Blagoy Kiroff: 66 books

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591 – 1666), best known as Guercino, or Il Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from the region of Emilia, and active in Rome and Bologna. The vigorous naturalism of his early manner is in contrast to the classical equilibrium of his later works. His...

Lord Frederic Leighton was one of the most famous British artists of the nineteenth century. The recipient of many national and international awards and honors, he was well acquainted with members of the royal family and with most of the great artists, writers and politicians of the late Victorian...

Jacob Jordaens was one of three Flemish Baroque painters, along with Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, to bring prestige to the Antwerp school of painting. Like Rubens, Jordaens painted altarpieces, mythological, and allegorical scenes, and after 1640—the year Rubens died — he was the most...

Berthe Morisot was French artist, member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt. She formed a close friendship with Manet,...

Jacques-Louis David (1748 – 1825) was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the pre-eminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, heightened...

John William Waterhouse was a painter of classical, historical, and literary subjects. Before entering the Royal Academy schools in 1870, Waterhouse assisted his father in his studio. His early works were of classical themes in the spirit of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Frederic Leighton, and were...

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...

Paul Sandby (1731 – 1809) was an English map-maker turned landscape painter in watercolors, who, along with his older brother Thomas, became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Gainsborough singled him out as the only contemporary English landscape artist: "If one wanted...

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was French painter and draftsman. Of the painters classed in the Barbizon school it is probable that Corot will live the longest, and will continue to occupy the highest position. In his first style he painted traditionally and “tight” — that is to say, with minute...

Guido Reni (1575 – 1642) was an Italian painter of high-Baroque style and popular religious works and critically acclaimed mythological scenes. He was a quintessentially classical academic but he was also one of the most elegant painters in the annals of art history. He was constantly seeking an...

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...

George Romney was an English portrait painter. He was the most fashionable artist of his day, painting many leading society figures – including his artistic muse, Emma Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson. Romney is generally ranked third in the hierarchy of 18th-century society portrait painters,...

Hans Holbein the Younger was German painter, draftsman, and designer renowned for the precise rendering of his drawings and the compelling realism of his portraits. Holbein was one of the greatest portraitists and most exquisite draftsmen of all time. Holbein was associated early on with the Basle...

Odilon Redon was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist. He describes his work as ambiguous and indefinable: "My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined." Redon's work represents an...