Randolph Rogers | Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, 1859

"Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii" by Randolph Rogers (Waterloo, New York 1825-1892 Rome) was the most popular American sculpture of the nineteenth century.

According to Rogers, it was replicated 167 times in two sizes.

The subject was drawn from "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), a widely read novel by Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which ends with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in a.d. 79.

Rogers’s evocative portrayal of Nydia highlights her heroic attempt to lead two companions out of the burning, ash-covered city.

Wilhelm von Gegerfelt | Post-Impressionist painter

Swedish painter Wilhelm von Gegerfelt (1844-1920) painted landscapes with motifs from Venice, Brittany, Swedish coastal landscapes and from Gotland in Sweden.

Gegerfelt studied at the Royal Danish Academy from 1861-1863, at the Royal Swedish Academy from 1864-1867, and thereafter in Düsseldorf until 1872.

He then went to Paris where he developed a new technique joining Alfred Wahlberg as one of the first Swedes to represent the Modern Breakthrough in Nordic art.

Gerardine Jacoba | Still life painter of flowers

Came from an artistic family, the still life Dutch painter Gerardina Jacoba Van de Sande Bakhuyzen (1826-1895), was a 19th-century painter from the Northern Netherlands.

Her father was the painter Hendrik Van de Sande Bakhuyzen, and her brother was the painter Julius Jacobus Van de Sande Bakhuyzen.

Gerardina was taught by her father, as were all her numerous sisters.

She achieved great success with her oils and watercolours of flowers and still lives, winning numerous medals between 1870-1880, in which year she had an exhibition at the Grafton Gallery in London.

Paul Signac | Neo-impressionist painter

French painter Paul Signac (1863-1935) was born in Paris.

He followed a course of training in architecture before deciding at the age of 18 to pursue a career as a painter.

He sailed around the coasts of Europe, painting the landscapes he encountered.

He also painted scenes of cities in France in his later years.

Tranquillo Cremona | Romantic painter

Tranquillo Cremona (10 April 1837 - 10 June 1878) was an Italian painter.

He was born in Pavia and was the brother of the mathematician Luigi Cremona.

He trained as a young man with Giovanni Carnovali. He lived in Venice from 1852-1859.

Cremona moved to Milan and he became part of the Scapigliatura movement which was characterized by bohemian attitudes and included poets, writers, musicians and artists infused with a combination of rebellious, and later anti-academic and anarchic, tendencies.

Gustav Vigeland | Figurative sculptor

Gustav Vigeland (1869-1943), born as Adolf Gustav Thorsen, was a Norwegian sculptor.

Gustav Vigeland occupies a special position among Norwegian sculptors, both in the power of his creative imagination and in his productivity.

He is most associated with the Vigeland installation (Vigelandsanlegget) in Frogner Park, Oslo.

The Vigeland installation made Frogner Park into Norway's most popular tourist attraction, and the park also contains Frogner Manor with the Oslo Museum and the Henriette Wegner Pavilion.

Vigeland was also the designer of the Nobel Peace Prize medal.

Vladimir Majakovskij e Maria Denisova, un Amore disperato

La storia del poema "La nuvola in calzoni" / "Облако в штанах" è collegata all'amore tormentato e non corrisposto del poeta Russo Vladimir Majakovskij (1893-1930) per la scultrice monumentale Russa, Maria Alexandrovna Denisova (1894-1944).

I due si incontrarono nel 1914 ad Odessa, durante il viaggio dei futuristi del 1913.

"La nuvola" è il capolavoro della stagione "prerivoluzionaria" di Majakovskij, uno dei testi più significativi del futurismo russo e della letteratura russa del Novecento.

Victor Nizovtsev

Composto tra il 1914-1915 da un Majakovskij poco più che ventenne, il poemetto trabocca di una forza lirica tesa, appassionata, che vuole essere dissacrante, antiborghese, antifilistea, ed è soprattutto intensamente libertaria.

Majakovskij vuol portare dentro l'arte della parola la carica dirompente di una visione nuova o rinnovata della realtà, dei sentimenti, dell'idea stessa della poesia e della scrittura.

Claude Monet | The Path through the Irises, 1914-1917

Irises, among Monet's favorite flowers, lined the pathways leading up to the house and Japanese bridge on the artist's property at Giverny.

This bird's-eye view of a garden path belongs to a series of monumental works painted during the First World War that capture the vital essence of these flowers with intensity and breadth of vision.

Late in life, as his eyesight faltered, he dispensed with subtlety and "took in the motif in large masses", waiting "until the idea took shape, until the arrangement and composition inscribed themselves on the brain". | Source: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | The Path through the Irises, 1914-1917 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vincent van Gogh | Irises, 1889-1890

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) returned to irises again and again in the final year of his life.

While staying at the psychiatric institution in Saint-Rémy (1889-1890), the garden became one of his main sources of inspiration.

He painted several studies of irises over the course of about a year.

Sometimes a single flower, sometimes overflowing bouquets.

He experimented with colour, rhythm and composition.

A small detail: the irises we see as blue today were originally painted a vibrant purple.

Over time, some of Van Gogh’s pigments faded, subtly changing the colours.

Vincent van Gogh | Irises, 1889 | Getty Museum

Frederic Edwin Church | Hudson River School

Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) was perhaps the best-known representative of the Hudson River School of landscape painting as well as one its most traveled.

Born in Hartford in 1826, he was the privileged son of Joseph Church, a jeweler and banker of that city, who interceded with Connecticut scion and collector Daniel Wadsworth to persuade the landscape painter Thomas Cole to accept his son as a pupil.

From 1844-1846, Church studied with Cole in his Catskill, New York, studio and accompanied him on sketching sojourns in the Catskill Mountains and the Berkshires of Massachusetts.

At one point, the master characterized the student as having "the finest eye for drawing in the world".

William Blake: "È più facile perdonare un nemico che un amico"!

• "Il Cristianesimo è Arte e non soldi. I Soldi sono la sua Maledizione".

• "Reprimono il desiderio solo quelli che lo hanno tanto debole da poterlo reprimere".

• "È più facile perdonare un nemico che un amico".

• "La via dell'eccesso conduce al palazzo della saggezza".

• "Nessun uccello vola troppo in alto, se vola con le proprie ali".

• "Chi manca di coraggio è esuberante d'astuzia".

• "Una verità detta con cattiva intenzione batte tutte le bugie che si possono inventare".

• "Nel tempo della semina impara, in quello del raccolto insegna, d'inverno godi".

Albert Lynch | Belle Époque painter

Born in Lima, Peru, Albert Lynch (1860-1950) settled in Paris, where he studied at l'École des Beaux-Arts.

Lynch worked under the guidance of painters Jules Achille Noël, Gabriel Ferrier and Henri Lehmann.

He showed his artwork in the Salon of French artists which he won in 1890 and 1892 and in the World's Fair of 1900 during which he received a gold medal.

Vincent Van Gogh | Sunset at Montmajour, 1888

Sunset at Montmajour is a landscape in oils painted by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh on 4 July 1888.

It was painted while the artist was at Arles, France and depicts a landscape of garrigue with the ruins of Montmajour Abbey in the background.

The painting is 73.3 cm × 93.3 cm (28.9 in × 36.7 in).

For over 100 years, it was in a Norwegian industrialist's private collection and wrongly assumed to be fake, before being re-examined, authenticated and sold to its current private owner.

The painting was temporarily on display from 24 September 2013 until 12 January 2014 as part of an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Eva Gonzalès | Impressionist painter

Eva Gonzalès (1849-1883) was a French Impressionist painter.

She was one of the four most notable female Impressionists in the nineteenth century, along with Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Berthe Morisot (1841-95) and Marie Bracquemond (1840-1916).

Gonzalès began her professional training and took lessons in drawing in 1865, from the society portraitist Charles Chaplin, who was also Mary Cassatt's teacher.

Antonio Canova | Drawing

Antonio Canova (1757-1822) used graphic drawings as the essential foundation for his Neoclassical marble masterpieces.

His sketches acted as a direct window into his creative process, transitioning from rapid, emotional thoughts into highly calculated, geometric structures.

Unlike his highly polished marbles, his initial sketches features rapid, loose, and gestural ink strokes.

He heavily used charcoal wash and cross-hatching to map out how light would fall on the three-dimensional stone surface.

Claude Monet | The Rue Montorgueil, 1878

The Rue Montorgueil, Paris was painted by Claude Monet (1840-1926) on 30 June 1878 for a festival declared that year by the government celebrating "peace and work".

This was one of the events organised for the third Universal Exhibition in Paris a few weeks after it opened, and intended to be a symbol of France’s recovery after the defeat of 1870.

French Art History and Sitemap

French art consists of the visual and plastic arts (including French architecture, woodwork, textiles, and ceramics) originating from the geographical area of France.

Modern France was the main centre for the European art of the Upper Paleolithic, then left many megalithic monuments, and in the Iron Age many of the most impressive finds of early Celtic art.

The Gallo-Roman period left a distinctive provincial style of sculpture, and the region around the modern Franco-German border led the empire in the mass production of finely decorated Ancient Roman pottery, which was exported to Italy and elsewhere on a large scale.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Jeune fille en rose dans un paysage, 1903

Henri Martin | Neo-Impressionist / Symbolist painter

Henri Martin was born in Toulouse on 5 August 1860; his father was a cabinetmaker and his mother of Italian origin.

In 1877, after convincing his father with great difficulty, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, and studied with Jules Garipuy.

Two years later he was awarded a prize and a scholarship that enabled him to join Jean-Paul Laurens's workshop at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe | Presenza / Presence

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Alessandro Zezzos | Genre painter

Alessandro Zèzzos (Venice, 1848 - Vittorio Veneto, 1914) was an Italian painter of genre scenes, costume scenes, portraits and vedute, in watercolors and oils.

He studied under Giacomo Favretto, Alessandro Milesi and Luigi Nono at the Academy of Fine Arts in his native Venice.