Kahlil Gibran | Quotes / Aforismi

Pablo Picasso | Le couple, 1904

"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers!".

"Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart".

“We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side".

"Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need".

Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) Academic painter

Born in the Grand-Duchy of Baden in 1805, of peasant stock, Franz Xaver Winterhalter received early training in Freiburg as a graphic artist.

In 1824 he enrolled at the Munich Academy for further study in painting, while continuing to earn a living with lithographic work.

Barbara McCann (1948-2011) | Impressionist painter

Barbara McCann, American painter, began her artistic endeavors with drawing as a child, and then with painting in her teenage years. Upon graduating from high school, she took a four-year apprenticeship in architectural illustration and design, which set the stage for a career in commercial art.

McCann moved to Florida in 1973, and for the next 20 years ran her own architectural illustration studio.

Julio Vila y Prades (1873-1930)

Julio Vila y Prades was a Spanish painter🎨 and muralist who also worked throughout Latin America.

Against his parents wishes, he began his artistic studies at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos with Francisco Domingo Marqués and Joaquín Agrasot🎨.

He then went to Madrid and was an assistant in the workshop of Joaquín Sorolla🎨 from 1893-1904.

Marius Borgeaud | Post-impressionist painter

Marius Borgeaud (1861-1924) was a Swiss Post-Impressionist painter. He was born in Lausanne.

Early life

Borgeaud came from a bourgeois milieu; he attended the Industrial School of Lausanne and did not intend to pursue painting.

As chance would have it, the future gallerist Paul Vallotton was one of his school-mates.

In 1888, he began working in a bank in Marseille and remained there until the death of his father the following year.

Cuno Amiet | Expressionist painter

Cuno Amiet (1868-1961) is often called the “master of colour” and is seen as a pioneer of modernism in Swiss art; he ranks as one of the most versatile and significant artists of Switzerland.

Cuno Amiet was born in Solothurn and devoted his entire life to art.

After finishing school he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and continued his training with his friend Giovanni Giacometti at the Académie Julian in Paris.

Godfried Schalcken (1643-1706)

Godfried Schalcken or Gottfried Schalken was a Dutch genre and portrait painter.

He was noted for his mastery in reproducing the effect of candlelight, and painted in the exquisite and highly polished manner of the Leiden fijnschilders.

Life and work

Godfried Schalcken was born in Made, North Brabant, the son of Cornelis Schalcken and Aletta Lydius.

Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) | Romantic / Genre painter

Carl Spitzweg was a German🎨 romantic painter, especially of genre subjects🎨. He is considered to be one of the most important artists of the Biedermeier era.

Spitzweg was born in Unterpfaffenhofen, near Munich, Bavaria, the second of three sons of Franziska (née Schmutzer) and Simon Spitzweg.

His father, a wealthy merchant, had Carl trained as a pharmacist.

Arkady Plastov (1893-1972) Socialist Realist painter

Arkady Alexandrovich Plastov / Аркадий Александрович Пластов was a Russian🎨 socialist realist painter. Plastov was born into a family of icon painters in the village Prislonikha in the Russian Governorate of Simbirsk.

He attended the sculpture department of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture beginning in 1914.

César Pattein (1850-1931) | Genre painter

César Pattein was a French painter active from 1882-1914.

Pattein studied under French Naturalist painter Jules Breton (1827-1906) .

He was exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris, where he was awarded a third-class medal in 1896.

Born in Steenvoorde, in northern France, Pattein was raised among farmers and maintained a close connection to the rural region throughout his life.

Hermann Hesse: A dance by Chopin, 1901

Frédéric Chopin, 1906 - Parc Monceau, Paris, France - Jacques Froment-Meurice (1864-1947)

A dance by Chopin sounds loudly in the ballroom,

A wild, riotous dance.

The windows gleam pallidly because of the weather,

The grand piano is adorned by a wilted wreath.

Un walzer di Chopin riempie la sala

una danza selvaggia e scatenata.

Alla fine pallido chiarore,

il pianoforte adorna un'appassita ghirlanda.

Sir Thomas Francis Dicksee | Victorian painter

Sir Frank Bernard Dicksee PRA (1853-1928) was an English Victorian painter and illustrator, best known for his pictures of dramatic literary, historical, and legendary scenes.

He also was a noted painter of portraits of fashionable women, which helped to bring him success in his own time.

Bo Bartlett, 1955 | Realist / Figurative painter

Bo Bartlett is an American🎨 Realist painter with a modernist vision. His paintings are within the tradition of American Realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth.

Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America's land and people to describe the beauty he finds in everyday life. His paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary.

"Bartlett was educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where realist principles must be grasped before modernist ventures are encouraged.

John McGhie (1867-1952) | Seascape / Genre painter

John McGhie was born in Lesmahagow near Lanark in Scotland in 1867; the son of a grocer. He showed an early interest in drawing and painting, but was initially apprenticed to an architect before persuading his father to allow him to enrol at the Glasgow School of Art.

Following a year’s study in Glasgow he was awarded🎨 a scholarship to study for three years at the Royal Academy School in London where he was taught by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896); amongst other renowned artists.

Octave Denis Victor Guillonnet (1872-1967)

Octave Denis Victor Guillonnet was a French painter🎨, great decorator of national palaces and designer, a portrait painter and illustrator.

Guillonnet was extraordinarily precocious as an artist, entering the studio of Lionel Royer at the age of thirteen and, incredibly, gaining his first medal at the Paris Salon🎨 two years later.

J.T. Winik | Figurative painter

Kingston based artist J. T. Winik obtained a Bachelor of Fine Art at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and a Bachelor of Education at the University of Western Ontario in London.

Since 1996, J.T Winik has dedicated herself entirely to painting, dividing her time primarily between Spain, Holland and Canada. Winik's work frequently incorporates the female form.

Recurring themes examine the emotional tension within the psychological context of various dualities: power and fragility, angst and felicity, and passion and passivity.

Cesare Pavese / Filippo Anivitti: I will pass by Piazza di Spagna

Filippo Anivitti (1876-1955) | The Spanish Steps, Rome | Christie's

There will be a clear sky.

The streets will open out

onto the hills of pines and stone.

The tumult of the streets

will not disturb the still air.

Flowers blotched

with colour by the fountains

will eye you

like amused women. Steps

terraces swallows

will sing out in the sun.

Léon Spilliaert | Symbolist painter

Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946), also Leon Spilliaert, was a Belgian symbolist painter and graphic artist.

Spilliaert was born in Ostend, the oldest of seven children of Léonard-Hubert Spilliaert, a perfumer, and his wife Léonie (née Jonckheere).

From childhood, he displayed an interest in art and drawing. A prolific doodler and autodidact, he was predominantly a self-taught artist.

Charles-Amable Lenoir | Academic painter

French painter🎨 Charles Amable Lenoir (1860-1926) was born in Châtellaillon, a small district located near La Rochelle.

His family was of moderate means and knowing that his parents would not support art as a career, Lenoir became a maître d'études (study master), and then a teacher at a secondary school, the Lycée in Rochefort.

He began his artistic studies at Rochefort-su-Mer when he visited at age 20.

Hermann Hesse | Watercolor painter

• "For me, producing with drawing pen and brush is the wine whose inebriating effect makes life warm and pleasant to an extent that it becomes bearable".

• La produzione con penna e pennello per me è il vino, la cui ebbrezza scalda ed abbellisce la vita in modo da renderla sopportabile”.

Hermann Hesse, 1920.