Gennaro Greco | Imaginary Architecture /Landscape painter

Gennaro Greco (1663-1714) also known as "Il Mascacotta", was an Italian painter of Figures, portraits, landscapes, landscapes with figures, architectural views, murals and veduta. Greco was a specialist in imaginary views (vedute ideate) showing architectural ruins.

Greco was born and worked in Naples.

He is described by Dalbono as a painter of views of mutilated ruins.

Edward Henry Potthast | Impressionist painter

Edward Henry Potthast (1857-1927) was an American Impressionist painter. He is known for his paintings of people at leisure in Central Park, and on the beaches of New York and New England.

Edward Henry Potthast was born on June 10, 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio to Henry Ignatz Potthast and Bernadine Scheiffers.

Starting in 1870 he studied art at the McMicken School in Cincinnati and in 1873 he started working at the Strobridge Lithography Company.

From June 10, 1879 to March 9, 1881, Potthast studied under Thomas Satterwhite Noble, a retired Confederate Army captain who had studied with Thomas Couture in Paris.

Dirck van Delen | Architecture Fantasy painter

Dirck van Delen or Dirck Christiaensz van Delen (c.1605, Heusden - May 16, 1671, Arnemuiden) was a Dutch Golden Age painter who specialized in architectural painting.

According to the early artist biographer Arnold Houbraken, van Delen was born in Heusden. It is not clear with whom he apprenticed and both Frans Hals and Hendrick Aerts (who also specialized in architectural paintings) have been proposed as his masters. More plausible are studies under Pieter van Bronckhorst and/or Bartholomeus van Bassen in Delft.

Franz Christoph Janneck | Baroque painter

Franz Christoph Janneck (3 October 1703, Graz - 13 January 1761, Vienna) was an Austrian painter in the Baroque style.

He specialized in genre scenes, often with mythological themes, as well as some portraits, landscapes and religious works.

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale | Pre-Raphaelite painter

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (1871-1945) was a well respected illustrator and painter of her day. In 1896, she created a lunette titled Spring, which was used in the Royal Academy Dining Room. In 1902, she had the honor of becoming the first female member of the Institute of Painters in Oils. She illustrated many books such as Poems by Tennyson, 1905, W.M. Canton, Story of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1912, and Calthorp, A Diary of an 18th Century Garden, 1926, to name a few. In 1919, Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale's Golden Book of Famous Women was published by Hodder and Stoughton, which was a compilation of stories about some of the most famous women in history and legend as written by some of the most famous authors in history such as William Shakespeare, Lord Tennyson, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and John Keats among others. 

Although this book contains no introduction to explain whose inspiration it was to put the book together or who chose the content, it seems clear from the title that Brickdale must have been the mastermind behind it.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin | Symbolist painter

Kuzma Sergeyevich Petrov-Vodkin / Кузьма Сергеевич Петров-Водкин (born October 24 [November 5, New Style], 1878, Khvalynsk, Saratov oblast, Russian Empire - died February 15, 1939, Leningrad, Russia, U.S.S.R. [now St. Petersburg, Russia]), Russian painter who combined many traditions of world art in his work and created an original language in painting that was both deeply individual and national in spirit.

Petrov-Vodkin’s birthplace was a small town on the banks of the Volga River, where he was born into the family of an impoverished cobbler.

He spent his youth there, living in harsh conditions reminiscent of those described by Maksim Gorky in My Universities.

But his talent overcame his provincial surroundings, and his determination to be an artist led him first to art classes in Samara (1893-95) and then to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1897-1904), where he studied with painter Valentin Serov.

Genaro Pérez Villaamil | Romantic Historical-scenes painter

Born in Ferrol on 3 February 1807, Genaro Pérez Villamil (1807-1854) was still a boy when he enrolled at the Military Academy in Santiago de Compostela, but after moving to Madrid with his family he abandoned the military for literary studies. In 1819 he was wounded when fighting against the absolutist troops of King Ferdinand VII and taken to Cadiz as a prisoner of war and it was there that he began to develop his artistic skills. During those years he may have made a trip to England with his brother Juan, also a painter, and in 1830 the two of them travelled to Puerto Rico, where they decorated the Tapia theatre in San Juan.

Eugenio Lucas Villaamil | Genre painter

Eugenio Lucas Villaamil (Madrid, 1858 - Madrid, 1918) also known as Lucas "the younger", was born in Madrid on 14 January 1858 to the painter Eugenio Lucas Velázquez and Francisca Villaamil. Until only a few years ago the information we had about his life was almost as vague as what is known about his work.

After initially training in his father’s studio as a boy, he furthered his studies at the Special School of Painting in Madrid and took part in the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts three times. In 1876 he entered two works: Italianas ("Italian Women") and Mendigo ("Beggar"); in 1881 he submitted a small picture entitled Galanterías en el siglo XVIII ("Gallantries in the 18th Century"); and in 1884 the watercolour Después de la fiesta. Dibujo de Serra ("After the Fiesta. Drawing of Serra") and the oil painting Cuestión de honor ("A Question of Honour").