Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) Academic painter

Born in the Grand-Duchy of Baden in 1805, of peasant stock, Franz Xaver Winterhalter received early training in Freiburg as a graphic artist.

In 1824 he enrolled at the Munich Academy for further study in painting, while continuing to earn a living with lithographic work.

Barbara McCann (1948-2011) | Impressionist painter

Barbara McCann, American painter, began her artistic endeavors with drawing as a child, and then with painting in her teenage years. Upon graduating from high school, she took a four-year apprenticeship in architectural illustration and design, which set the stage for a career in commercial art.

McCann moved to Florida in 1973, and for the next 20 years ran her own architectural illustration studio.

Julio Vila y Prades (1873-1930)

Julio Vila y Prades was a Spanish painter🎨 and muralist who also worked throughout Latin America.

Against his parents wishes, he began his artistic studies at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos with Francisco Domingo Marqués and Joaquín Agrasot🎨.

He then went to Madrid and was an assistant in the workshop of Joaquín Sorolla🎨 from 1893-1904.

Marius Borgeaud | Post-impressionist painter

Marius Borgeaud (1861-1924) was a Swiss Post-Impressionist painter. He was born in Lausanne.

Early life

Borgeaud came from a bourgeois milieu; he attended the Industrial School of Lausanne and did not intend to pursue painting.

As chance would have it, the future gallerist Paul Vallotton was one of his school-mates.

In 1888, he began working in a bank in Marseille and remained there until the death of his father the following year.

Cuno Amiet | Expressionist painter

Cuno Amiet (1868-1961) is often called the “master of colour” and is seen as a pioneer of modernism in Swiss art; he ranks as one of the most versatile and significant artists of Switzerland.

Cuno Amiet was born in Solothurn and devoted his entire life to art.

After finishing school he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and continued his training with his friend Giovanni Giacometti at the Académie Julian in Paris.

Godfried Schalcken (1643-1706)

Godfried Schalcken or Gottfried Schalken was a Dutch genre and portrait painter.

He was noted for his mastery in reproducing the effect of candlelight, and painted in the exquisite and highly polished manner of the Leiden fijnschilders.

Life and work

Godfried Schalcken was born in Made, North Brabant, the son of Cornelis Schalcken and Aletta Lydius.

Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) | Romantic / Genre painter

Carl Spitzweg was a German🎨 romantic painter, especially of genre subjects🎨. He is considered to be one of the most important artists of the Biedermeier era.

Spitzweg was born in Unterpfaffenhofen, near Munich, Bavaria, the second of three sons of Franziska (née Schmutzer) and Simon Spitzweg.

His father, a wealthy merchant, had Carl trained as a pharmacist.

Arkady Plastov (1893-1972) Socialist Realist painter

Arkady Alexandrovich Plastov / Аркадий Александрович Пластов was a Russian🎨 socialist realist painter. Plastov was born into a family of icon painters in the village Prislonikha in the Russian Governorate of Simbirsk.

He attended the sculpture department of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture beginning in 1914.