"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".

Stefan Draschan, 1979 | Coincidences at Museums

Austrian photographer Stefan Draschan is a self-confessed flâneur(a French term popularized in the 19th century for a type of urban male "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", or "loafer").

Draschan commutes between Vienna, Berlin, Naples, and Paris.

His penchants for museum-going and people-watching blossomed into a wildly successful blog-turned-book: Coincidences at Museums (2019), in which he photographed other museum-goers who inadvertently matched with the paintings in front of them.

Walter Crane | Precursor of Art Nouveau

Walter Crane (1845-1915) was an English artist and book illustrator.

Together with William Morris, Walter Crane was a leader in the Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts artistic movements

.

Walter Crane is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century.

Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come.

Émile Zola: "I would rather die of passion than of boredom"

• "[Johann Strauss jr] Ha mostrato come il mondo può essere bello, io invece ho scritto come il mondo può essere brutto".

• "Il talento del Signor Manet è fatto di semplicità e di esattezza. Senza dubbio, davanti alla natura incredibile di alcuni dei suoi colleghi si sarà deciso ad interrogare la realtà, solo con sé stesso: avrà rifiutato tutta la perizia acquisita, tutta l'antica esperienza, avrà voluto prendere l'arte dall'inizio, cioè dall'osservazione esatta degli oggetti. Si è dunque messo coraggiosamente di fronte a un soggetto, ha visto questo soggetto per larghe macchie, per opposizioni vigorose, e ha dipinto ogni cosa così come la vedeva".

Édouard Manet | Portrait of Émile Zola, 1868 | Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Alfonso Simonetti | Romantic painter

Alfonso Simonetti (29 December 1840 - 22 August 1892) was an Italian painter of historical scenes, portraits and landscapes; best known for his works with moonlight and sunset effects.

Simonetti was born in Naples, Italy, to the painter Giuseppe Simonetti (1840-1864) and his wife Vincenza, née Piccirillo.

In 1859, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under Gabriele Smargiassi and Giuseppe Mancinelli.

Eugenio Montale | Accade

Accade

che le affinità d'anima non giungano

ai gesti e alle parole ma rimangano

effuse come un magnetismo. Ѐ raro

ma accade.

Daniel Gerhartz | Home

Claude Monet | Alice Hoschedé au jardin, 1881

Monet's magnificent depiction of his garden at Vétheuil exemplifies the visual splendor of Impressionism at its height.

Monet painted this work in 1881 as a new chapter of his life was unfolding, and this picture expresses the exuberance and renewed passion of the artist during this important period.

Seated among the flowers is Alice Hoschedé, the artist's thirty-seven year old lover and the wife of his close friend and patron Ernst Hoschedé.

The composition is lavished with all of the hallmarks of a great Impressionist composition, with its vivid color palette, intermingling of the natural elements and interplay of light and shadow.

Claude Monet | Alice Hoschedé au jardin, 1881