valley.

Attualmente vive e lavora nell'Hampshire, Regno Unito.

Da quando Al si è laureato a Cardiff con una laurea in Belle Arti, la figura umana è stata la sua principale fonte di ispirazione.

I suoi dipinti sono composti di solito da un'unica figura e, sebbene privi di narrativa ovvia, portano ai nostri pensieri ed interpretazioni indagatori.

William Callow | Watercolor painter

William Callow (1812–1908) was an British landscape painter, engraver and water colourist.

Callow was born in Greenwich on 28 July 1812.

He was apprenticed to the artist Copley Fielding, where he learnt the technique of plein air sketching.

He went on to study under Theodore and Thales Fielding, where he learnt to colour prints and make aquatints, and was taught water colour painting between 1825-7.

In 1829 Thales Fielding found him work as an engraver in Paris, where he worked alongside his friend Charles Bentley. While in the French capital he was encouraged by Thomas Shotter Boys to take up watercolours again.

Friedrich Overbeck | Nazareni painter

Johann Friedrich Overbeck (3 July 1789 - 12 November 1869) was a German painter. A member of the Nazarene movement - group of early 19th-century German Romantic painters who aimed to revive spirituality in art. The name Nazarene came from a term of derision used against them for their affectation of a biblical manner of clothing and hair style - he also made four etchings.

Early life and education

Born in Lübeck, his ancestors for three generations had been Protestant pastors; his father Christian Adolph Overbeck (1755-1821) was doctor of law, poet, mystic pietist and burgomaster of Lübeck.

Within a stone's throw of the family mansion in the Konigstrasse stood the Gymnasium, where the uncle, doctor of theology and a voluminous writer, was the master; there the nephew became a classic scholar and received instruction in art.