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.

Teodor Axentowicz | Academic painter

Teodor Axentowicz (1859-1938) was a Polish-Armenian painter and university professor.

A renowned artist of his times, he was also the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.

As an artist, Axentowicz was famous for his portraits and subtle scenes of Hutsul life, set in the Carpathians.

In Paris, he received the prestigious title of Officier d'Académie Ordre des Palmes Académiques and Member of Académie des Beaux-Arts.

In 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair, Axentowicz received a Special Commemorative Award in recognition of distinguished service in connection with various national sections of the Department of Art.

José Malhoa | Naturalist painter

José Vital Branco Malhoa, known simply as José Malhoa (28 April 1855 - 26 October 1933) was a Portuguese painter.

Malhoa was, with Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, the leading name in Portuguese naturalist painting in the second half of the 19th century.

They were both members of the Grupo do Leão (Lion Group), a group of artists and writers in the 1880s.

He often painted popular scenes and subjects, like his two most famous paintings: The Drunks (1907) and Fado (1910).