Van Gogh's "Café Terrace at Night" was inspired by Maupassant's "Bel-Ami"

After finishing Café Terrace at Night, Vincent van Gogh wrote a letter to his sister expressing his enthusiasm:

"You never told me if you had read Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami, and what you now think of his talent in general.

I say this because the beginning of Bel-Ami is precisely the description of a starry night in Paris, with the lighted cafés of the boulevard, and it's something like the same subject that I've painted just now". (Letter 678 from Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh, Arles, 1888.)

Vincent van Gogh | Café Terrace at Night, 1888 | Kröller-Müller Museum, Netherlands

Ellen Pyle | Magazine illustrator

Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle (1876-1936) was an American illustrator best known for the 40 covers she created for The Saturday Evening Post in the 1920s and 1930s under the guidance of Post editor-in-chief, George Horace Lorimer.

She studied with Howard Pyle and later married Pyle's brother Walter.

Life

Born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia on November 11, 1876, to Newcomb Butler and Kate Ashton Thompson, Ellen began her artistic studies at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in 1895.

Rosalba Carriera | Rococo painter

Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), a Venetian Rococo painter, was best known for her innovative approach to pastels, which had previously been used for informal drawings and preparatory sketches.

She was also credited with pastel as a medium for serious portraiture that redefined the Rococo manner.

In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures.

Carriera would later become known for her pastel portraits, helping popularize the medium in eighteenth-century Europe.

Marco d'Oggiono | Leonardo's pupil

Marco d'Oggiono (1470-1549) was an Italian Renaissance painter and a chief pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, many of whose works he copied.

He was born at Oggiono near Milan.

Of the details of his life, we know almost nothing - not even the date of his important series of frescoes painted for the church of Santa Maria della Pace in Milan. He probably died in Milan.

Luigi Lanzi gave 1530 as the date of his death, but various writers in Milan say it took place in 1540, and now the best accepted date is 1549.

Edwin Harris | Genre painter

Edwin Harris (1855-1906) was an British painter from Ladywood, Birmingham.

Harris entered the Birmingham School of Art at the age of fourteen, where he worked under Charles Morgan, F G Jackson and Edward R Taylor.

Fellow students included Walter Langley, William John Wainwright and William Breakspeare.

Harris was appointed as assistant master and after two years set up his own studio, painting pictures and giving lessons.