Francisco De Zurbarán | Vita e pittura

Francisco Zurbarán (1598-1664), fu l'artista barocco che meglio seppe rappresentare la religiosità controriformista della Chiesa spagnola del 17° secolo.

Profondamente religioso, Zurbarán rimase personalità singolare ed appartata.

Nella sua vasta produzione di soggetti sacri, le figure assurgono a simboli di intensa spiritualità (dipinti per il convento di S. Pablo el Real di Siviglia, commissionatigli nel 1626, ora sparsi in chiese e musei della città; serie delle sante, 1639-45, in vari musei europei).

Nella fase finale della sua attività si dedicò alla natura morta, che rese in modi estremamente moderni.

Franz von Lenbach | Life and paintings

Franz Seraph Lenbach (1836-1904), after 1882, Ritter von Lenbach was a German painter, known primarily for his portraits of prominent personalities from the nobility, the arts, and industry.

Because of his standing in society, he was often referred to as the "Malerfürst" (Prince of Painters).

Marc Chagall | Paintings and Quotes

• Bisogna lavorare sul quadro pensando che qualcosa della propria anima entrerà a farne parte e gli darà sostanza.
• Mine alone is the country of my soul.
• When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art.
• Color is vibration like music; everything is vibration.
• The freer the soul, the more abstract painting becomes.
• I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension.

Charles Meynier | Apollo and the Muses, 1798

Charles Meynier | Clio, Muse of History | Cleveland Museum of Art

In 1797 François-Bernard Boyer-Fonfrède, an industrial textile manufacturer, commissioned Charles Meynier (Paris, 1768-1832) to paint nine canvases featuring Apollo and the Muses for a large room in his home in Toulouse.

Meynier exhibited the painting based on this drawing at the Salon of 1800 but ultimately only completed five canvases, as his patron ran out of money.

The paintings were installed in the hall of Wallenried Castle, Switzerland by General Castella de Berlens around 1824, where they remained until 1983.

The group was acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2003. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

David Uhl, 1961 | Romantic realism painter

David Uhl was born into a family of engineers and artists which made him particularly suited for capturing the lifestyle inherent in motorcycling culture.

He purchased his first bike in 1988 and soon after his pencils and pens reflected his visual passion for the sport.

In 1993 he began producing countless best selling artworks for Harley-Davidson apparel.

After several years at the helm of Uhl Studios, an award-winning illustration company, David fulfilled his desire to move into Fine Art.

Paul de Longpré | Biografia ed Opere

Paul de Longpré (1855-1911) è stato un pittore Francese di fiori, che ha lavorato principalmente negli Stati Uniti.

De Longpré dipinse solo esemplari di fiori perfetti. Con una delicatezza del tatto ed una sensibilità per il colore ha unito conoscenza scientifica ed arte. Sapeva anche dare espressione alla sottile essenza dei fiori.

Dipingendo scene floreali quasi esclusivamente ad acquerelli, nel 1900 de Longpre trovò ispirazione nei 4.000 cespugli di rose che piantò nella sua tenuta di Hollywood.

Antonietta Brandeis | Life and paintings

Antonietta Brandeis (1848-1926) was a Czech-born Italian landscape, genre and portrait painter, as well as a painter of religious subjects for altarpieces.

Early Life and Initial Training

She was born on January 13, 1848, in Miskovice (near Kutná Hora) in Eastern Europe. The first bibliographical indication of Antonietta Brandeis dates from her teens, when she is mentioned as a pupil of the Czech artist Karel Javurek of Prague. After the death of Brandeis' father, her mother, Giuseppina Dravhozvall, married the Venetian Giovanni Nobile Scaramella; shortly afterward the family apparently moved to Venice.

In the 1867 registry of the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts, Brandeis is listed as being enrolled as an art student. At this time, Brandeis would have been nineteen, and one of the first females to receive academic instruction in the fine arts in Italy. In fact, the Ministry granted women the legal right to instruction in the fine arts only in 1875, by which time Brandeis had finished her education at the Academy.