Marie Antoinette Portrait.

Marie Antoinette.

"Bocca Baciata" (The Kissed Mouth) ~ By Dante Gabriel Rossetti ~ 1828 - 1882.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Rossetti was born, the son of an Italian patriot and political refugee and an English mother, in England. He was raised in an environment of cultural and political activity that, it has been suggested, was of more import to his learning than his formal education. This latter was constituted by a general education at King's College from 1836 to 1841 and, following drawing lessons at a school in central London at the age of fourteen, some time as a student at the Royal Academy from 1845 onwards. Here he studied painting with William Hollman Hunt and John Everett Millais who, in 1848, would set up the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with Rossetti, Rossetti's younger brother and three other students.

"Soiree de Mai" By ~ Elisabeth Sonrel ~ 1874 - 1953.

Elizabeth Sonrel was the daughter of the painter from Tours, Stephane Sonrel, from whom she received her early artistic guidance. To further her artistic studies she moved on to Paris where she became the pupil of the famous artist Jules Lefebvre at his Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The Tours museum owns her diploma work, Pax  et Labor, which was executed in 1892 at the age of 18 and shows how tremendously precocious she was.

She showed at the Salon des Artistes français in Paris from 1893 to 1941, especially large watercolors of idealized women that have both a certain Pre-Raphaelite intensity (since a journey in Italy, to Florence and Rome where she discovered the Renaissance painters, she deeply admired Botticelli) and an affinity to French symbolist painting. She was inspired by Arthurian romance, biblical subjects, archaic legends and medieval love. Some of her mystical works include Ames errantes (Salon of 1894) and Les Esprits de l’abime (Salon of 1899) and Jeune femme a la tapisserie which has an inspiration close to the famous symbolist Maxence. She did not however adhere to the symbolist movement that, besides, totally ignored her.

"Elegante au Chapeau", By ~ Jules Toulot ~ 1863.

Jules Toulot (French, b.1863)

Elegante au chapeau

Lady Holding A Fan, By ~ Jules Charles Aviat ~ 1844 - 1931.

Jules Charles Aviat  (1844 - 1931)
[Jules Aviat, Jules-Charles Aviat]

Pupil of:

E. Hebert, Leon Bonnat, and Lafrance

Jules Aviat was born at Brienne-le-Chateau, in the Department of Aube, and is a pupil of E. Hebert, Leon Bonnat, and Lafrance. His female portraits are especially esteemed, although he is also strong in male portraiture. His imaginative pictures are always graceful, refined, decorative in treatment, and charmingly delicate in color.

"Good Council", By John Atkinson Grimshaw ~ 1836 - 1893.

John Atkinson Grimshaw was a British landscape painter. Born in Leeds, he remained in the north of England for most of his life. He first began painting while working as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway. In 1861 he left his job and decided to become a full-time artist.

John Atkinson Grimshaw ~ "Good Council"

Grimshaw’s early works were true to the Pre-Raphaelite style, with painted landscapes of accurate colour and lighting, and vivid detail. By the late 1860s he had begun to experiment with moonlit scenes, initially concentrating on rural areas before including cityscapes and docksides. He often painted images that typified seasons or a type of weather with city and suburban streets and moonlit views of the docks in London, Leeds, Liverpool, and Glasgow featuring largely in his art.