"The Maid Of Honer" By ~ Jean-Francois Raffaelli ~ 1867 - 1924.

Jean-François Raffaëlli was a French realist painter, sculptor, and printmaker who exhibited with the Impressionists. He was also active as an actor and writer, mostly during the first half of the 20th century.

Raffaëlli was born in Paris. He showed an interest in music and theatre before becoming a painter in 1870. One of his landscape paintings was accepted for exhibition at the Salon in that same year. In October 1871 he began three months of study under Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris - he received no other formal training. Raffaëlli produced primarily costume pictures until 1876, when he began to depict the people of his time—particularly peasants, workers, and rag-pickers seen in the suburbs of Paris—in a realistic style. The rag-picker became for Raffaëlli a symbol of the alienation of the individual in modern society.

"The White Rose" By ~ Fernand Toussaint ~ 1873 - 1955.

Toussaint was primarily known as a painter and watercolourist of female portraits, which he presented in a rich and elegant manner. His works were usually commissioned by the upper-middle class and noble families. His models were always dressed in the latest fashion, often accompanied by an umbrella or a hat, and seated on a bench in a house interior. The gazes of the women are honest, barely provocative and dreamy. Avant-garde art magazines in Paris took notice of him when he was awarded the gold medal for a portrait of an elegant lady at the renowned “Salon des Artistes Français” in Paris in 1929.