beside the easel

La Vérité, 1870 Born on March 14, 1836 in Tournan-en-Brie, France, Jules Lefebvre was a French figure painter and respected teacher, whose students include names such as Kenyan Cox, Edmund C. Tarbell, and Paul Cornoyer . Lefebvre is well-known for his highly sensual female nudes, yet looking deeper into his work we see a keen insight into personality and character, creating mood and atmosphere as an essential ingredient in all of his paintings. A contemporary of William Bouguereau , Lefebvre approached the feminine form unabashedly and without the sentimentality of children nor the predictable satyrs and nymphs prancing about in lush landscapes. Lefebvre's women are unique and charming, as he was more keen on capturing who they were first and their physical beauty second. La Vérité above, was modelled after a famous actress of the time, Sophie Croizette: La Vérité reveals an aesthetic visual manifesto of sorts on the superiority of beauty and Classicism. Although m...

Self portrait Born March 8, 1869 in London, George Spencer Watson was an English Realist portrait and figure artist. Watson was a member of the prestigious Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters , whose famous alumni include artists such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Henri Fantin-Latour, John Singer Sargent, James Whistler and Auguste Rodin. By the time his career was in full-swing the 20th century changed art in a way that punished Realist painters and Watson's talents were not appreciated as much as they could have been had he been born a mere fifty years earlier. Although obscure considering the company he was in, Watson had a uniquely modern eye for the portrait and especially the female nude that is definitely worth looking at. In his Self-Portrait above, Watson portrays himself as an artist with uncanny self-awareness, studying himself with cautious scrutiny by the way he leans forward. Note how tightly rendered his head is, and how the...

Death of Cleopatra, ca.1659 Born on January 19, 1601 near Rimini, Italy, Guido Cagnacci was a Baroque painter from the Forlì school and also the Bolognese School , whose contemporaries include Guido Reni , Domenichino , Guercino, and Lionello Spada among others. Considered odd and unreliable, it is unfortunate because his work represents a rare vision on the sensuality of women at a time when the Inquisition did not have an open mind about it. Cagnacci's work is unique from most of his contemporaries for this reason, and his women are unaffected and life-like in a way that is ahead of his time. In Death of Cleopatra we clearly see the Baroque influence from Caravaggio but here Cagnacci heightens the soft flesh with transparent shadows and bright colored drapery. The asp coils loosely around her wrist and bites the forearm of Cleopatra yet her expression is one of surrender, if not pleasure. Cagnacci groups her closest servants on a horizontal plane yet creates a confined sp...

Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée was born in Paris on December 30, 1724. A student of Carlo Van Loo, Lagrenée is a painter of pure French Rococo with beautiful skin tones and bright, sumptuous colors that are pleasing to the eye. In fact, Lagrenée is one of the most erotic painters of his day, rivaling even Boucher. It is his Classical DNA that makes him more interesting than other Rococo artists however because he combines solid anatomy and figures with expressive composition and unabashed color. His colors are purely emotional. A familiar theme in painting, Amor and Psyche above in the hands of Lagrenée becomes a sensual moment. Look at how Psyche gazes into his eyes, touching his cheek with her hand. Lagrenée is setting the scene for a passionate kiss that will take place only in our minds. Here Lagrenée reinterprets this mythology into an allegory of young love, with Cupid as a young man who has met the woman of his dreams. The way in which Lagrenée paints his wings also indicate...