Maria Peitcheva: 161 books

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...

Jean-François Millet 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 of common agricultural...

Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (1791 – 1824) was an influential French painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings. Although he died young, he was one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement. Géricault's first major work, The Charging Chasseur, exhibited...

José Victoriano González-Pérez (1887 – 1927), better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor born in Madrid who lived and worked in France most of his life. Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism, his works are among the movement's most distinctive. In 1906 he...

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...

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...

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,...

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,...

Jacob Jordaens (1593 – 1678) 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...

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...

Charles Le Brun (1619 – 1690) was a French painter and art theorist. Declared by Louis XIV "the greatest French artist of all time", he was a dominant figure in 17th-century French art and much influenced by Nicolas Poussin. Le Brun primarily worked for King Louis XIV, for whom he executed...

Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin (1876 –1942) was a 20th-century illustrator and stage designer who took part in the Mir iskusstva and contributed to the Ballets Russes. Throughout his career, he was inspired by Slavic folklore. Ivan Bilibin was born in a suburb of St. Petersburg. He studied in 1898 at...

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...

John Constable was English painter, ranked with Turner as one of the greatest British landscape artists. After spending some years working in the Picturesque tradition of landscape and the manner of Gainsborough, Constable developed his own original treatment from the attempt to render scenery more...