Pete "The Street" Brown, 1967 | Urban plein-air painter

Peter first came to Bath for a year in 1986 to study an art foundation course.

He went on to graduate from Manchester Polytechnic remaining a further two years working in a studio in Ancoats, an area just north of the city centre.

He then studied a PGCE in FE in Eltham, London before giving up painting.

Returning to Bath in 1993, inspired by the architecture and life of the town, he started to draw in charcoal moving back to working in oils three years later. And it was on the streets of Bath Peter began to earn his living and it was here he earned the nick name 'Pete the Street'.

Peter paints a great deal across the UK - its cities, landscapes and coastline and in particular London.

Franz Skarbina | Impressionist painter

Franz Skarbina (1849-1910) was a German impressionist painter, draftsman, etcher and illustrator.

Born in Berlin, he was the son of a goldsmith from Zagreb. From 1865-1869, he studied at the Prussian Academy of Arts.

After graduation, he spent two years as a tutor to the daughters of Count Friedrich von Perponcher-Sedlnitzky (1821-1909), during which time he travelled to Dresden, Vienna, Venice, Munich, Nuremberg and Merano.

In 1877, he had acquired the funds to make a year-long study trip to the Netherlands, Belgium and France, where he came under the influence of impressionism.

Claude Monet | The River, 1881 | Museum Barberini

Claude Monet depicted an evening on the river using a reduced formal vocabulary. The impulsive play of lines seems to be rapidly set down, as if the painter had wanted to complete the composition just before the sun disappeared.

Several branches glow in the red light of its last rays. Although the picture has the appearance of a sketch, the artist’s signature indicates that he considered it an independent, completed work.

According to Academic standards, a finished painting was characterized by a polished surface in which even subordinate elements should be developed in some detail.

Monet resisted this aesthetic of the fini by dissolving the traditional distinction between the preparatory sketch (esquisse or étude) and the painting intended for exhibition (tableau).

Paul Hagemans (1884-1959)

Born in Antwerp, Paul Hagemans was the son of the celebrated Belgian landscape painter Maurice Hagemans (1852-1917).

Hagemans received early artistic instruction from his father but at the age of fifteen enrolled at the Academy of Antwerp.

Here he was fortunate enough to be tutored by one of the most important landscape painters of nineteenth century Belgium, Isidore Verheyden as well as receiving classes in figure painting from Herman Richir.

Julian Onderdonk | Impressionist painter

Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922) was a Texan Impressionist painter, often called "the father of Texas painting".

President George W. Bush decorated the Oval Office with three of Onderdonk's paintings.

The Dallas Museum of Art has several rooms dedicated exclusively to Onderdonk's work. His art studio currently resides on the grounds of the Witte Museum.

Early years

Julian Onderdonk was born in San Antonio, Texas, to Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, a painter, and Emily Gould Onderdonk. He was the brother of Eleanor Onderdonk, also a prominent Texas painter, sculptor, and art administrator. His grandfather Henry Onderdonk was the Headmaster of Saint James School in Maryland, from which Julian's father Robert graduated.

Helen Maria Turner (1858-1958) | Impressionist painter

Helen Maria Turner was an American painter and teacher known for her work in oils, watercolors and pastels in which she created miniatures, landscapes, still lifes and portraits, often in an Impressionist style.

Life and career

Turner was born in Louisville, Kentucky while her parents, Mortimer Turner and Helen Maria Davidson, were on a long visit to family in the town. Her lineage was respectable; she was the great-granddaughter of John Pintard of New York, granddaughter of a well-known doctor from New Orleans, and daughter of a wealthy Louisiana businessman.

Turner spent much of her early life between Alexandria, Louisiana and New Orleans, and early became a refugee from the American Civil War, which destroyed her father's fortune and led to the loss of his business.

Candace Lovely, 1953

Candace Whittemore Lovely is an American impressionist painter known for her paintings of contemporary American life, including landscapes of treasured locales and people at play in idyllic locations. She lives and works in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

In 1991, Lovely painted the official portrait of former First Lady Barbara Bush that now hangs in the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

She has been called "the grand dame of Boston painters".

Ten American Painters, 1897-1918

The Ten American Painters (also known as The Ten) was an artists' group formed in 1898 to exhibit their work as a unified group.

John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir and Childe Hassam were the driving forces behind the organization. Dissatisfied with the conservatism of the American art establishment, the three artists recruited seven others from Boston, New York City, and elsewhere on the East Coast, with the intention of creating an exhibition society that valued their view of originality, imagination, and exhibition quality.

The Ten achieved popular and critical success, and lasted two decades before dissolving.

Foundation

In America, popular painting styles usually originated on the east coast in cities like New York and Boston.

The Ten continued a tradition of artists forming new groups in reaction to a lack of support from existing artists' groups. Thus, the National Academy of Design (founded in 1825 by students dissatisfied by the conservatism of the older American Academy of the Fine Arts) eventually became too conservative to suit the artists who in 1877 initiated the Society of American Artists so they could meet and exhibit their work as a collective.

Frank W. Benson | Summer, 1909