Maria: 1071 books

"To tell the truth, the peasant subjects suit my temperament best; for I must confess, even if you think me a socialist, that the human side of art is what touches me most." Jean-François Millet Jean-François Millet (1814 – 1875) was a French painter and one of the founders of...

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is best known as a chronicler of the nightlife of late 19th century Paris. He used to frequent the nightclubs and cafés of Montmartre, befriending the dancers and prostitutes, making countless sketches as they comb their hair or just lie in bed. Toulouse-Lautrec did not...

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade he produced over 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, the majority created in the last two years of his life. They include portraits, self-portraits,...

Giovanni Boldini was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting. His paintings and drawings showed his subject in soft-focus, elongated, in movement, alive, and sophisticated. He painted mostly portraits and also landscapes in the naturalistic style of his day,...

Jean-François Millet was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers; he can be categorized as part of the movements of Realism and Naturalism. Millet portrayed the gravity, hardship, and dignity of common agricultural...

Paul Cézanne was the leading figure in the revolution toward abstraction in modern painting. His influence on the course of modern art, particularly on the development of cubism, is enormous and deep. In his early career, he was strongly influenced by Delacroix and Courbet. Through Pissarro, Cezanne...

John Bergsma’s popular Bible Basics for Catholics, which has sold more than 60,000 copies, offers readers an accessible vision of salvation history as it unfolds in the Bible, showing readers how the Bible points us to the saving life and work of Jesus. This new edition includes an additional chapter...

Jacques Tissot was born to a middle class family. He initially studied art at Beaux-Arts in Paris. He decided to move to London in 1871. Here Tissot started to paint highly finished pictures of London society. The main criticisms were that the pictures were really only painted photographs, and they...

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the...

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was the most versatile and influential Baroque artist in northern Europe in the seventeenth century. Highly gifted and internationally oriented, the Flemish artist received commissions from almost all of Europe's major courts. His art blends the High Renaissance of Italy,...

Audrey Hepburn is my favourite actress. "I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess! - She says for herself. She was very intelligent and with a delicious sense of self-irony and humour. Her mother was a Dutch aristocrat; her father was an...

When Frida Kahlo married Diego Rivera, Diego was 42 years old, and 300 pounds; Frida was 22 years old,and just 98 pounds. Her mother did not approve of the union and did not attend the wedding ceremony. She said that Diego was too old, too fat and worse yet he was a Communist and an atheist. She described...

Joseph Mallord William Turner was English painter, one of the greatest and most original of all landscape painters. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned...

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), Italian engraver and architect, is best known for his etchings of ancient and baroque Rome and grandiose architectural constructions of his own imagination. Throughout most of his adult life Piranesi made etchings of views of the city; not only its antiquities,...