Franz Xaver Winterhalter | Academic painter

Born in the Grand-Duchy of Baden in 1805, of peasant stock, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) 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.

Moving to Karlsruhe in 1828, he found employment as drawing master to the margravine of Baden and thus entered the world of aristocratic patronage.

A travel stipend in 1833-1834 took him to Italy, where he composed romantic genre scenes in the manner of Léopold Robert (1794-1835).

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.