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).

François Habert (French, 17th Century)

These sumptuous still lifes are the work of the rare artist François Habert, active in France between 1643 and 1652, one of the most important still life painters of 17th Century France.

François Batet | Pittore della Belle Époque

François Batet (1921-2015) pseudonimo di Francisco Batet Pellejero fu un pittore ed illustratore Spagnolo, noto soprattutto per il suo lavoro di illustratore della letteratura per l'infanzia e la gioventù nella casa editrice Hachette.

Il suo tema preferito fu la rappresentazione di figure femminili degli anni '20 in stile Art Déco

Francois Batet è nato a Barcellona, in Spagna. Ha studiato pittura alla Scuola di San Jordi (Beaux Arts) ed anche all'Accademia di Tarrega.

Quando viveva a Madrid studiò i grandi maestri come Goya e Valasquez. Si trasferì poi a Parigi e studiò vari famosi pittori impressionisti francesi.

Ha vissuto e lavorato in Francia dal 1950. Lo stile classico della Scuola di Parigi di Batet richiama lo spirito della Parigi degli anni '20 e '30.

"Zorba the Greek" composer Theodorakis dies at 96

Athens, Sept 2. -Reuters - Composer Mikis Theodorakis, whose music crossed international boundaries in his captivating score for the film "“Zorba the Greek", died on Thursday, plunging Greece into three days of mourning.

A towering man with a brooding presence and a shock of wavy hair, Theodorakis's work evoked a progressive, democratic vision of the world, though his political struggles reflected a darker side of Greece rarely seen by visitors.

As news of his death at home in Athens at the age of 96 swept across the country of 11 million, authorities declared three days of mourning and tributes poured in from across the political spectrum. "Today we lost a part of Greece's soul. Mikis Theodorakis, Mikis the teacher, the intellectual, the radical, our Mikis has gone," said Culture Minister Lina Mendoni.

Anne Cotterill (1933-2010) | Flowers painter

Anne Cotterill was born in the Borders of Scotland, educated in Edinburgh and graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1956 at the time when Sir William Gillies was head of painting.

She was awarded a postgraduate scholarship to continue her work in Edinburgh followed by a travelling scholarship to Europe that enabled her to study the work and technique of the great traditional painters.

Married life brought her to West Somerset in the early 1960s where the seasonal changes of the wildflowers in the surrounding countryside are a constant source of inspiration for her paintings.