Henri Fantin-Latour | Portrait of Madame Léon Maître, 1882

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) imbued his sitter - the sister-in-law of a friend - with an air of introspective melancholy, and the delicately rendered jewelry, fan, and corsage reveal his talent for still life.

While working on this portrait, the artist likely saw A Bar at the Folies-Bergère in the studio of his longtime friend Édouard Manet.

Madame Maître’s black, lace-trimmed evening dress, her choker, and the flowers at her décolletage are similar to the barmaid’s.

Henri Fantin-Latour | Portrait of Madame Léon Maître, 1882 | Brooklyn Museum

Both paintings were displayed at the 1882 Paris Salon, but whereas Manet’s ambiguous scene of a lower-class woman at work caused a public sensation, critics praised Fantin-Latour’s more sedate portraits, such as this one, as exemplars of femininity and breeding: "No one expresses like Monsieur Fantin-Latour the freshness of flowers and the natural gentleness of women of good solid bourgeois stock". | Source: © Brooklyn Museum

Gustave Caillebotte | Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877

This complex intersection, just minutes away from the Saint-Lazare train station, represents in microcosm the changing urban milieu of late nineteenth-century Paris.

Gustave Caillebotte grew up near this district when it was a relatively unsettled hill with narrow, crooked streets.

As part of a new city plan designed by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, these streets were relaid and their buildings razed during the artist’s lifetime.

In this monumental urban view, which measures almost seven by ten feet and is considered the artist’s masterpiece, Caillebotte strikingly captured a vast, stark modernity, complete with life-size figures strolling in the foreground and wearing the latest fashions.

William Turner | Romantic painter

J.M.W. Turner, in full Joseph Mallord William Turner, (born April 23, 1775, London, England - died December 19, 1851, London), English Romantic landscape painter whose expressionistic studies of light, colour, and atmosphere were unmatched in their range and sublimity.

Turner was perhaps the greatest landscapist of the 19th century.

Although brought up in the academic traditions of the 18th century, he became a pioneer in the study of light, colour, and atmosphere.

Venice in the 19th-Century paintings

Friedrich Nerly🎨 (German painter, 1842–1919) Piazza San Marco in Venedig bei Mondlicht, 1871

A Visit to Venice

by Ivan Sergeevič Turgenev - Novel "On the Eve", 1860

"Whoever has not seen Venice in the month of April will find it hard to picture to himself the indescribable charm of this fairy city. The softness and mildness of spring are to Venice, what the bright summer sun is to glorious Genoa, or what the purple golden autumn is to ancient Rome.

Like spring, the beauty of Venice excites and arouses our softest desires; it animates and stirs the unspoiled heart like the promise of some near, undefined, mysterious pleasure".

Marco Ortolan, 1973

Marco Ortolan - "Drawing is the fundamental basis of my painting, it is what keeps it afloat. I pay particular attention to composition and light. Our role as an artist is to awaken the spirit and sensitivity of the viewer as art is linked to the spirit".

Marco Ortolan was born in Arquitecto, Argentina.

Since 1985 he trained in the plastic arts at the Miguel Perez Macias Academy where he developed Drawing and Painting with references to the Italian Renaissance and French Impressionism.

Friedrich Nietzsche | Venice / Venezia

Luca Carlevarijs (Italian painter, 1663-1730) | View of the Molo Venice looking west

Venice

By the bridge I stood

recently in the brown night.

From the distance came the sound of song;

golden drops surged away

over the vibrating surface.

Venezia

Stavo sul ponte,

poco tempo fa, nella notte bruna.

Di lontano giungeva un canto:

gocce d’oro affioravano

sulla superficie vibrante.

Pietro Canonica | Figurative sculptor

“The aim of the artist is to study truth in its purest form, concentrating the greatest possible emotion on it”, with these words Pietro Canonica (1869-1959) declared his predilection for an art capable of idealising and yet at the same time expressing the most secret motions of the soul.

In his sculptures he combines the proportions and balance of classical art, the refined models of fifteenth century Florentine work, the lightness of touch of neoclassicism, Romantic disquietude and nineteenth century sensibility.

Gifted with an absolute mastery of technique and great ability and speed in working the material, he received commissions from the aristocracy of all Europe, who sought after his refined taste and idealization.

Charles Caryl Coleman | Genre painter

Charles Caryl Coleman (1840-1928) was an American artist who lived most of his life in Capri, Italy.

Coleman studied art with Andrew Andrews and W.H. Beard in Buffalo, NY in the 1850s.

Between 1859-1862, Coleman studied in Paris under Thomas Couture, returning during the American Civil War to serve with the Union Army during which he was seriously wounded in South Carolina and recovered in New York City.