Jakub Schikaneder | Impressionistic nocturnes

Jakub Schikaneder (1855-1924) came from the family of a German customs office clerk.

Despite the family's poor background, he was able to pursue his studies, thanks in part to his family's love of art; an ancestor was Urban Schikaneder, the elder brother of the librettist Emanuel Schikaneder.

After having completed his studies in Prague and Munich 1871-1879, Schikaneder, alongside Emanuel Krescenc Liška, was involved in the furnishing of the royal box in the National Theatre in Prague; however, this work was lost in a fire in 1881.

Émile Lecomte-Vernet | Orientalist painter

Émile Vernet-Lecomte, born Charles Émile Hippolyte Lecomte (1821-1900) was a French painter, best known for his Orientalist works.

He came from a family of illustrious painters.

His great-grandfather was Claude Joseph Vernet and his father was the battle painter, Hippolyte Lecomte; who was himself the son-in-law of Carle Vernet, and the nephew of Horace Vernet.

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) | Still Lifes

Odilon Redon🎨's work represent an exploration of his internal feelings and psyche.

He himself wanted to "place the visible at the service of the invisible"; thus, although his work seems filled with strange beings and grotesque dichotomies, his aim was to represent pictorially the ghosts of his own mind. Redon🎨 also describes his work as ambiguous and undefinable:

"My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined".

Odilon Redon | Symbolist / Colorist painter

Odilon Redon (born April 20, 1840, Bordeaux, France - died July 6, 1916, Paris) French Symbolist painter, lithographer and etcher of considerable poetic sensitivity and imagination, whose work developed along two divergent lines.

His prints explore haunted, fantastic, often macabre themes and foreshadowed the Surrealist and Dadaist movements.

Kay Boyce | Figurative painter

British painter and illustrator Kay Boyce was born in Sheffield.

As a child she would often spend hours at a time drawing on rolls of wallpaper; this was the beginning of her passion for art.

Kay studied illustration at Wrexham College before working as a freelance illustrator. She produced editorial work for Women s Weekly, Bella, My Weekly, Sunday Express and Woman's Own.

Her illustration work has carried her through to major book publishers such as Hodder and Staughton, Wadsworth Romantics, Mills and Boon and Mandarin.