Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges on 25 February 1841. In 1854, the boy’s parents took him from school and found a place for him in the Lévy brothers’ workshop, where he was to learn to paint...
Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionist’s circle, for both favoured the animated Parisian life of their day as a motif in their paintings. Degas did not attend Gleyre’s studio; most likely he...
Ornans, Courbet’s birthplace, is near the beautiful valley of the Doubs River, and it was here as a boy, and later as a man, that he absorbed the love of landscape. He was by nature a revolutionary,...
Goya is perhaps the most approachable of painters. His art, like his life, is an open book. He concealed nothing from his contemporaries, and offered his art to them with the same frankness. The...
Within this book you will find a simple, fun and effective method to learn basic drawing techniques in order to draw beautiful horses in an easy way. With this complete manual you will achieve...
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) has long been considered one of the greatest artists in European history. His paintings have launched imitations and homages, including best-selling novels, a recent TV...
Since the first funerary statues were placed in the first sepulchres, the ideas of death and the afterlife have always held a prominent place at the heart of the art world. An unlimited source of...
Leonardo’s early life was spent in Florence, his maturity in Milan, and the last three years of his life in France. Leonardo’s teacher was Verrocchio. First he was a goldsmith, then a painter and...
Influenced by the masters of Antiquity, the genius of Michelangelo and Baroque sculpture, particularly of Bernini, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is one of the most renowned artists in history. Though...
With Impression, Sunrise, exhibited in 1874, Claude Monet (1840–1926) took part in the creation of the Impressionist movement that introduced the 19 th century to modern art. All his life, he...
Michelangelo, like Leonardo, was a man of many talents; sculptor, architect, painter and poet, he made the apotheosis of muscular movement, which to him was the physical manifestation of passion. He...
Even today, the splendid appearance of angels remains undiminished. Images of these heavenly and powerful messengers convey protection, innocence and calm, and have been an inspiration to religious...
What happened to the insolence of the 18th-century libertines or to the carefree excesses of the Belle Époque and its legalized brothels? They have merely been inhibited and buried by the nowadays...
Whether you are an animal lover or a budding artist, who hasn’t wished to be able to draw animals? And if you happen to have a cat, who hasn’t wished to draw it in a funny pose or when it is placidly...
If sensuality had a name, it would be without doubt Utamaro. Delicately underlining the Garden of Pleasures that once constituted Edo, Utamaro, by the richness of his fabrics, the swan-like necks of...
Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionist’s circle, for both favoured the animated Parisian life of their day as a motif in their paintings. Degas did not attend Gleyre’s studio; most likely he...
Rembrandt is completely mysterious in his spirit, his character, his life, his work and his method of painting. What we can divine of his essential nature comes through his painting and the trivial...
Audubon’s ambitious project to paint all the birds of North America resulted in a work that represents one of the greatest advances in ornithology. Not only did he identify new species, he also...
Flowers are the centerpiece in the majority of pictorial still-lifes. By painting their colours and forms, artists from Brueghel to O’Keeffe have created symbols for both life and mortality. Van...
Since The Turkish Baths (1863) by the French painter Ingres, the Far Eastern woman has, to many, been a symbol of out of reach or forbidden pleasures. Seafaring explorers, military adventurers and...
Mega Square In Praise of the Backside celebrates the most sensual part of the female body. The insightful text by Hans-Jürgen Döpp discusses the backside as a feature that stands for both powerful...
Reflecting their owner’s taste and serving as an impressive exhibition space for visitors, cabinets of curiosities were a place of interest in the houses of the wealthy in the 16th an 17th centuries....
Raphael was the artist who most closely resembled Pheidias. The Greeks said that the latter invented nothing; rather, he carried every kind of art invented by his forerunners to such a pitch of...
With Impression, Sunrise, exhibited in 1874, Claude Monet (1840–1926) took part in the creation of the Impressionist movement that introduced the 19 th century to modern art. All his life, he...
For Claude Monet the designation ‘impressionist’ always remained a source of pride. In spite of all the things critics have written about his work, Monet continued to be a true impressionist to the...
Egon Schiele’s work is so distinctive that it resists categorisation. Admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at just sixteen, he was an extraordinarily precocious artist, whose consummate skill...
For Claude Monet the designation ‘impressionist’ always remained a source of pride. In spite of all the things critics have written about his work, Monet continued to be a true impressionist to the...
In 1905 Georgia travelled to Chicago to study painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1907 she enrolled at the Art Students’ League in New York City, where she studied with William Merritt...
Picasso was born a Spaniard and, so they say, began to draw before he could speak. As an infant he was instinctively attracted to artist’s tools. In early childhood he could spend hours in happy...
