Painter of languid, elegant, Edwardian beauties and sharply dressed gentlemen, John Singer Sargent was the ultimate society painter. He knew everyone who was anyone and was on personal terms with many of them, including Edward VII and the U.S. presidents Roosevelt and Wilson. This social standing was justified. Sargent was one of the greatest portrait painters ever, able to convey the personality and style of his sitters—comparable to the great Velázquez himself, of whom he was a great adm...

Although an American, Mary Cassatt spent the majority of her life in France and gained most of her fame and success in Europe. Not until after her death on June 14, 1926, at Chateau de Beaufresne, near Paris, did she become a truly celebrated American artist. Cassatt is known most for her paintings and pastels of mothers and their children. Never having been a mother herself, perhaps Cassatt was mesmerized by the familial bond so evident to observers of these unique relationships and in pa...

Katsushika Hokusai is the most famous of a sequence of names used by a versatile and long-lived Japanese artist who worked in many genres and schools, evolving a unique style that made him known then as well as now as a true master. He was an unusual and restless man who slipped boundaries and made fresh connections, yet never sought great wealth or position. Hokusai produced over 30,000 different designs, prints, illustrations, paintings, and sketches. He is especially known for bringing ...

Ando Hiroshige is considered by many as the last of the great creative masters of the traditional Japanese woodblock print. His skill has won him worldwide fame and artistic influence, along with his contemporary, Katsushika Hokusai. Both artists widened the range of subjects they covered to encompass every aspect of life in Japan’s Edo period. Although famous primarily for his landscapes and the studies of his home city of Edo, Hiroshige produced many others kinds of ukiyo-e , or everyday...

Jan Vermeer is acknowledged as one of the greatest artists who ever lived. Yet in his lifetime he was largely unregarded and struggled to make a living for himself and his family. He lived and worked all his life in the prosperous Dutch town of Delft painting perfectly beautiful pictures of the inhabitants and their homes. Vermeer’s technique was faultlessly meticulous and consequently painstakingly slow. Fewer than forty of his paintings have survived, in fact he probably did not paint an...

Edgar Degas began as a classical painter of genre history scenes and died as one of the greatest and most innovative names in French art—although as with so many other artists, he did not receive a great deal of recognition in his lifetime. Along the way his style changed completely from strict academic formalism to near-abstract scenes of contemporary Parisian life. His primary subject was the human form, especially that of women, and he also loved the vibrancy of horse racing. Degas is u...

Gustav Klimt was raised in poverty in mid-nineteenth century Vienna but his precocious artistic talent raised him from the gutter to the heights of Austrian society. Initially a generic painter of historical scenes he soon devised his own unique style featuring semi-naked women in mystical, gold-wrapped, abstract landscapes that either completely enchanted or totally outraged his audience. His trademark heavily patterned, exotically beautiful women captured the sensuality and excitement of...

The earliest botanical illustrations are found inancient herbals—practical works of knowledge, written to pass on crucial information about how to heal the sick. Around the time of the Renaissance, however, flowers began to be more generally appreciated for their beauty, so talented artists set about capturing their magic. Botanical illustration developed into a high art form during the golden era of the 18th and early 19th centuries. From that era, date some of the most stunning examples ...

Hieronymus Bosch is a Dutch painter of the late Middle Ages. He died in 1516. His work is known for its use of fantastic, now-viewed as horrific, imagery to illustrate moral and religious concepts and narratives of the Roman Catholic church during that time. Balancing the images of hell and tormented sinners are the bucolic, delicate, and detailed landscapes he painted on the back of his triptychs typically created for display and use in churchs. Bosch was not a prolific artist. Only 30 to...

Many art historians consider Edouard Manet to be the father of modern art. Although often cited alongside the Impressionists, he was not a member of their group and never exhibited in their Salon des Réfusées. Instead, he pioneered a path between realism and impressionism, choosing contemporary subjects and composing them in a truly modern fashion. A number of Manet’s paintings provoked outrage and scandal, but his most controversial work was Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass ...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was, above all, a painter of people, especially young women and rosy-cheeked children. In many ways, he is the most approachable Impressionist. Not for him were the grim realities of a hard life. Renoir painted people enjoying themselves: talking, flirting, laughing, often dancing, eating, drinking, and simply passing joyful times together. A constant theme throughout his works is the female nude. It was a subject he approached over and over again, sometimes sharply d...

The greatest artist of the 18th century, Francisco de Goya began his career as an apprentice to a local artist where one of his jobs was adding draperies and modesty items to nude figures in religious paintings; for this he was titled “Reviser of Indecent Paintings.” But by the age of 40, Goya had established himself as a leading Spanish artist. Goya simultaneously pursued a number of disparate projects, commissions he received from prestigious churches and royalty, as well as producing se...