Jean-François Portaels | A Sicilian bride, 1861 | Royal Collection of the United Kingdom
Three-quarter length, facing half left, her head turned to the viewer; seated on a stone bench; she wears a white dress with red trim and flower petals embroidered on the lower sleeves, and a black sleevless garment; with loosely arranged lace headgear; holding a rosary.
Eugène Jules Joseph Baron Laermans (1864-1940) was a Belgian painter.
He was born in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek. At the age of eleven, he contracted meningitis, which left him deaf and nearly mute (although some sources say he was born deaf).
This concentrated his attention on his sense of sight, and led to his decision to become a painter.
He enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in 1887, where he studied with Jean-François Portaels and was a great admirer of the paintings of Félicien Rops.
Betsy Westendorp-Osieck (1880-1968) was a Dutch painter, watercolorist, etcher, pastelist and draftsman who was part of the Amsterdamse Joffers painting group.
Johanna Elisabeth ("Betsy" or "Betsie") Osieck was born in Amsterdam 29 December 1880 to the merchant Philip Willem Osieck and Catharina Agnes Briel.
She was one of a family of five, but one of them died as a child. Westendorp-Osieck attended a French secondary school before going to a German boarding school.
She intended becoming a pianist but when that proved improbable she took up art.
Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807) was a painter in the early Neoclassical style who is best known for her decorative wall paintings for residences designed by Robert Adam.
The daughter of Johann Joseph Kauffmann, a painter, Angelica was a precocious child and a talented musician and painter by her 12th year.
Her early paintings were influenced by the French Rococo works of Henri Gravelot and François Boucher.