Maria Peitcheva: 161 books

Pierre-Auguste Renoir is French painter who was important figure in the development of the Impressionist movement. The female nudes were one of his primary themes. His early work reflected many influences including those of Courbet, Manet, Corot, Ingres and Delacroix. Under the influence of Gustave...

Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin, (1878 – 1939) was an important Russian and Soviet painter and writer. Petrov-Vodkin extensively used an aesthetic of Orthodox icon together with brighter colors and unusual compositions. His works were often deemed irreligious and erotic. From 1924 to 1926 Petrov-Vodkin...

John Ottis Adams (1851 – 1927) was an American impressionist painter and member of the Hoosier Group of Indiana painters. He spent his youth in Franklin, Shelbyville, and Martinsville, Indiana and attended Wabash College for two years. Adams studied art at the South Kensington School of Art in London...

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...

Rubens approached a large work in a series of stages. First, the artist would make preliminary drawings in black chalk, sometimes in combination with brown chalk. At this point he would often refer to his extensive library of copies, but the work of his forebears always underwent radical transformation...

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...

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...

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526 – 1593) was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books. Giuseppe's father, Biagio Arcimboldo, was an artist of Milan. Like his father, Giuseppe Arcimboldo started his...

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, (1833 –1898) was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company. Burne-Jones...

Thomas Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences,...

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609 – 1664) was an Italian Baroque artist, painter, printmaker and draftsman, of the Genoese school. He is best known now for his elaborate engravings, and as the inventor of the printmaking technique of monotyping. Castiglione painted portraits, historical pieces...

George Romney (1734 – 1802) 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...

Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (1815 – 1905) was a German artist noted for drawings, etchings, and paintings. Along with Caspar David Friedrich, he is considered one of the two most prominent German artists of the 19th century, and was the most successful artist of his era in Germany. His popularity...

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...