Blagoy Kiroff: 53 books

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was The American painter, etcher, and lithographer who created a new set of principles for the fine arts, favored "art for art's sake", and introduced a delicate style of painting in which atmosphere and mood were the main focus. Establishing himself as a painter...

Jean-François Millet (1814 – 1875) was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers; he can be categorized as part of the movements of Realism and Naturalism. Millet portrayed the gravity, hardship, and dignity...

Felicien Rops was a Belgian artist who spent most of his life in Paris. He worked in many mediums and was also a master printmaker utilizing various techniques. Rops was originally trained in lithography by the University of Brussels, but went on to produces engravings and etchings as well. He was...

An important Post-Impressionist French painter, Georges Seurat moved away from the apparent spontaneity and rapidity of Impressionism and developed a structured, more monumental art to depict modern urban life. Seurat studied avant-garde painting techniques, especially Impressionism and the latest...

Anders Zorn was one of Sweden’s foremost artists who obtained international success as a painter, sculptor and printmaker in etching. His incisive ability to depict the individual character of his model is famous. The model's surroundings were important; Zorn believed that a portrait should be painted...

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758 – 1823) was a French Romantic painter and draughtsman best known for his allegorical paintings and portraits. Prud'hon's artistic style contrasted starkly with the dominant version of Neoclassicism under Jacques-Louis David. His paintings were based on classical texts...

Mary Cassatt was an American impressionist painter who depicted the lives of women, chiefly the intimate bond between mother and child. Her works are painted with quick brushstrokes in a pastel palette. Invited in 1877 by her friend and mentor Edgar Degas, Cassatt was one of three women—and the...

Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704 – 1788) was a French Rococo portraitist who worked primarily with pastels. Among his most famous subjects were Voltaire, Rousseau, Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. He was born in Saint-Quentin, Aisne, a son of a musician who disapproved of his taking up painting....

August Macke (1887 – 1914) was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). He lived during a particularly innovative time for German art he saw the development of the main German Expressionist movements as well as the arrival of the successive...

Paul Cézanne was the leading figure in the revolution toward abstraction in modern painting. His influence on the course of modern art, particularly on the development of cubism, is enormous and deep. In his early career, he was strongly influenced by Delacroix and Courbet. Through Pissarro, Cezanne...

Eugene Delacroix was the greatest French painter of the Romantic Movement. Delacroix's output was enormous. After his death his executors found more than 9,000 paintings, pastels, and drawings in his studio and he prided himself on the speed at which he worked, declaring 'If you are not skilful enough...

Essential figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism, Edouard Manet was an influential painter who left his own unique mark on the art world. In 1856, in his early thirties, Manet opened his own studio. He began painting in a quasi-realist style, which transitioned to a more Impressionist...

Amedeo Modigliani was the essence of a tragic artist. He sketched furiously, sometimes drawing over 100 sketches in a day, but many of his works were lost, given away, or in some cases, destroyed by Modigliani himself. His favorite subject was by far the human form, painting the likenesses of other...

Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto, was an Italian painter of landscapes of Venice. He was also an important printmaker in etching. Much of Canaletto's early artwork was painted "from nature", differing from the then customary practice of completing paintings in the studio....