John Singer Sargent 1856-1925 | American Impressionism

John Singer Sargent was an american artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian Era luxury.

The Edwardian Period corresponds to the French Belle Époque period. Despite its brief pre-eminence, the period is characterised by its own unique architectural style, fashion, and lifestyle. Art Nouveau had a particularly strong influence. Artists were influenced by the development of the automobile and electricity, and a greater awareness of human rights.

During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2.000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine and Florida.
Born in Florence in 1856 to expatriate American parents, John Singer Sargent received his first formal art instruction in Rome in 1868, and sporadically attended the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence between 1870-1873. In 1874 he was accepted at the Paris studio of the portraitist Emile-Auguste Carolus-Duran, and the next fall entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study drawing. He began to exhibit at the Salon in 1877. Over the next few years several experiences had a significant impact on Sargent's artistic development: during a trip to Spain in 1879 he copied paintings by Velázquez at the Prado; in 1880 he visited Belgium and Holland, where he copied works by Frans Hals; and in 1881 he met James McNeill Whistler in Venice.
During the 1870-1880, Sargent painted genre scenes, based in part on his travels to Spain and Venice, but it was his remarkable skills as a portraitist upon which his reputation rested. The scandal caused by Sargent's daring portrait of Madame Gautreau at the Salon of 1884 precipitated his departure to London the following year. In England, Sargent's style of working was seen as peculiarly French. In 1885 he joined Francis David Millet in the Worcestershire village of Broadway, where he began his masterpiece of english impressionism, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. By 1886, he had made London his permanent home. A year later, Sargent visited and worked with Monet at Giverny, and made his first professional trip to America, where the demand for his portraiture brought him considerable fame.

Igor Venski 1962 | Russian impressionist painter

Venski was born on 6 June 1962 in Krasnodar, Russia, and he began drawing and painting very early in his youth. He studied painting at Krasnodar School of Fine Arts. Igor Venski is adhering to the aesthetic principles and the classical traditions. The artistic formula he employs is that of romantic impressionism with a marked infusion of realistic elements. Sometimes he paints in manner such as of post modernism.

Raymond Leech 1949 | British impressionist painter

Raymond Leech was born at Great Yarmouth in East Angila in 1949 and spent his childhood by the seaside, He was influenced to take up an artistic career by his father, who taught him to draw. In particular, he was inspired by the work of the Newlyn School, the french impressionists, Edgar Degas 1834-1917, Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841-1919 and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1864-1901.
Raymond Leech did take a course in fine art and graphics at a local college of art but considers himself mainly to be a self-taught artist.

Sherree Valentine-Daines 1956 | British impressionist painter

Sherree Valentine-Daines was born in Effingham, Surrey. She was not always an artist, at 18 she began work as a legal secretary in London. Realising the quality of the idle sketches she drew on her legal pads, it became clear that she had a talent for drawing. Valentine-Daines studied fine art at Epsom School of Art for 4 years, leaving in 1980. It was during her time at art school that she developed an interest in painting figures. After graduating, she spent the first summer in Cornwall, painting villages, harbours and beaches and most of all the people. She has also been known to paint the busy streets of London, especially showing passers by hailing cabs, looking around markets or leaving the theatre.
Sherree has had considerable success in her career, her colourful impressionist paintings appeal to a world wide clientele making her a favourite with many celebrity collectors including members of the British Royal Family. Many famous people have sat for her including Joanna Lumley and Michael Parkinson. She was televised painting the England cricket team and was also the official artist to the Rugby World Cup, producing commemorative portraits of Martin Johnson and Jonny Wilkinson. Her recent projects have included the publication of ‘First Impressions’, a stunning hardback book celebrating her life and career. Her work has been widely exhibited, selling through many of the top London Galleries and at venues including - The Royal Academy, The Barbican, Lord’s.

E. Melinda Morrison | American contemporary impressionist

Melinda Morrison is a story teller. Her stories are of diverse people and places with long histories and uncertain futures, and she tells it all in the language of oils and light and composition. Although her paintings have their foundation in the quotidian of daily events and experiences, she enhances and enlarges those slices of life and paints what she wants to see with a certain looseness and abstraction in shapes. Her colors are carefully paired with grays - never “color for color-sake”, rather color for the sake of the narrative. In her own words, she “enjoys telling the story” and revels in framing a climactic scene: “whether a humorous or an emotional moment, capturing a person in spontaneous expression is the ultimate glory for me in painting”. As an extroverted artist, Morrison has always had the unfortunate tension of drawing energy from interaction with people, while needing to nourish and express her creative soul in solitude.

Édouard Manet 1832-1883 | French Realist/Impressionist Painter

Édouard Manet nato in una famiglia borghese, dopo gli studi classici si arruolò in Marina. Respinto agli esami, decise di iniziare la carriera artistica. Dal 1850 al 1856 studiò presso il pittore accademico Couture, pur non condividendone gli insegnamenti. Viaggiò molto in Italia, Olanda, Germania, Austria, studiando soprattutto i pittori che avevano scelto il linguaggio tonale quali Giorgione, Tiziano, gli olandesi del Seicento, Goya e Velazquez. Notevole influenza ebbe sulla definizione del suo stile anche la conoscenza delle stampe giapponesi. Nell’arte giapponese, infatti, il problema della simulazione tridimensionale viene quasi sempre ignorato, risolvendo la figurazione solo con la linea di contorno sul piano bidimensionale.
Manet è stato un pittore poco incline alle posizioni avanguardistiche. Egli voleva giungere al rinnovamento della pittura operando all’interno delle istituzioni accademiche. E, per questo motivo, egli, pur essendo il primo dei pittori moderni, non espose mai con gli altri pittori impressionisti. Rimase sempre su posizione individuale e solitaria anche quando i suoi quadri non furono più accettati dalla giuria del Salon.
Le sue prime opere non ebbero problemi ad essere accettate. La rottura con la critica avvenne solo dopo il 1863, quando Manet propose il quadro «La colazione sull’erba». In questa tela sono già evidenti i germi dell’impressionismo. Manet aveva abbandonato del tutto gli strumenti classici del chiaroscuro e della prospettiva per proporre un quadro realizzato con macchie di colori puri e stesi uniformemente. In esso, tuttavia, l’occhio riesce a cogliere una simulazione spaziale precisa se osservato ad una distanza non ravvicinata.

Charles Courtney Curran 1861-1942 | American Impressionist painter

Curran was born in Hartford, Kentucky in 1861 and moved to Sandusky, Ohio in 1881. He studied one year at the Cincinnati School of Design, and began a brilliant career after moving to New York City in 1882 where he enrolled in the National Academy of Design. He went on to study at the Académie Julian in Paris and was a student of Benjamin Constant, Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Henri Lucien Doucet. Curran himself would become a teacher at the Pratt Institute, New York City, the Cooper Union and the National Academy.

Claude Monet 1840-1926 | The father of Impressionism

The father of Impressionist Art, Monet's style and passion for painting paved the way for the Modern art movement French Impressionist Painter. Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise Impression, soleil levant. Oscar Claude Monet was born in Paris, attending the Swiss Academy for one year in 1859. Later studying in the studio of Glenyre he met Sisley and Renoir and the three of them began the Impressionist movement. He moved to Giverny in 1883 where he began painting his home and the lily ponds and gardens in his beloved yard. Some Famous Monet Oil Paintings include Poppy Field in Argenteuil, Walking near Argenteuil and London House of Parliament. Monet - Water Lilies Some of the most famous of Claude Monet’s impressionist works Water Lilies, which is actually the name for three different paintings that he did at various times in his life. The first was painted in 1903, the second in 1906 and the third he worked on between 1916 and 1923.

Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890 | Self-portraits

Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890 created many self-portraits during his lifetime. He was a prolific self-portraitist, who painted himself 37 times between 1886-1889. In all, the gaze of the painter is seldom directed at us; even when it is a fixed gaze, he appears to look elsewhere. The paintings vary in intensity and color and some portray the artist with beard, some beardless, some with bandages, depicting the episode in which he severed his ear. Self-portrait Without Beard, from late September 1889, is one of the most expensive paintings of all time, selling for $71.5 million in 1998 in New York. At the time, it was the third, or an inflation-adjusted fourth, most expensive painting ever sold. It was also van Gogh's last self-portrait, given as a birthday gift to his mother. All of the self-portraits painted in Saint-Rémy show the artist's head from the right, the side opposite his mutilated ear, as he painted himself reflected in his mirror. During the final weeks of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, he produced many paintings, but no self-portraits, a period in which he returned to painting the natural world.

Claude Monet 1840-1926 | I Covoni

Nell'ottobre del 1890 Claude Monet scriveva: "Sgobbo molto, mi ostino su una serie di diversi effetti, ma in questo periodo il sole declina così rapidamente che non mi è possibile seguirlo, vedo che bisogna lavorare molto per riuscire a rendere quello che cerco: l'istantaneità, soprattutto l'involucro, la stessa luce diffusa ovunque, e più che mai le cose facili, venute di getto, mi disgustano".
Difatti, nel 1889-1891, inizio a dipingere la serie Meules - i Covoni, che rappresentavano il mutare della luce, delle stagioni e delle ore in soggetti e forme quasi elementari.
L'importante era il manifestarsi del proprio interesse verso l'irradiazione della luce.
Esposta presso la Casa Durand-Ruel nel maggio del 1891, la serie dei Covoni ebbe successo e le tele vengono vendute da Monet direttamente ai collezionisti.

Guy Dessapt 1938 | French impressionist painter

As a child, Guy showed an enthusiastic aptitude for painting which led him to the highly acclaimed Art Decoratifs School in Paris. Here he learned about the masters of genre and grew to respect the impressionists of the 1800's. At this time, Guy spent many days painting in the streets of Montmarte which provided him with direct exposure to a thriving arts community. He began painting his favorite subjects from cities and countrysides of Europe, which would later become his trademark expression. The themes emanating from Dessapt's lifelong passion for travel are depicted through the merging of both visual experience with a uniquely striking impressionist style. Dessapt can easily call St. Tropez, Venice, Paris or New York City his home. In fact, for seven years in the 1960's, Guy worked in New York and explored a variety of artistic styles and techniques. Currently he spends most of his time living and working in the house built by his grandfather in France with his wife and children. Guy Dessapt has been established as a premier talent in the American art market as well as the Asian art market. In Japan today, Guy Dessapt is considered part of the Paris School which includes such renowned artists as Marc Chagall, Roger Bonafe, Rouls Icart, Bernard Buffet and George Laporte. His works are highly prized by art connoisseurs worldwide.

Andrew Atroshenko 1965 | Russia | Romantic impressionist painter

Andrew Atroshenko was born in 1965 in the city of Pokrovsk, Russia. Accepted as a gifted child in 1977 into the Children’s Art School, Andrew graduated with honors in 1981. Two years later, Andrew entered Bryansk Art College, and in 1991 was accepted at one of the most prestigious art schools in the world, the St. Petersburg Academy of Art. In 1994, Andrew began taking part in exhibitions such as St. Petersburg Artists in Reutlingen, Germany, the exhibition of a group “Academy” in St. Petersburg 1996, and “Teacher’s memory” 1997. After graduation from St. Petersburg Academy of Art in 1999, Andrew was invited by a New England, US based art group “Bay Arts” to take part in their exhibitions and activities, spending that entire year in the United States into the Millennium. While Andrew’s work was being sold successfully in galleries across Florida, California, Ohio and Arizona, the artist was taking part in a variety of group exhibitions and auctions in France, which resulted in all of his work being sold out. Since 2000, Andrew has worked with dealers from Western Europe and the US, exhibiting and selling his paintings in such US cities as Carmel, Scottsdale, Palm Desert, Las Vegas & Hawaii. Two of Andrew’s pieces were also auctioned off by Sotheby’s in 2002-2003. In 1992 Andrew married a fellow student, Maria, who is now an art critic in St Petersburg, Russia, and has a daughter named Alexandra. Like many artists, Andrew has his artistic references and influences, but his wife and daughter are the inspiration for his passion.

Michael and Inessa Garmash | Ukraina | Romantic Impressionists painters

Mr. and Mrs. Garmash are considered two of the finest Romantic Impressionists of our day. Their incredible talent is only matched by their love and career stories. In similar fashion to the determination of his artwork, Mr. Garmash courted his future wife, after seeing her for but a moment, by painting her image all over her hometown while she slept. She immediately recognized the passion with which this man cared so dearly and married him shortly thereafter.

Edgar Degas 1834-1917 | French impressionist | Ballet dancers

Among the supreme masterpieces of the century are Degas's pictures of the ballet and its dancers. The impulse towards painting the contemporary scene came to him not only from Courbet and Manet but from his friend, the critic Duranty, the exponent of the aesthetics of naturalism. Yet in the particular direction of his tastes and his conception of design he was entirely individual. To study and convey movement was a chosen task, first undertaken on the race course and then in his many pictures of the Opera, viewed from behind the scenes, in the wings, or from the orchestra stalls during a performance.

Edgar Degas 1834-1917 | French impressionist | Paintings

Edgar Degas, born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a french artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist. A superb draughtsman, he is e...specially identified with the subject of the dance, and over half his works depict dancers. These display his mastery in the depiction of movement, as do his racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and depiction of human isolation. Early in his career, he wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classic art. In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.

Joaquín Sorolla 1863-1923 | Realist/Impressionist painter

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida was a spanish painter, born in Valencia, who excelled in the painting of portraits, landscapes, and monumental works of social and historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous representation of the people and landscape under the sunlight of his native land. Joaquin Sorolla was the eldest child born to a tradesman, also named Joaquin, and his wife, Concepcion Bastida. His sister, Concha, was born a year later. In august 1865 both children were orphaned when their parents died, possibly from cholera. They were thereafter cared for by their maternal aunt and uncle. He received his initial art education, at the age of fourteen, in his native town, and then under a succession of teachers including Cayetano Capuz, Salustiano Asenjo. At the age of eighteen he traveled to Madrid, vigorously studying master paintings in the Museo del Prado. After completing his military service, at twenty-two Sorolla obtained a grant which enabled a four year term to study painting in Rome, Italy, where he was welcomed by and found stability in the example of F. Pradilla, the director of the Spanish Academy in Rome. A long sojourn to Paris in 1885 provided his first exposure to modern painting; of special influence were exhibitions of Jules Bastien-Lepage and Adolf von Menzel. Back in Rome he studied with Jose Benlliure, Emilio Sala and Jose Villegas.

Scott Mattlin 1955 | Impressionist american painter

Mattlin is an artist with a deep and passionate appreciation for beauty in the natural world and within the human spirit. This enthusiastic and sensitive joy is reflected strongly in his artwork. His work is executed in a vibrant, impressionistic style, which - while still retaining its representational roots, incorporates abstract elements, resulting in a uniquely contemporary union. Mattlin paints the private world to which he bears witness. Whether it be an intimate moment captured between mother and child, a glimpse into the solitary reverie of a ballet dancer, or a private view into that sacred world of the timeless nude. Scott’s choice of subject matter, his masterful ability for extemporaneous composition, and his brilliant talent for the juxtaposition of light and shadow, all evoke a powerful old world feel, yet with an irresistible modern edge.

Eric Wallis | Impressionist american painter

Eric started oil painting at the age of seven painting en plein-air along with his father, Kent R. Wallis. Trekking through mountain forests and rural farmland, the two painted together, scenes of simple, quiet, yet soulful scenery. Eric became a child prodigy at the side of his experienced father. Many awards followed through Eric’s school years as he continued to find voice in visual clarity. His impressionistic style continued to develop; color and texture the focus of the experience. Eric received a music scholarship at Utah State University but after teaching a percussion class at a local middle school, he quickly changed direction and embarked upon an education in painting. Eric studied with Adrian Van Suchtelen, an extraordinary figurative artist with traditional discipline at hand. Glen Edwards from Art Center, also with a traditional approach, guided Eric in a loose, impressionistic style. Figure painting was the emphasis at USU. Eric received a BFA in painting in 1992. In 1990 Eric embarked on a professional art career. He was accepted to hang in The Long Gallery of Scottsdale Arizona. Immediately it became a full time vocation so Eric worked to finish his junior and senior years at USU and devote himself to painting. For seventeen years Eric has been working 10 to 12 hour days to keep up with demand for his colorful, enjoyable paintings. His work has grown in popularity every year.

Jean Béraud 1849-1935 | French Impressionist painter | Belle Époque

Jean Béraud was a russian-born french impressionist painter and commercial artist noted for his paintings of Parisian life during the Belle Époque. Béraud's paintings often included truth-based humour and mockery of late 19th century Parisian life, along with frequent appearances of biblical characters in then contemporary situations. Paintings such as Mary Magdalene in the House of the Pharisees aroused controversy when exhibited, because of these themes. Towards the end of the 19th century, Béraud dedicated less time to his own painting but worked on numerous exhibition committees, including the Salon de la Société Nationale.

Aristide Maillol 1861-1944 | French sculptor and painter | Les Nabis

Maillol began his career as a painter and tapestry designer, but after c. 1900 devoted himself to three-dimensional work, becoming one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century.
He concentrated almost exclusively on the nude female figure in the round, consciously wishing to strip form of all literary associations and architectural context.
Although inspired by the Classical tradition of Greek and Roman sculpture, his figures have all the elemental sensuousness and dignity associated with the Mediterranean peasant.