Antonio Zoppi | Grandpa plays the accordion for Grandma

Antonio Zoppi (1860-1926) was an Italian painter, mostly of genre and costume scenes, as well as landscapes.

He was born and resident in Novara. In 1881 at Milan he exhibited: Paggio del secolo XVI.

In 1881 at Rome he exhibited: Fate la carità e In vino laetitia.

To other exhibitions he sent: Winter Sun; Dolci ricordi; Il nonno; Adele; Study of a head; A landscaper of Tobacco; and Savoy and Winter Morning.

Antonio Zoppi | Grandpa plays the accordion for Grandma / Il Nonno suona la fisarmonica per la Nonna | Simpson Galleries, Houston, Texas

William Faulkner: "I believe that man will not merely endure he will prevail!"

William Faulkner’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm

December 10, 1950

Ladies and gentlemen,

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.

So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin.

Antonio Nunziante

Iain Faulkner, 1973 | Figurative / Romantic painter

Scottish painter Iain Faulkner was born in Glasgow where he was raised and educated.

He graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1996 with a BA (Honours) Degree in Fine Art.

From the onset of his professional career, the fashionable and trendy routes of contemporary and conceptual art, adopted by many of his peers, was not an option.

He chose instead to follow the more difficult and demanding path of figurative painting wherein clear, concise yardsticks of competence, draughtsmanship and painterly skills can be measured and judged, warts and all.

Sir John Everett Millais | Ophelia, 1851-1852

The scene depicted is from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV, Scene VII, in which Ophelia, driven out of her mind when her father is murdered by her lover Hamlet, falls into a stream and drowns:

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds

Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;

Sir John Everett Millais | Ophelia, 1851-1852 | Tate Britain, London

Marc Chagall's America Windows, 1977

The America Windows are a stunning display of the iconic style of one of the world’s most prolific and expressive artists.

They capture Marc Chagall’s unique vision as he reflected, late in his career, on the resilience and freedom of the creative spirit.

At eight feet high and thirty feet across, these stained glass windows are a vast arrangement of colors of the highest intensity - bright reds, oranges, yellows, and greens - placed against brilliant shades of blue. Representations of people, animals, and items such as writing implements, musical instruments, and artists’ tools float above a skyline of buildings and trees.