Michele Gordigiani | Portrait / Genre painter

Michele Gordigiani (Florence, 1835-1909) was an Italian painter, known best for his portraits.

Biography

Gordigiani was the son of a famous Florentine musician.

He first studied at the Academy in Florence under Giuseppe Bezzuoli, then Luigi Norcini and Silvestro Lega; he also worked in the studios of Luigi Mussini and Adolph Sturler.

In 1855, he frequented the Caffè Michelangiolo along with his brother Anatolio, where he met many of the Macchiaioli painters.

William Affleck | Victorian Gardens

William Affleck (1869-1943) was a London painter of landscapes and rustic scenes, especially old cottages.

He was born at Rochdale in Lancashire and studied at Heatherley's and the Lambeth School of Art.

Affleck exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1891-1915, and also at Suffolk Street, the New Watercolour Society and elsewhere.

He was also a member of the London Sketch Club.

George John Pinwell RWS | Victorian painter / Illustrator

George John Pinwell RWS (London 26 December 1842 - 8 September 1875 London), was a British illustrator and watercolourist.

Pinwell was born on 26 December 1842 at 12 Great Mays Buildings, London. He was baptised on 27 July 1845, at St. Mark's, Surbiton, south-west London, along with his younger brother Henry (born c. 1845).

His parents were John Pinwell, a carpenter or builder, and his wife, Mary Ann Baker.

Pinwell's father was thought to have been involved in building the original Surbiton railway station in south-west London.

His mother was "a rough, illiterate woman", and "a rough and determined person".

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.