Nikolay Dubovskoy | Hushing (Calm Before the Storm), 1890

Isaac Levitan: "Not everyone can convey such a capture from nature itself, like "Calm before the storm", where you feel not the author, but the elements themselves".

The painting Притихло" ("hushing" or "silencing", before the storm) display at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, is a masterpiece of Nikolay Nikanorovich Dubovskoy / Николай Никанорович Дубовской (1859-1918), a Russian landscape painter, associated with the Peredvizhniki (The Itinerants) - group of Russian realist artists who formed an artists' cooperative in protest of academic restrictions; it evolved into the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions in 1870.

The artist's most famous and landmark painting, which placed his name among the most famous Russian landscape painters.

It marked the beginning of the "Landscape of Mood" genre, developed by Nikolay Dubovskoy and Isaac Levitan.

Nikolay Dubovskoy | Calm Before the Storm, 1890 | State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Louis Rolland Trinquesse | After the Soirée, 1774

Louis Rolland Trinquesse (1746-1800) was a French Rococo painter.

He was a student at the Académie Royale from 1758 to at least 1770 and worked both as a portrait painter and a Genre painter.

His portraits are usually gentle and uncomplicated likenesses painted in pastel colours, for example the Young Girl (1777; Paris, Louvre).

Adolph von Menzel | Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim in Concert, 1854

Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (1815-1905) was a German Realist artist noted for drawings, etchings, and paintings.

Along with Caspar David Friedrich, he is considered one of the two most prominent German painters of the 19th century, and was the most successful artist of his era in Germany.

First known as Adolph Menzel, he was knighted in 1898 and changed his name to Adolph von Menzel.

Alphonse Spring | Violin Player, 1890

Alphons Spring (1843-1908) was a genre painter of the Munich School and co-founder of the artists' society Allotria in Munich.

Alphons Spring, who wrote himself Alfons Spring from around 1878, was born in Liepaja in Latvia and studied at the art school and academy in Saint Petersburg.

He moved to Munich 1870 where he became a student of Professor Wilhelm Diez.

Constance Marie Charpentier | Melancholy, 1801

Constance Marie Charpentier (1767-1849) was a French painter.

She specialized in genre scenes and portraits, mainly of children and women.

She was also known as Constance Marie Bondelu.

Constance-Marie Charpentier | Melancholy, 1801 | Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Edgar Degas | Combing the Hair, 1896

Women combing their hair, or having it combed, often appear in Degas’s work - for example, in his early Beach Scene, also in the National Gallery.

This late painting is one of his boldest treatments of the subject.

Here, a maid, wearing her servant’s uniform, combs the hair of her seated mistress, who is not yet fully dressed and who may also be pregnant.

Edgar Degas | Portrait of Estelle Musson Degas, 1872

Edgar Degas arrived in New Orleans in 1872 for an extended stay, two years after he had enlisted in the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War, and two years before he would join a group of painters back in Paris for the first of what would become known as the Impressionist Exhibitions.

It was a pivotal time in his career, one that brought to the fore many important familial, artistic, and personal connections.