Francesco Gioli | Macchiaioli painter

Francesco Gioli (June 29, 1846 - February 4, 1922) was a prominent Italian painter associated with the Macchiaioli movement and Tuscan Naturalism.

Born into a wealthy family in San Frediano a Settimo (Pisa), he became celebrated for his elegant depictions of rural Tuscan life, atmospheric landscapes and intimate portraits.

Gioli initially trained under academic masters like Antonio Ciseri and Enrico Pollastrini, starting his career with traditional historical paintings.

Franz Richard Unterberger | Romantic painter of waterscapes

Austrian painter Franz Richard Unterberger (1838-1902), a Romantic style painter of waterscapes, landscapes, architecture and Genre, was born in Innsbruck, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on 15th August 1838, one of eleven children of a wealthy bourgeois family.

He decided to pursue a career as an artist at a relatively young age and enrolled in the Academy in Munich.

Here he studied with Albert Zimmerman (1808-1888) a professor and landscape painter at the Academy and with Julius Lange (1817-1878).

Love Letter from Auguste Rodin to Camille Claudel, 1886

"My ferocious friend".... "Mia feroce amica"...

Thus begins Rodin’s desperate cry of love to Camille Claudel in the early years of their relationship.

Rodin was soon captivated by this pupil who became his assistant, mistress and muse, while Claudel outwardly remained in complete control of her feelings.

Consumed and tormented by an obsessive love, he implores her - “on his knees” - to ease his suffering from beginning to end of this letter, written in a muddled style, with erroneous syntax and imperfect spelling.

Vilhelm Hammershøi | Interior painter

Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) was a Danish painter. He is known for his poetic, subdued portraits and interiors.

In 1997, Denmark issued a postage stamp in his honour.

Vilhelm Hammershøi was born iin Copenhagen, Denmark.

The son of a well-to-do merchant, Christian Hammershøi, and his wife, Frederikke (née Rentzmann), Hammershøi studied drawing from the age of eight with Niels Christian Kierkegaard and Holger Grønvold, as well as painting with Vilhelm Kyhn, before embarking on studies with Frederik Vermehren and others at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Rainer Maria Rilke / Rodin | Love Song, 1907

How shall I hold my soul and yet not touch

It with your own? How shall I ever place

It clear of you on anything beyond?

Oh gladly I would stow it next to such

Things in the darkness as are never found

Down in an alien and silent space

That does not resonate when you resound.

Auguste Rodin - Fugit Amor, 1881

Rainer Maria Rilke | La sera / The evening

Come una indefinibile fata d'ombre...

Vien da lungi la Sera, camminando

per l'abetaia tacita e nevosa.

Johan August Malmström (1829-1901) | Dancing Fairies, 1866

Nadežda Petrović | Expressionist / Fauve painter

Nadežda Petrović / Надежда Петровић (1873-1915) was a Serbian painter and one of the women war photography pioneers in the region.

Considered Serbia's most famous Expressionist and Fauvist, she was the most important Serbian female painter of the period.

Born in the town of Čačak, Petrović moved to Belgrade in her youth and attended the women's school of higher education there.

In 1893, she became an art teacher at the school and later taught at the women's university in Belgrade.

Ivan Aivazovsky | Romantic painter

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky / Ива́н Константи́нович Айвазо́вский (1817-1900) became the most prolific Russian painter of his time.

Early in his career, he was elected a member of five Academies of Fine Arts, including those of St. Petersburg (his Alma Mater) Rome, Florence, Stuttgart and Amsterdam.

He was an Academician at 27 and Professor of Marine Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, at the age of 30.