Tom Roberts | Impressionist painter

Tom Roberts, byname of Thomas William Roberts, (born March 9, 1856, Dorchester, Dorset, England - died September 14, 1931, Kallista, Victoria, Australia), painter who introduced Impressionism to Australia🎨.

Arriving in Melbourne at age 13, Roberts worked as a photographer, supplementing his meagre earnings with paintings produced as an evening art student.

In 1881 he went to England to study at the Royal Academy in London and toured Spain and France, where he was exposed to Impressionism.

Henri Le Sidaner's 157th Birthday

French painter🎨 Henri Eugène Augustin Le Sidaner (1862-1939) was born 157 years ago on this day - August 7th 1862, into a French family, in Port Louis, Mauritius.

He studied under Alexandre Cabanel🎨 until 1885 and was introduced to the work of Edouard Manet🎨 who influenced Le Sidaner’s artistic development.

Henri Le Sidaner was one such individual: a contemporary of the Post-Impressionists who painted in dots but was not a Pointillist🎨; revelled in complementary colours but was not a Fauve; and drew a veil of dreams over reality but was not a Symbolist🎨, or only briefly.

He was, as his friend the critic Gabriel Mourey described him, "a sort of mystic who has no faith".

Walter Ernest Webster (British, 1878-1959)

Walter Ernest Webster RI ROI RP (17 November 1877 - 30 April 1959) was a British figure and portrait painter. He also worked as an illustrator.

Webster was born on 17 November 1877.

His parents were Robert Walter Waithman Webster (born c. 1853), a salesman, and Mary Lowe (born c. 1856), the daughter of bookkeeper Edwin Lowe.

He was baptised in Manchester Church of England Cathedral on 10 January 1878.

Paul Delvaux (1897-1994) | Surrealist painter

Paul Delvaux (23 September 1897 - 20 July 1994) was a Belgian painter🎨 noted for his dream-like scenes of women, classical architecture, trains and train stations, and skeletons, often in combination.

He is often considered a surrealist, although he only briefly identified with the Surrealist movement🎨.

He was influenced by the works of Giorgio de Chirico🎨.

Hjalmar Munsterhjelm | Moonlight paintings

Magnus Hjalmar Munsterhjelm (19 October 1840, Tuulos - 2 April 1905, Helsinki) was a Finnish landscape painter.

Munsterhjelm was born at Toivoniemi Manor of Tuulos, Finland.

He was the son of Gustaf Riggert Munsterhjelm (1806-1872) and his wife and Mathilda Charlotta Eleonora von Essen (1818-1895).

His father first sent him to the Turku Maritime School.

In the early 1860s, he studied art at Düsseldorf with Werner Holmberg (1830-1860) and Oswald Achenbach (1827-1905) and at Karlsruhe under Hans Gude.

Jaroslav Seifert / Vladimir Volegov: "Prima che asciughino quei due o tre baci"

Prima che asciughino quei due o tre baci

sulla fronte

e qui e lí,

ti chinerai per bere

acqua d’argento dallo specchio,

e se nessuno ti starà a guardare

ti toccherai le labbra con la bocca.

Henry Bacon | Orientalist painter

Henry A. Bacon (1839-1912) was an American painter, author, illustrator, and translator.

Before his formal training as an artist, he served as a soldier and war artist during the American Civil War, and was badly wounded in the Second Battle of Bull Run.

He then studied in France, and became a member of the Pont-Aven School, painting genre subjects of French country life, many sold back in America.

He first traveled to Egypt in 1897, and then developed an interest in Orientalist painting, soon spending his winters in the Middle East, dying in Cairo.