Eugène Lami | Fashion in Paris

Eugène Louis Lami (1800-1890) was a French painter and lithographer.

He was a painter of fashionable Paris during the period of the July Monarchy and the Second French Empire and also made history paintings and illustrations for books such as Gil Blas and Manon Lescaut.

He worked at the studio of Horace Vernet then studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris with Camille Roqueplan and Paul Delaroche under Antoine-Jean Gros.

Anna Sahlsten | Genre painter

Anna Sofia Sahlstén (1859-1931) was a Finnish painter, primarily known for portraits and genre scenes.

Her father, Clas Vilhelm Sahlstén (1826-1897), was a Chamber Counselor who later became a writer.

Her mother was Edla Elisabeth Heinricius.

When she was eight, her family moved to Helsinki, where she attended a Swedish girls' school; receiving her certificate in 1877.

She then studied at the Finnish Society Drawing School from 1877 to 1880, then at a private school operated by Adolf von Becker, from 1880 to 1882.

Pietro Longhi | Rococò painter

Pietro Longhi (1701-1785) was a Venetian painter of contemporary genre scenes of life.

Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in the parish of Saint Maria, first child of the silversmith Alessandro Falca and his wife, Antonia. He adopted the Longhi last name when he began to paint.

He was initially taught by the Veronese painter Antonio Balestra, who then recommended the young painter to apprentice with the Bolognese Giuseppe Maria Crespi, who was highly regarded in his day for both religious and genre painting and was influenced by the work of Dutch painters.

Longhi returned to Venice before 1732.

Bella, Chagall's Eternal Muse

"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of LOVE" - Marc Chagall

The love story between Bella Rosenfeld (1889-1944) and Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a profound, almost mystical connection that began in 1909 in Saint Petersburg.

Bella, a 19-year-old from a wealthy Jewish family, crossed paths with Chagall, a 26-year-old aspiring artist still in art school.

Their love was instantaneous, a moment both would later describe as love at first sight.

Bella, who would go on to become a writer, was captivated by Chagall’s deep blue eyes, describing them as if they had “fallen straight from the sky” and floated independently.

Marc Chagall | Les Amoureux, 1928

Mariangela Gualtieri | Se la parola amore è

Se la parola amore è

uno straccio lurido,

se non ho altra lingua per dire cosa

amo, se l’anima adesso è un ingombro

e il cielo un posto come un altro

se dormiamo e dormiamo

Alfred W. Elmore (1815-1881) | A Greek Ode | Christie's

René Magritte | L'utopie (Utopia), 1945

Painted in June 1945, René Magritte (Belgian surrealist artist, 1898-1967) himself described the scene in L'utopie in his publication, Dix tableaux de Magritte précédes de descriptions, published the following year.

There, he explained that, 'The rose is alone on an island'..

This sense of the solitude of the flower, already emphasised by the span of the distant horizon and the vastness of the ocean, is thus reinforced by Magritte's statement and his own declared intention.

How did the rose reach this island?

René Magritte | L'utopie (Utopia), 1945

"Corot painted 3.000 canvases, 10.000 of which have been sold in America"..!

The strong market for Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's (French painter, 1796-1875) works and his relatively easy-to-imitate late painting style resulted in a huge production of Corot forgeries between 1870 and 1939.

René Huyghe (French writer on the history, psychology and philosophy of art, curator at the Louvre's department of paintings (from 1930), a professor at the Collège de France director of the Musée Jacquemart-André, a member of the Académie Française, 1906-1997) famously quipped that "Corot painted three thousand canvases, ten thousand of which have been sold in America".