Louis Boulanger (11 March 1806, Vercelli, Piedmont – 5 March 1867, Dijon) was a French Romantic painter, lithographer and illustrator. He enrolled in 1821 at the École des beaux-arts where he attended the workshop of Guillaume Guillon Lethière and received a solid classical training. Next he made a présentation for the prix de Rome, in 1824,…
Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès, better known by the pen name Léo Taxil (French pronunciation: [leo taksil]; March 21, 1854–March 31, 1907), was a French writer and journalist who became known for his strong anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views. He is also known for the Taxil hoax, a spurious expose of Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic…
Konrad Dielitz is a German portrait and fantasy painter. Born in 1845 in Berlin, was the son of a well-known literary man. He made his first stroke of fortune as a portrait painter, and the reputation he thus gained brought him an appreciative public for his genre, historical, and legendary compositions. In “The Daughters of…
Kawanabe Kyōsai, May 18, 1831–April 26, 1889) was a Japanese artist, in the words of a critic, “an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting”. Living through the Edo period to the Meiji period, Kyōsai witnessed Japan transform itself from a feudal country into a modern state. Born at Koga, he…
Karl Bryullov was born on December, 12th (23), 1799 in St. Petersburg, in a family of the academician, the woodcarver and engraver Pavel Ivanovich Briullo (Brulleau, 1760—1833). He felt drawn to Italy from his early years. Despite his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1809–1821), Bryullov never fully embraced the classical style taught by…
Vítězslav Karel Mašek (1865–1927) was a Czechoslovakian artist active during the Art Nouveau movement in Europe. He studied pointillism after the manner of Seurat, and had a large influence on later artists, such as Gustav Klimt.
Karel Hlaváček (August 24, 1874, Prague – June 15, 1898, Prague) was a Czech Symbolist and Decadent poet and artist. He published his poetic works and art criticisms in the journal Moderní revue (Modern review). He was also active as an artist, creating works that suggest his anxieties about sex, such as Exile. He was…
Justus Sustermans (28 September 1597 – 23 April 1681), also known as Giusto Sustermans, was a Flemish painter in the Baroque style. He was born in Antwerp and died in Florence. Sustermans is chiefly notable for his portraits of members of the Medici family as he was their court painter. His work can be found in…
Julio Ruelas (June 21, 1870 – September 16, 1907) was a Mexican graphic artist, painter, draughtsman and printmaker. Ruelas was the principal illustrator of the Revista Moderna magazine and is most associated with Mexican symbolism. A number of his works are on display at the Museum of the City of Mexico and in the Zacatecas…
He was born and died in Córdoba, Spain, where he lived most of his life. His father was the famous painter Rafael Romero Barros and his mother was Rosario de Torres Delgado. Julio learned about art from his father who was the director, curator and founder of Córdoba’s Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes and an…
Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière, originally published in Paris in 1862. I have titled this text The Sorceress because that is a literal translation of the original French title. The original title of this translation was Satanism and Witchcraft, and it was later retitled Witchcraft, Sorcery and Superstition. However there is no need to sensationalize this…
Juan de Valdés Leal (4 May 1622 – 15 October 1690) was a Spanish painter of the Baroque era. Leal was born in Seville in 1622. He became a painter, sculptor, and architect. By his twenties, he was studying under Antonio del Castillo in Córdoba. Among his works are History of the Prophet Elias for the…
Joseph Wright (3 September 1734 – 29 August 1797), styled Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as “the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution.” Wright is notable for his use of Chiaroscuro effect, which emphasises the contrast of light and dark, and for…
“Turner’s earliest works were watercolours in the eighteenth-century tradition of the topographical ‘tinted drawing’, in which a preliminary pencil outline determined the subsequent placing of the washes of colour. However, after a group of watercolours in which he surpassed all previous works in this style, he evolved, together with Thomas Girtin and under the influence…
He was born in Wooer’s Alley, Dunfermline, Fife, to a family of weavers who worked with damask. He continued the family trade for a short time. He had strong artistic inclinations however and studied briefly at the Royal Academy, London in 1843. He painted in the Pre-Raphaelite style and became a painter of historical, fairy, allegorical…
Jose Guadalupe Posada: (1852–1913) was a Mexican cartoonist illustrator and artist whose work has influenced many Latin American artists and cartoonists because of its satirical acuteness and political engagement. Posada was born in Aguascalientes, on February 2, 1852. His education in his early years was drawn from his older brother Cirilo, a country schoolteacher, who taught…
Painter of classical, historical, and literary subjects. John William Waterhouse was born in 1849 in Rome, where his father worked as a painter. He was referred to as “Nino” throughout his life. In the 1850s the family returned to England. Before entering the Royal Academy schools in 1870, Waterhouse assisted his father in his studio.…
“Visiting the galleries of Baroque painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art one afternoon, some friends and I paused before Rubens’s portrait of himself with his family, and reminded one another what a remarkable man he was. A painter of stupefying energy and force, he ran a workshop, listened to music as he painted, did…
John Payne (1607–1647) was an English engraver, who was one of the earliest exponents of the art of engraving in England. His best work was the finest produced by a native-born engraver working during the reign of Charles I. Payne had considerable skill in engraving, and many of his portraits and title-pages have great merit.…
J. H. Valda was a English illustrator and artist, who had studied alongside John Millais at the Sass’s Academy in London and had painted the portrait of King Edward VII.