Frank Holl R.A. | Victorian painter

Francis Montague Holl RA (London 4 July 1845 - 31 July 1888 London) was an British painter, specializing in somewhat sentimental paintings with a moment from a narrative situation, often drawing on the trends of social realism and the problem picture in Victorian painting.

He was also, especially in his later years when the demand for social realism slackened, a portrait painter, mostly of official-type portraits of distinguished and therefore elderly men, including members of the royal family.

He died in his early 40s, which some contemporaries attributed to overwork, as he had been very busy in the last twenty years of his life.

Virginia Woolf | Resta viva / Stay alive

Qualunque cosa succeda, resta viva.

Non morire prima di essere morta davvero.

Non perdere te stessa, non perdere la speranza, non perdere la direzione.

Resta viva, con tutta te stessa, con ogni cellula del tuo corpo, con ogni fibra della tua pelle.

Resta viva, impara, studia, pensa, costruisci, inventa, crea, parla, scrivi, sogna, progetta.

Erik Werenskiold | Mrs. Heimbeck Study for The Dinner Party, 1929

Sir William Rothenstein | Portrait painter

Sir William Rothenstein (1872-1945) was an English painter, printmaker, draughtsman, lecturer and writer on art.

Emerging during the early 1890s, Rothenstein continued to make art right up until his death.

Though he covered many subjects - ranging from landscapes in France to representations of Jewish synagogues in London - he is perhaps best known for his work as a war artist in both world wars, his portraits, and his popular memoirs, written in the 1930s.

More than two hundred of Rothenstein's portraits of famous people can be found in the National Portrait Gallery collection.

William Frederick Yeames RA | Historical genre painter

William Frederick Yeames RA (1835-1918) was a British painter best known for his oil-on-canvas "And When Did You Last See Your Father?", which depicts the son of a Royalist being questioned by Parliamentarians during the English Civil War.

Yeames was born in Taganrog, Russia, the son of a British consul based in Russia.

After the death of his father in 1842, Yeames was sent to school in Dresden where he began studying painting.

After a change in the fortunes of his family, Yeames moved to London in 1848, where he learnt anatomy and composition from George Scharf and took art lessons from F. A. Westmacott.

Albert Chevallier Tayler | Genre painter

Albert Chevallier Tayler (1862-1925) was an British artist who specialised in portrait and genre painting, but was also involved in the plein air methods of the Newlyn School.

He studied at Heatherley's School of Art, Royal Academy Schools and with avant-garde painters in Paris.

He was educated at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire.

Herbert Davis Richter | Floral still life painter

Herbert Davis Richter (1874-1955) was born in Brighton 10th May 1874. His family moved to Lansdown on the outskirts of Bath and it was at the Bath School of Art that Richter studied Furniture Design and Architecture.

He subsequently set up in business with his brother Charles, the Company Bath Cabinet Makers, with himself as Head of the Design Department.

In 1900, the Company was awarded Gold and Silver Medals at the Paris World Exhibition.

The Company was later awarded contracts for the furniture and fittings for the Cunard Liners, Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth.

John Donne | Il sogno / The Dream

Per nessun altro, amore, avrei spezzato

questo beato sogno.

Buon tema per la ragione,

troppo forte per la fantasia.

Sei stata saggia a svegliarmi. E tuttavia

tu non spezzi il mio sogno, lo prolunghi.

Tu così vera che pensarti basta

per fare veri i sogni e storia le favole.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-73) | Contemplation | Royal Collection

Sir Cedric Morris | Post-Impressionist painter

Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet (11 December 1889 - 8 February 1982) was a British artist, art teacher and plantsman.

He was born in Swansea in South Wales, but worked mainly in East Anglia.

As an artist he is best known for his portraits, flower paintings and landscapes.

Painting style

Cedric Morris had a distinctive and often rather primitive post-Impressionist style, and painted portraits, landscapes and very decorative still lifes of flowers and birds.

In his analysis of Morris's paintings, Richard Morphet has suggested that the "unusual force of Cedric's paintings derives from the projection of the subject through a dynamic economy in combination with an acute sense of pictorial realism".

Dod Procter | Figurative painter

Dod Procter, born Doris Margaret Shaw, RA (1890-1972) was an English artist, and the wife of the artist Ernest Procter.

Her painting Morning was bought for the public by the Daily Mail in 1927.

Procter and her husband attended art schools in England and in Paris together, where they were both influenced by Impressionism and the Post-Impressionism movements.

William Henry Gore | Genre painter

William Henry Gore RI (1857-1942) was an British painter and watercolourist of the late Victorian period to the early Twentieth Century.

He is known for his rural landscapes of his native Berkshire and for his Genre paintings of children and animals.

Gore was in the tradition of late Victorian Romanticism and Naturalism that flourished in the period before the turn of the Twentieth Century but which quickly became unfashionable in the aftermath of the Great War and the social and political changes that followed.

Sir Peter Lely | Baroque painter

Sir Peter Lely (1618 -1680) was a painter of Dutch origin whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.

Lely was born Pieter van der Faes to Dutch parents in Soest in Westphalia, where his father was an officer serving in the armed forces of the Elector of Brandenburg.

Lely studied painting in Haarlem, where he may have been apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber.

He became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1637.

Isaac Snowman | Genre painter

Isaac Snowman (1873-1947) was an Anglo-Jewish artist who made Jewish cultural themes his subject.

Early life

He was educated at the City of London School. In 1890 he entered the Royal Academy School, where he gained a free medal, and afterward a scholarship in the Institution of British Artists.

He showed his interest in Jewish matters by his drawings A Difficult Passage in the Talmud and The Blessing of Sabbath Lights, as well as by his Early Morning Prayer in the Synagogue.

Alexander Mark Rossi | Genre painter

Alexander Mark Rossi (1840-1916) was a successful British artist, specializing in genre works who flourished in the late 19th century.

He was born on the Greek Island of Corfu, the son of Dr Mark Rossi, an Italian who was one of the three judges presiding over the Ionian Islands during the time of British rule. On a visit to Preston, England in 1866, Rossi met and later married Jane Gillow.

He remained in the United Kingdom thereafter. In the 1870s he moved to London.

Charles Spencelayh | Genre painter

Charles Spencelayh (October 27, 1865 - June 25, 1958) was an English genre painter and portraitist in the Academic style.

Spencelayh was born in Rochester in Kent, and first studied at the National Art Training School, South Kensington. He showed his work at the Paris Salon, but most of his exhibitions were in Britain.

Between 1892-1958, he exhibited more than 70 paintings at the Royal Academy, including "Why War" (1939), which won the Royal Academy ‘Picture of the Year’. He had a solo exhibition at The Sunderland Art Gallery in 1936.

Laura Alma-Tadema | Genre painter

Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema -née Epps (1852-1909) was an English painter specialising in domestic and genre scenes of women and children.

Eighteen of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy. Her husband, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, was also a painter.

Life

A daughter of Dr. George Napoleon Epps (who was brother of Dr. John Epps), Lady Alma-Tadema had two sisters who were also painters (Emily studied under John Brett, a Pre-Raphaelite, and Ellen under Ford Madox Brown), while Edmund Gosse and a stockbroker called Rowland Hill were her brothers-in-law.

Daniel Rodgers | It's Christmas time

Daniel Rodgers is an figurative artist and illustrator living in Sunderland, UK.

"I'm a freelance illustrator and artist that specialises in making illustrations on the realistic side of things.

As you'll see through this site I like to work on a variety of subject matter from traditional Christmas cards to fantasy and scifi illustrations.

Above all I find it most satisfying to inject some element of story into my work.

My work focuses on a love of painting and drawing with a narrative context".

Oscar Wilde | De profundis, 1897

Il "De Profundis" è una lunga lettera a Lord Alfred Douglas, il giovane amato da Wilde, scritta nei primi mesi del 1897 nel carcere di Reading dove Oscar Wilde (Scrittore, aforista, poeta, drammaturgo, giornalista e saggista irlandese dell'età Vittoriana, esponente del decadentismo e dell'estetismo Britannico, 1854-1900), si trovava da quasi due anni per aver amato un uomo.

Nel 1895 Oscar Wilde, al culmine del successo mondano e letterario, fu condannato a due anni di lavori forzati per “atti osceni”: alla sofferenza della reclusione si unirono la bancarotta finanziaria e la morte civile, con il divorzio e la perdita dei figli.

Chiuso tra le mura del carcere di Reading, Wilde scrisse una lunga lettera a Lord Alfred Douglas, il giovane poeta aristocratico di cui era innamorato e che era stato la causa dello scandalo.

Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, May 1893 | British Library

Lord Alfred Douglas | L’Amore che non osa.. / The Love that dare not..

Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, soprannominato "Bosie" (1870-1945), è stato un poeta, scrittore e traduttore Britannico, ricordato soprattutto per il fatto di essere stato il compagno dello scrittore Oscar Wilde, nonché un poeta uraniano.

Douglas incontrò Oscar Wilde nel 1891 e subito iniziò una relazione con lui. Quando suo padre, il marchese di Queensberry (con il quale Alfred aveva già rapporti di odio reciproco a causa del carattere intrattabile di entrambi), scoprì il legame del figlio insultò pubblicamente Wilde con un biglietto sgrammaticato lasciato al club dello scrittore dublinese.

Paul Cadmus (American painter, 1904-1999)

James Hayllar (1829-1920) | Genre painter

From Christie's:

Artistic dynasties were not unusual in Victorian England, but few attained the distinction of the Hayllars, where five members of the family exhibited at the Royal Academy towards the end of the century. In addition to producing a son who was an engraver, James produced four remarkable daughters, each of whom he taught.

James Hayllar was born in Chichester in 1829, and after overcoming family opposition enrolled at Cary's Art School in 1842. Francis Cary was a respected historical painter who later took over Sass's Academy in Bloomsbury. He is now principally remembered as tutor to Rossetti and Millais.

On completing his studies, Hayllar made a tour of the continent, where he encountered Leighton in Rome in in 1851.

His likeness can be seen in Leighton's first great canvas, Cimabue's Madonna carried through the streets of Florence, which was purchased by Queen Victoria, and is now in the Royal Collection, though on loan to the National Gallery.

Anthony Hinchliffe | Figurative painter

"I have always loved the sense of escapism that comes with creating artwork.

I am passionate about exploring my creativity, constantly looking at developing my techniques so I can keep that feeling of energy within my work.

When someone is emotionally moved by looking at my artwork that is a big motivation for me as I have always liked to please people through my painting.

My preferred medium is oil paint, I do sometimes create an acrylic underpainting first as I really like the way the oil paint behaves when applied over acrylic.

I often dilute the oil paint down with turpentine in the initial stages and use it like watercolour".