Jimmy Ernst - Lumiere [1968]

Jimmy Ernst, born Hans-Ulrich Ernst (June 24, 1920 - February 6, 1984), was an American painter born in Germany. He was the son of surrealist painter Max Ernst and Luise Straus. When he was just two years old, his parents divorced, Jimmy staying with his mother. He first visited his father in France in 1930, where he met many of the surrealists, including André Masson, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. In February 1933 the Ernst family emigrated to Paris on account of being suspected by the new Nazi regime. In June 1938 Jimmy set sail from Le Havre, eventually arriving in New York. There he met many European exiles and befriended the city's avant-garde. His efforts to transport his father away from Nazi-occupied France finally succeeded in 1941. His mother, however, was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944, which she did not survive.

[Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 inches]

Frederick C Frieseke - Two Women on the Grass [c.1914]

Frederick Carl Frieseke (April 7, 1874 – August 24, 1939) was an American Impressionist painter. He was born in Owosso, Michigan and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris. Frieseke and his family resided for fourteen years in Giverny, which was also home to Monet. He had a great influence on the Americans at the colony there, many of whom shared his Midwestern American background.

Edward Burne-Jones - King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid [1883]

The Beggar Maid [Lord Alfred Tennyson]

Her arms across her breast she laid;
She was more fair than words can say;
Barefooted came the beggar maid
Before the king Cophetua.
In robe and crown the king stept down,
To meet and greet her on her way;
It is no wonder,' said the lords,
She is more beautiful than day.'

As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen;
One praised her ankles, one her eyes,
One her dark hair and lovesome mien.
So sweet a face, such angel grace,
In all that land had never been.
Cophetua sware a royal oath:
This beggar maid shall be my queen!'

[Oil on canvas, 136 x 290 cm]

Hugues Merle - Romeo and Juliet [1879]

Hugues Merle (Saint Martin, 1823 – Paris, 1881) was a 19th Century French painter. He mostly depicted sentimental or moral subjects. He has often been compared with William-Adolphe Bourguereau.

[Oil on canvas, 67 x 51 cm]

Mina de la Cruz - Asian Vessels

Originally from the Philippines, Mina immigrated to Canada in 1977 and is currently residing and working in Toronto. In 2004, she left her career in Human Resources to pursue her passion in drawing and painting. Although she attended various schools to strengthen her drawing skills, in painting, Mina is self-taught. As a contemporary realist painter, Mina’s main focus is in still life and portraiture. Her technique is based on the academic or traditional style of painting; a technique that emphasizes skill and draftsmanship. She works out of Adelaide Street Studio located in downtown Toronto. Mina has participated in various group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her paintings hang in private collections in Canada and abroad.

See: http://www.minadelacruz.com/

[Oil on linen]

Aleksander Veliscek - Freud [2008]

Aleksander Veliscek was born in Nova Gorica, Slovenia in 1982; he currently lives and works in Venice.

See: http://aleksanderart.blogspot.com/

[Oil on canvas, 110 x 45 cm]

John R Grabach - Morning [c.1917]

Starting out as a die-cutter for a silverware firm, Grabach also designed important works of sterling silver hollow ware and Art Deco glass designs for several high-end retail manufacturers. He designed United States stamps for the Treasury Department and designed holiday greeting cards for several firms. Grabach enrolled in courses at the Art Students League in his spare time, studying under George Bridgman, Frank Dumond, Kenyon Cox and H. August Schwabe.

Considered a leading figure in the Newark School of Painters, his powerful Ashcan style paintings depicting scenes of New York City and Newark are truly American masterpieces. He captures the expressions and mood of his subjects in these complex compositions on par with any of the highly regarded Ashcan painters of this period. Similar in many ways to his contemporary, George Bellows, Grabach was gifted in portraying the everyday events of working class folks, and translating their ordinary daily routines into something extraordinary to look at.

[Oil on canvas, 91.6 x 107.3 cm]

Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor y Zaragoza - Portrait of Father Villalba

Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor y Zaragoza (El Ferrol, September 25, 1875 – Madrid, March 17, 1960) was a Spanish painter. In 1922 he became director of the Museo del Prado and member of the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. As director of the Museo del Prado, he was in charge until 1931 when he was obliged to leave the post due to the rise of the republic in Spain. he later became director of the museum a second time after the Spanish Civil War until he died. He played a great role in hiding most of the paintings the museum held during the civil war and later on recuperating them. From 1953 to 1955 he was also director of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

[Oil on canvas, 86 x 100cm]

Henri Matisse - Bathers with a Turtle [1907-08]

[Oil on canvas, 179.1 x 220.3 cm]

Aaron Coberley - Cathleen Seated Nude [2005]

[Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches]

Aaron Coberly - Pigeon White Shirt [2008]

Aaron Coberly was born in Seattle in 1971. He has been drawing for as long as he can remember. He started taking art seriously as a teenager after being invited to attend a life drawing class. Living and traveling in Europe further inspired him. He began oil painting in 1999. His work is primarily figurative with a stylistic nod to the Masters and the Impressionists. Aaron runs an open painting and drawing session in Seattle. He resides in the greater Seattle area and is married with a young son.

See: http://www.flickr.com/people/aaroncoberly/

[Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches]

Jean-Leon Gerome - Diogenes [1860]

The Greek philosopher Diogenes (404-323 BC) is seated in his abode, the earthenware tub, in the Metroon, Athens, lighting the lamp in daylight with which he was to search for an honest man. His companions were dogs that also served as emblems of his "Cynic" philosophy, which emphasized an austere existence. Three years after this painting was first exhibited, Gerome was appointed a professor of painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he would instruct many students, both French and foreign.

[Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 101 cm]

Joseph Mallord William Turner - Dinner in a Great Room with Figures in Costume [c.1830-35]

The influence of Rembrandt's dramatic effects of chiaroscuro on Turner (1775 – 1851) can be readily appreciated in this unfinished painting. Turner had been impressed by Rembrandt's art since he had been a student, but many of the paintings he produced during the last years of the 1820s, and on into the 1830s, demonstrate his revived respect for the Dutch old master. The left hand side of this work seems to be indebted to a painting formerly thought to be by Rembrandt, which passed through the London art market in 1821; the small interior scene is now in the National Gallery. The costumes worn by the figures suggest that Turner may have intended to complete a historical subject.

[Oil on canvas, 908 x 121.9 mm]

Gertrude S Spaller - Woman Seated [1920]

Gertrude S. Spaller Woman Seated 1920, originally uploaded by Art & Vintage.

Gertrude S Spaller (aka Getrude Spaller Kinder) was an American artist and was married to Pierre Jermain Kinder. Her occupations were illustrator, needlework and clothing books, and Rand McNally books.. Her address circa 1916 was 6332 Glenwood Avenue, Chicago – the city of her birth. She was a member of the Arts Club of Chicago, the Chicago Artists Guild, and the Chicago Society of Artists. Harry Armstrong was Gertrude Kinder's second husband – they had no children.

Lovis Corinth - The Temptation of Saint Anthony [1897]

Lovis Corinth (Tapiau, Prussia, July 21, 1858 – Berlin, July 17, 1925) was a German painter and printmaker whose mature work realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism. Corinth studied in Paris and Munich, joined the Berlin Secession group, later succeeding Max Liebermann as the group's president. His early work was naturalistic in approach. Corinth was initially antagonistic towards the expressionist movement, but after a stroke in 1911 his style loosened and took on many expressionistic qualities. His use of colour became more vibrant, and he created portraits and landscapes of extraordinary vitality and power. Corinth's subject matter also included nudes and biblical scenes.

Edouard Manet - The Swallows [1873]

Here man and landscape are uniquely fused. The artist’s mother in black and Madame Manet in white have taken their ease on a field behind the dunes, with their billowing skirts and bonnets tied on with veils. The sun has just been shining, but now the sky is overcast; the artist’s wife has lowered the still opened parasol to her lap, and low flying swallows herald the change in weather. All this has nothing anecdotal about it, but is merely the expression of the mood of the landscape, which is accentuated on the far horizon in the shape of windmills, the small church and rooftops of the village.

Manet found an understanding buyer for the painting in Paris immediately after his return, which did not prevent the Salon of 1874 from rejecting it. The jury could not accustom itself as yet to the sketchy quality of this kind of painting.

Albert Marquet - Milliners [1901]

Albert Marquet (Bordeaux, March 27, 1875 – Paris, June 14, 1947) was a French painter associated with the Fauvist movement. At the end of 1907 he stayed in Paris and dedicated himself, together with Henri Matisse, to a series of city views. The fundamental difference between the two is that while Matisse used strong colours, Marquet favoured greyed yellows, greyed violets or blues. Black was usually used as a violent contrast to light colours for such forms as bare tree trunks or calligraphically drawn people contrasted with very light, often yellow or orange streets and sidewalks. Another difference is that Marquet used an approximation of traditional perspective, although his colours and compositions constantly referred to the rectangle and cut its plane with their calligraphy.

[Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 61 cm]

Daniel Ridgway Knight - Hailing the Ferry [1888]

Daniel Ridgway Knight (March 15, 1839 - March 9, 1924) was an American artist born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a pupil at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under Gleyre, and later worked in the private studio of Meissonier. After 1872 he lived in France, having a house and studio at Poissy on the Seine. He painted peasant women out of doors with great popular success.

Gerrit van Honthorst - Childhood of Christ [c.1620]

The subject of this canvas is thought to be an apocryphal story from the childhood of Christ: Jesus helps the carpenter Joseph, his foster-father, with advice. Gerrit van Honthorst (November 4, 1592 - April 27, 1656) was one of the leading Dutch followers of Caravaggio. The influence of the great Italian master is clear in the down-to-earth nature of the scene, in the half-figures shown close to, and in the powerful contrasts of light and shade. Here a candle as a strong source of light may refer to Christ's words: "I am the light of the world."

[Oil on canvas, 137 x 185 cm]

Werner Groshans - Lake Erie Shore [1961]

Werner Groshans was born in Eutingen, Germany in 1913 and died in Catskill, New York in 1986.

[Oil on canvas, 43.6 x 58.6 cm]

Leon Jean Basile Perrault - Maternity [1873]

Though little known abroad, Perrault (French, 1832 – 1908) enjoyed a considerable following in France as a painter of genre subjects and portraits. A student of Picot and Bouguereau, he made his first appearance in the Paris Salon in 1861. In addition to easel paintings he also produced some decorative works, including a ceiling decoration for the Marriage Chamber of the city hall of his native Poitiers.

In this interior scene that was first exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1873, Perrault shows a pretty young mother holding her young son. The child is nude and the mother wears a kimono, with her left shoulder and breast exposed. Perrault has excelled in achieving a remarkable richness of colours and textures: the embroidered saffron-coloured silk of the mother's kimono contrasts with the rich purple velvet upholstery of the chair. The vibrantly coloured Oriental rug and Japanese carved teak bed, on which rests a punchinello doll, reflect the vogue for Japanese products in 1870s France.

[Oil on canvas, 170.3 x 111.4 cm]

Karel van Mander - Garden of Love [1602]

Karel van Mander (Meulebeke, May 1548 – Amsterdam, September 2, 1606) was a Flemish-born Dutch painter and poet. Karel van Mander is considered the founder of the Haarlem drawing academy, although it is very unclear what this involved at this period - it was certainly not a regular school offering classes, probably an informal discussion group which may have sat for life-drawing together. He was considered an established expert when he arrived in Haarlem.

He received budding artists in his home for evenings of communal drawing and study of classical mythology. His purpose was to educate young painters in the proper artistic techniques; he was a firm believer in the hierarchy of genres. It was his firm belief that only through proper study of existing works that true-to-life historical allegories could be achieved.

[Oil on canvas, 45 x 70 cm]

Hsin-Yao Tseng - A Glance

Hsin-Yao Tseng was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1986. He received his B.F.A of Fine Art Painting from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco in 2009. The subjects he chooses to explore include landscapes, the figure and still-life using bright colour and expressive brush-strokes.

See: http://hsinyaotseng.mosaicglobe.com

[Oil on canvas, 11 x 14 inches]

Camille Pissarro - The Rue de l’Hermitage, Pontoise [1873-75]

This watercolour is unique in Pissarro’s career, as it is the only watercolour depicting the rue de l'Hermitage, on which Pissarro lived with his family throughout much of the 1870s. Pissarro painted the street seven times, and one pencil drawing also survives. Neither the drawing nor the watercolour relates in any direct way to a painting, clearly indicating that for Pissarro in the early and mid-1870s each work of art was made independently, rather than in the traditional hierarchy of drawing, watercolour, oil sketch, and finished painting.

Stylistic evidence suggests that this watercolour was made in the early or mid-1870s, when Pissarro concentrated on street scenes with balanced architectural masses. The interplay of red, green, and blue and the contrast of large areas of white and dark give the work a visual strength that belies its small size. It was made in a medium that Pissarro used throughout his life but that, curiously, was without a particularly distinguished history in French art. The pencil initials at the lower right indicate that Pissarro himself considered this sheet to be finished.

[Watercolour, pencil, gouache on woven paper]

Jose Jimenez Aranda - Figaro’s Shop [1875]

In this scene set in Rome, a young gypsy strums a guitar while a priest and a couple of men in frock coats play a game of checkers. The barber pulls up a chair to join them. The artist has provided a wealth of descriptive details, including caged birds, a copper barber's bowl suspended over the door, and graffiti on the wall. Jiménez (Spanish, 1837 - 1903), an artist from Seville, joined Mariano Fortuny's circle of Spanish artists in Rome in 1871. Like them, he displayed remarkable technical skills in his humorous depictions of daily life.

[Oil on canvas, 44 x 57.4 cm]

George Spencer Watson - Portrait of Betty McCann [1927]

George Spencer Watson Portrait of Betty McCann 1927, originally uploaded by Art & Vintage.

Kenneth Frazier - Woman with a Rose [1891-92]

Kenneth Frazier, born in 1867, was an illustrator who worked in a hybrid of Art Nouveau, Impressionist and Realist styles. The watercolours Portrait of a Fortune Teller and Portrait of a Stylish Woman explore his type of illustration, which reflected increasing female sophistication. He exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show in New York City - the first major introduction of modern art and modern artists to America.

Edouard Bernard Debat-Ponsan - The Daughter Of Jephthah [1876]

Edouard Debat-Ponsan (1847 - 1913) was born in Toulouse, April 25, 1847 and died in Paris, January 29, 1913. He is considered an important portrait and landscape painter from the French school. Debat-Ponsan received his formal training at l’ Ecole des Beau-Arts under Cabanel. In 1874, he was awarded prix Troyon at the Institute and in 1875, second in the prix de Rome. In 1889, Edouard Debat-Ponsan was invited to exhibit at the Universal Exhibition. He was awarded a bronze medal for “Le Portrait equestre du General Boulange” which he refused. Ponsan was very dissatisfied with how the exhibition was organized and how the judging was conducted. He very abruptly removed his painting and returned to France.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Harvesters [1565]

This panel is part of a series showing the seasons or times of the year, commissioned from Bruegel by the Antwerp merchant Niclaes Jongelinck. The series included six works, five of which survive. The other four are: "The Gloomy Day," "Hunters in the Snow," and "The Return of the Herd" (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna); and "Haymaking" (National Gallery, Prague). This remarkable group of pictures is a watershed in the history of Western art. The religious pretext for landscape painting has been suppressed in favour of a new humanism, and Bruegel''s unidealised observation of the local scene is unified by his profound understanding of Italian Renaissance compositional principles.

[Oil on wood, original painted surface 116.5 x 159.5 cm]

Constant Troyon - Coast Near Villers [c.1859]

Constant Troyon (French, 1810 - 1865) was the third generation of his family to be employed at the Sèvres Manufactory decorating porcelains. In his spare time, he began to sketch in the Fontainebleau Forest, where he met other painters who would become associated with the Barbizon School. Troyon was a gifted marine painter and, in the early 1850s, acquired a house at Villers which he named The Academy of Landscape. He worked here closely with several young painters, including Eugène Boudin. After seeing the works of the Dutch 17th-century masters Paulus Potter and Albertus Cuyp during a tour of the Netherlands and Belgium in 1847, Troyon decided to specialize in animal genre subjects. In this view of an impending storm near the resort village of Villers-sur-Mer, the artist presents a cross section of society: a peasant couple riding on ponies equipped with baskets for carrying seaweed, a sportsman from town strolling with his gun, and hunters erecting fowling nets.

[Oil on canvas, 67.4 x 95.7 cm]

Henri Le Fauconnier - Little Schoolgirl [1907]

Henri Le Fauconnier (Hesdin, July 5, 1881 - Paris, December 25, 1946) was a French cubist painter. As an artist he is somewhat forgotten today, although he played an important role in the spread of cubism.

[Oil on canvas, 73 x 92.5 cm]

Will Hicok Low - An Arcadian Pool [1891]

Will Hicok Low, born in Albany, New York, in 1853, was a leading muralist and figurative painter who explored both Barbizon landscape and a colourful Victorian style. He studied with academic painter Jean-Leon Gerome from 1872-1877, in Paris. He was the second husband of artist Mary MacMonnies Low, and a friend of writer Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, New York City, elected an Associate in 1888, and an Academician in 1890.

Mary Cassatt - Young Mother Sewing [1900]

During the 1890s Mary Cassatt (American, 1844 – 1926) narrowed the range of her subjects to mothers or nurses caring for children, and children alone. These themes reflected her affection for her nieces and nephews and her friends' children as well as her contemporaries' concern with motherhood and child rearing. Set in the conservatory of Cassatt's seventeenth-century manor house near Le Mesnil-Théribus, Oise, this painting depicts two of her favourite unrelated models in the roles of mother and child. Louisine Havemeyer, who purchased the painting in 1901, remarked on the truthfulness of its narrative: "Look at that little child that has just thrown herself against her mother's knee, regardless of the result and oblivious to the fact that she could disturb her mamma. And she is quite right . . . Mamma simply draws back a bit and continues to sew."

[Oil on canvas, 92.4 x 73.7 cm]

Mary Cassatt - The Caress [1902]

[Oil on canvas, 83.40 x 69.40 cm]

Marguerite Gerard - Artist Painting a Portrait of a Musician [c.1803]

Marguerite Gérard (Grasse, January 28, 1761 – Paris, May 18, 1837) was a French painter and etcher. She was the daughter of Marie Gilette and perfumer Claude Gérard. At 8 years-old she became the sister-in-law of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and when she was 14 she became his pupil, and she often worked with him. She was also the aunt of the artist Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard.

[Oil on panel, 61 x 51.5 cm]

John Frederick Peto - Job Lot Cheap [c.1901-07]

Born in Philadelphia in 1854, John Frederick Peto was raised in that city and is first listed in the 1876 Philadelphia directory as a painter residing on Chestnut Street, a favourite neighbourhood of that city’s artists. Peto was a musician as well as a painter, playing the cornet in the Fire Department Band and at religious meetings. He studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, along with fellow student William Harnett, whose paintings were often confused with those of Peto due to their similarities in composition and subject - still life. By the end of the nineteenth century, Harnett’s signature was often forged on Peto’s paintings to fetch more money, as Peto’s work received little recognition at the time, while Harnett was well known, and his work commanded higher prices.

In June 1887 Peto married Christine Pearl Smith, and to earn money he began to commute to Island Heights, New Jersey, where he played the cornet at camp revival meetings. By 1889 he had settled there permanently, devoting his life to his family and to painting in his solitary studio, surrounded by the battered books, lamps, mugs, and pipes that appear in his art. Isolated in this riverside town, his career began to decline. Beset by poverty, family problems, and ill health, Peto died in Island Heights on November 23, 1907.

Romaine Brooks - Self-Portrait [1923]

In this painting, Romaine Brooks portrayed herself in the dark colours of a man's outfit, her eyes veiled under the shadow of her hat brim. Brooks lived most of her life in Paris, where she crafted an androgynous appearance that challenged conventional ideas of how women should look and behave. The shadowed face in this portrait suggests that her true self is hidden behind a carefully constructed facade. The tiny flash of red on Brooks's lapel represents the ribbon of the Legion of Honour she received for her artistic achievements, but it might also hint at the secret passions of her personal life.

[Oil on canvas, 117.5 x 68.3 cm]

Vincent van Gogh - Cottages [1890]

The painting was executed in Auvers not long before van Gogh's death. He repeated the motif of peasant huts on many occasions: "In my opinion, the most marvellous of all that I know in the sphere of architecture is huts with their roofs of moss-grown straw and a smoky hearth," wrote van Gogh in one of his letters. The thatched roofs seem to be just as much an organic part of nature as the hills, fields and sky. The hilly relief of the distance allowed the artist to accentuate the dynamics of space, which he reinforced through the use of colour contrasts. The tense, wavy brushstrokes and lines convey the dramatism of the artist's perception of life and the world.

[Oil on canvas, 59 x 72 cm]

Raphael - Portrait of a Nude Lady

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino[ (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520), better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop, and despite his death at thirty-seven, a large body of his work remains.