André Derain: "The substance of painting is light"

• "Fauvism was our ordeal by fire... colours became charges of dynamite. They were expected to charge light... The great merit of this method was to free the picture from all imitative and conventional contact".

• "It was the era of photography. This may have influenced us, and played a part in our reaction against anything resembling a snapshot of life".

André Derain | Portraits

André Derain (1880-1954) was a French painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

Derain and Matisse worked together through the summer of 1905 in the Mediterranean village of Collioure and later that year displayed their highly innovative paintings at the Salon d'Automne.

The vivid, unnatural colors led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to derisively dub their works as les Fauves, or "the wild beasts", marking the start of the Fauve movement.

Francisco De Zurbarán | Baroque painter

Francisco de Zurbarán (baptized November 7, 1598 - August 27, 1664) was a Spanish painter.

He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes. Zurbarán gained the nickname Spanish Caravaggio, owing to the forceful, realistic use of chiaroscuro in which he excelled.

Zurbarán was born in 1598 in Fuente de Cantos, Extremadura; he was baptized on November 7 of that year.

His parents were Luis de Zurbarán, a haberdasher, and his wife, Isabel Márquez.

In childhood he set about imitating objects with charcoal.

In 1614 his father sent him to Seville to apprentice for three years with Pedro Díaz de Villanueva, an artist of whom very little is known.

Auguste Charpentier (1813-1880)

Auguste Charpentier was a French painter, engraver and designer.

Charpentier studied under the direction of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and François Gérard at the École beaux-arts de Paris.

He exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1833-1870, and was awarded a second-class medal in 1840.

Max Liebermann (1847-1935) | Vita ed Opere

Il pittore Tedesco Max Liebermann nacque in una famiglia ebraica. Studiò a Berlino e a Weimar, poi, attratto dalle innovazioni della pittura francese, dal 1873-1878 soggiornò a Parigi.

Tornato in Germania, si stabilì dapprima a Monaco poi a Berlino.

In questi anni non fu l'impressionismo a richiamare la sua attenzione, quanto il realismo di Gustave Courbet e di Jean-François Millet, di cui apprezzò particolarmente il messaggio sociale.

Giorgio Vasari | The Adoration of the Magi, 1566-1567

Title: The Adoration of the Magi

Artist: Giorgio Vasari🎨 (Italian Mannerist Writer and Painter, 1511-1574)

Date created: 1566-1567

Medium: Oil on panel

Dimensions: 65.00 x 48.00 cm (framed: 95.00 x 69.00 x 10.00 cm)

Current location: Scottish National Gallery

This panel is an autograph, small-scale replica of an altarpiece painted in 1566-7 for the newly elected Pope Pius V, which was destined for the pope’s burial chapel in the church of Santa Croce in his native town of Bosco Marengo in Piemonte.

Ercole de' Roberti | The miracles of St Vincent Ferrer, 1473

Author: Ercole de' Roberti (Italian Early Renaissance painter, 1450-1496);

Title: The miracles of St Vincent Ferrer;

Date: 1473;

Medium:Tempera on wood;

Dimensions: 30 x 215 cm;

Current location: Vatican Museums

This work by Ercole de' Roberti forms the predella of the altarpiece painted by his teacher, Francesco del Cossa🎨, for the Griffoni Chapel in S. Petronio, Bologna in 1473.

The central panel is preserved in the National Gallery of London, while the side panels are in the Pinacoteca of Brera in Milan.

Francesco del Cossa | Saint Lucy, ca. 1473/1474

Artist: Francesco del Cossa (Italian Early Renaissance painter, 1435-1477);

Title: Saint Lucy / Santa Lucia;

Date: c. 1473-1474;

Medium: Tempera on poplar panel;

Dimensions overall: 77.2 × 56 cm (30 3/8 × 22 1/16 in.);

Sold: May 1936 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;

Gift: 1939 to The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC;

Current location: The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

This work originally formed part of the Griffoni Altarpiece commissioned by Floriano Griffoni for his family chapel in the church of San Petronio in Bologna.

Moïse Kisling | Modern painter

Moïse Kisling (1891-1953), born Mojżesz Kisling, was a Polish-born French painter.

He moved to Paris in 1910 at the age of 19, and became a French citizen in 1915, after serving and being wounded with the French Foreign Legion in World War I.

He emigrated to the United States in 1940, after the fall of France, and returned there in 1946.

Born in Kraków, Austria-Hungary, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków.

His teachers encouraged the young man to go to Paris, France, considered the international center for artistic creativity in the early 20th century.