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The Pink Dancers, Before the Ballet (1884). Edgar Degas (French, Impressionism, 1834-1917). Oil on canvas. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
Degas likened the dancers’ training to his work as an artist. Just as he sketched the dancers’ every gesture and position to make his paintings as authentic as possible, the dancers performed countless repetitions to perfect their movements.
Degas sketched as he wandered the Opera House, filling his notebooks with drawings of dancers and then returning to his studio to compose and paint.
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Reading (1890). Ilya Galkin (Russian, 1860-1915).
“To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.” -- A C Grayling, Financial Times (in a review of A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel)
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Young Boy Playing Flute At The Edge Of The Woods. Haynes King (British, 1831-1904). Oil on canvas.
King was born on the island of Barbados, then in the British Empire. In 1854 he moved to London where he studied art at the Leigh Academy. Many of his paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts.
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A Pleasant Afternoon/Portrait of a Young Woman Reading. Lilian Matilda Genth (American, 1876-1953). Oil on canvas.
Genth worked as a dress designer before winning the Elkins Scholarship, which allowed her to study with J.A.M. Whistler in Paris for a year. Upon her return to the US, she began painting female nudes in landscapes, for which she became well known. Later in her career, she abandoned the nude in favor of scenes from her travels across Europe and Asia.
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The Secret Admirer. Etienne Adolphe Piot (French,1850-1910). Oil on canvas.
As a painter of the female face, Piot had few equals. His idealized depiction of women and girls are full of sentimentality yet possess a technical skill that is of the highest level. Piot was a student of Leon Cogniet, at his Paris atelier, in the late 1870’s. Cogniet instilled within the young artist a love for the human form.
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The Love Letter. Jessie Elliot Gorst (British, fl. 1889-1899). Oil on canvas.
“I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil.” — from Napoleon Bonaparte love letter
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Eva Gonzalès (1870). Edouard Manet (French, 1832-1883). Oil on canvas. The National Gallery, London.
Gonzalès (1849-1883) entered Manet’s studio as his pupil in 1869. Manet is said to have begun a portrait soon after. It was exhibited at the Salon in 1870. The present whereabouts of the flower-piece shown on her easel in the painting is not known.
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Reading at the window. Harold Knight (British, 1874-1961). Oil on board.
Together with his wife and painter Laura Knight, Knight moved to the Staithes Artist Colony on the Yorkshire coast where the art was characteristically of free brushwork in a bright Impressionist palette. During this important period in his development, Knight painted the daily activities of local Staithes fishermen and their families.
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The Ballet Lesson (1914). Pierre Carrier-Belleuse (French,1851–1932). Oil on canvas.
Many of Carrier-Belleuse’s works are a homage to female beauty, a genre that, in differing guises, grew in popularity in the latter 19th century. It frequently appeared in the form of dancers at work or in repose, thus catering for a new breed of collector in Paris, those familiar with the dance halls and Follies.
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Portrait of Rodo Reading (1893). Camille Pissarro (Danish-French, Impressionism, 1830-1903). Oil on canvas.
In 1871, Pissarro married Julie Vellay, with whom he would have seven children. Rodo was the fourth son. They lived outside of Paris, where Pissarro painted scenes of village life and the natural world. Like many of his contemporaries, he preferred to work in the open air rather than the studio.
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Francesca and Her Lute (c.1900). Edward Charles Hallé (English, 1846-1914). Oil on canvas.
Hallé’s first professors were Richard Doyle and the Baron Marochetti when he entered the School of the Royal Academy of London. At seventeen years of age he traveled to France and worked with Victor Mottez, a student of Ingres.
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Mary Lapsley Caughey (1916). John Butler Yeats (Irish, 1839-1922). Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Ireland.
COLUMBINE’S THOUGHTS
Harlequin has lovely eyes
And he seems so very wise.
Yet he bows him at my feet.
Finds my maiden kisses sweet.
All this goes to prove, I’m sure.
Men admire us demure;
Like us simple, good, and kind.
I please Harlequin’s mind.
He declares he can’t exist
Without kissing my small wrist.
So I think I’ll give him me.
All I have shall be quite free.
He shall have me for a prize.
Harlequin with lovely eyes.
Mary Lapsley Caughey, 1921. -
Girl with a Rose. Guido Reni (Italian, 1575-1642). Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Reni was a quintessentially classical academic but he was also one of the most elegant painters in the history of art. He was constantly seeking an absolute, rarefied perfection which he measured against classical Antiquity and Raphael. Because of this, over the years the Bolognese painter has been in and out of fashion, depending on the tastes of the times.
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Young Reader (2003). Jerry Davidson (Canadian). Acrylic on canvas.
Davidson comes from a family of artists. He works in a variety of media in a highly realistic style often combined with an element of mystery or ambiguity. His paintings and drawings have been sold through a number of public and private galleries in Canada. Davidson is an honorary member of the Drawing Society of Canada.
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Life Class at the École des Beaux-Arts (Fauvist Nude), 1898. Albert Marquet (French, 1875-1947). Oil on canvas. Musee des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux.
Marquet exhibited paintings at the Salon des Indépendants. His early compositions were characterised by a clear and painterly Fauvist approach, in which he had a fine control of the drawing and responded to light, not only by intensifying the strongest tones, but also by seeing the weaker ones in coloristic terms.
