Frank Duveneck

Frank Duveneck (October 9, 1848 - January 3, 1919) was an American figure and portrait painter. Frank Duveneck was born in Covington, Kentucky, the son of German immigrant Bernard Decker. Decker died when Frank was only a year old and his widow remarried Joseph Duveneck. By the age of fifteen Frank had begun the study of art under the tutelage of a local painter, Johann Schmitt and had been apprenticed to a German firm of church decorators.

While having grown up in Covington, Duveneck was a part of the German community in Cincinnati, Ohio, just across the Ohio River.

However, due to his Catholic beliefs and German heritage, he was an outsider as far as the artistic community of Cincinnati was concerned. In 1869 he went abroad to study with Wilhelm von Diez and Wilhelm Leibl at the Royal Academy of Munich, where he learned a dark, realistic and direct style of painting.

He subsequently became one of the young American painters-others were William Merritt Chase, John Henry Twachtman, and Walter Shirlaw-who in the 1870s overturned the traditions of the Hudson River School and started a new art movement characterized by a greater freedom of paint application.

Daniel Graves

Daniel Graves – (b. 1949) American, graduated from the Maryland Art Institute in 1972 where he studied with Joseph Shepard and Frank Russell. He continued his education at the Villa Schifanoia Graduate School of Fine Art with Richard Serrin, and then with Richard Lack in Minneapolis. That led to a teaching position at the Atelier Lack School of Fine Art.

In the late 1970’s Graves worked with Nerina Simi, who maintained a classical 19th Century studio in Florence. In 1984, along with Charles Cecil, he founded the atelier Studio Cecil-Graves. Seven years later, Daniel Graves went on to found the Florence Academy of Art which is dedicated to training artists in the humanist tradition. In addition to his one-man shows, Graves along with the Academy’s roster of realist painters have had their work exhibited in many prestigious venues both in Europe and the United States.

Evgeny Grouzdev

Evgeny Grouzdev (Russian, 1975 -?)

Godfrey Blow was born in North Hykeham, Lincolnshire, England in 1948. He gained a BA Hons Degree in Fine Art from Sheffield Hallam University in 1971. From 1973-74 he attended Manchester Metro University, where he qualified as a teacher. His first solo exhibition was held in London in 1976 and followed by another in 1980. He emigrated to Australia in 1982. Numerous solo and mixed exhibitions of his work have been held in Western Australia since 1982. He has also participated in a number of mixed shows in South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, United Kingdom, India, China and Canada. His work is represented in private and public collections in Australia, including The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Artbank Australia, University of Western Australia and the collections of the cities of Bunbury, Albany and Fremantle. In addition he has won several prestigious art awards in Western Australia. In October of 2006, Blow was a finalist in Australia's richest award for landscape painting, the Fleurieu Peninsula Biennale Art Prize, South Australia.

Since 2002 he has exhibited with the Stuckist group most notably in their landmark exhibition, The Stuckist Punk Victorian at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, during the 2004 Liverpool Biennial. He was also one of the featured artists exhibiting in the Triumph of Stuckism, which comprised part of Liverpool's 2006 Biennial, United Kingdom.

Godfrey Blow was one of the 30 finalists in the 2008 Doug Moran National Portrait prize and was selected as a highly commended, runner-up. The exhibition was held in Sydney and travelled around Australia for the rest of 2008. During this year the artist was also a finalist in the Alice Bale Art Award, Victoria and the Tattersall's Landscape Art Prize, Queensland.

Francisco Gimeno Arasa

Francisco Gimeno Arasa, also known by its name in Catalan Francesc Gimeno (Tortosa, February 4, 1858 - Barcelona, ​​November 22, 1927) was a Spanish painter. Author was fruitful, with great ease in drawing vivid and bright and colorful, practicing different genres, including portraiture, custom box and genre scenes. Excellent landscape and seascape. 

There his works, among many other places, in the National Art Museum of Catalonia (Barcelona), Museo National of Prado in Madrid and Museo of Montserrat. His work was not considered at the time, beginning to vindicate in 1915, after the exhibition organized by Ignacio Mallol in the Dalmau gallery, which greatly impressed critics and audiences. Among his works are The dog child, mother and son, and Rincon of the Costa Brava.

Juliette Aristides

Juliette Aristides was born in 1971 in Cape Town, South Africa, now living in Seattle, Washington. Married with three children works from a studio in the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle and alternates her time between painting, writing and teaching traditional drawing and painting techniques. Aristides has studied extensively for ten years under the best instructors she could find.

This took her many places, from big institutions like The National Academy of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art to private artist studios. She has participated in many respected exhibitions and has garnered impressive honors and awards including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. She was an original member of the Water Street Atelier and currently teaches at The Seattle Academy of Fine Art where she founded the award winning Classical Atelier Program. Aristides is a regular contributor to Artist Magazine and published two books with Watson-Guptill; Classical Drawing Atelier and Classical Painting Atelier. Her work could loosely be called classical realism, since she takes design system and artistic techniques from art history and applies them to contemporary works. Aristides invites the viewer to share an inner world as she explores her identity through the roles of artist, teacher, historian and mother. She utilizes historical references, which entice the viewer's intellect. She employs a rich warm palette, reminiscent of another age.

Victor Hume Moody

Victor Hume Moody (London.1896-1990) Artist in oil, pencil and charcoal, and teacher, born in London. He studied at Battersea Polytechnic and at Royal College of Art under William Rothenstein. Became head master of Malvern School of Art, 1935-62, succeeded by his daughter, Catherine Olive Moody. Showed at RA, RP and RBSA and had a solo show at Goupil Gallery, 1939. Moody produced classical compositions and portraits. Harris Museum & Art Gallery in Preston, Bolton and Worcester Libraries and Worcester Cathedral hold examples. Lived in Malvern, Worcestershire. Moody was featured in The Last of the Classicists, which the Harris mounted in 1993. The theme was enlarged at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery in 203 with the installation Underpainting and The Painting Methods of V H Moody, stemming from researches made by a group including Moody's daughter Catherine.

Richard Piloco

Richard Piloco – (b. 1964) American, received his undergraduate degree from the School of Visual Arts, then continued his training at The Art Students League and the New York Academy of Figurative Art. Mr. Piloco was a member of a leading group of realists known as The Paint Group, six immensely talented artists who came together in weekly sessions to challenge and critique one another's work. In 2002, Mr. Piloco was included in a small and select group of artists who traveled to the historical Forbes Estate in the north of France for an invitational painting adventure. Mr. Piloco has taught at The Water Street Atelier in New York and was a participant in the Mentor Program at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

Pietro Annigoni

Pietro Annigoni was born on the 7th of June 1910 in Milan, where he attended elementary school, high school at the Ginnasio Parini, and then the Calchi-Taeggi College. In Florence he was a student at the College of the Piarist Fathers. From the end of the 1920s onwards he lived mainly in Florence.Annigoni enrolled for the nude class run by the Circolo degli Artisti, while attending the open class in the same subject at the Academy. After finishing senior school he was admitted in 1927 to the Academy of Fine Arts, still in Florence, where he attended the courses given by Felice Carena in painting, Giuseppe Graziosi in sculpture, and Celestino Celestini in etching. These were the years wich formed his personality and which established the most enduring of his friendships.

In 1930 Annigoni exhibited his work for the first time in Florence as one of a group of painters. He had his first individual exhibition two years later at the Bellini Gallery in the Palazzo Ferroni.

In 1932 Ugo Ojetti wrote a memorable piece about him for the arts page of the Corriere della Sera. Also in 1932 he won the Trentacoste prize. It was in this period that he learned the technique of 'oil tempera' under the Russian painter, Nikolai Lokoff.

Annigoni had a great success with his Milan exhibition in 1936. After that he conceived the desire to travel and visited a number of foreign countries, including Germany, where he discovered his love of German painting.

In 1937 Pietro Annigoni married Anna Giuseppa Maggini. The marriage produced two children - Benedetto, born in 1939, and Maria Ricciarda, in 1948.

The series of gouaches that Annigoni produced on his travels, or simply on his country walks, revealed a rare talent for capturing the intrinsic character of landscape, which he rendered with a sharp and evocative sense of line. Between 1945 to 1950 he produced a succession of important and very successful works.In 1947 along with Gregory Sciltian, the brothers Antonio and Xavier Bueno, and others, he signed the manifesto of the 'Modern Realist Painters'. In this manifesto the group, which consisted of seven painters, came out in open opposition to abstract art and the various movements that had sprung up in Italy in these years.

The event constitutes an insignificant detail in Annigoni's life but, curiously, it would become one of the key points of reference in the literature about him. March 1949 saw Annigoni's first experience of England, when the Committee of the Royal Academy accepted the works he offered for its annual exhibition. This was the beginning of a success which was to acquire worldwide dimensions.

Annigoni had many exhibitions in London - at Wildenstein's in 1950 and 1954, at Agnew's in 1952 and 1956, at the Federation of British Artists in 1961, at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries in 1966, not to mention the inclusion of his work in many of the Royal Academy exhibitions.

Robert Liberace

Rob Liberace’s work is inspired by centuries of knowledge and skill exemplified by the great masters. He strives to combine his fascination with anatomy, art history and technique to produce work in a variety of disciplines including drawing, watercolor, painting and sculpture.

Rob is perhaps best known for the movement and draftsmanship of his figure work. American Art Collector published an article on his figure drawings and paintings in their March 2010 issue in which gallery owner Steven Diamant is quoted: "When you consider that almost one -third of all the drawings we have sold in the gallery were acquired by other artists of the caliber of Jeremy Lipking and Graydon Parrish, you can see why we call him 'The Artist's Artist'. Very few contemporary talents have the skill to depict the human figure on the level of Robert Liberace." Rob was selected as a professional member of the American China Oil Painting Artists League and has participated in their shows in New York and Bejing.

Rob was selected as a professional member of the National Sculpture Society. He has created a series of carved marble reliefs which are now permanently located in the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. A life sized marble statue of Mother Teresa also stands in the Shrine, based on Robert's design. Rob also sculpted a fifteen foot crucifix which hangs above the alter in a "Our Lady of Mercy" church in Potomac, Maryland.

Rob is known for his inspiring and informative teaching style. He teaches at The Art League of Virginia and holds workshops throughout the United States and abroad. He regularly tours students through the great museums of Europe, garnering from his extensive

knowledge of the old European masters. American Artist's Workshop Magazine featured one of his Ireland workshops in their Spring 2006 issue. He pioneered one of the first online teaching courses for American Artist magazine which included live webinars and critiques. He regularly teaches for their annual "Weekend with the Masters" workshops. Responding to the growing need for classical art instruction, Liberace Studio has produced a series of tutorial dvds in which Rob demonstrates painting and drawing techniques focusing on figure, portrait and anatomy. Rob also has written informational articles for both American Artist and The Artist's magazines.

George Lambert

George Lambert (1873–1930) was one of Australia’s most brilliant, witty and influential artists. The exhibtion George Lambert retrospective: heroes and icons is the most comprehensive showing of Lambert’s work for over fifty years. It will present the diverse range of Lambert’s work from his Australian bush subjects to his Edwardian portraits and figure groups, from his sparkling oil sketches to his major battle paintings and large sculpture. It will show the full breadth of Lambert’s approaches to image making and the variety of his handling of pencil, pen and paint. It will demonstrate his sure draughtsmanship and the seductive glamour and sensual appeal of his paint surfaces.

I know for myself that which is easy is not worth doing, and that nothing matters to an artist but the fulfilment of his gift.

But who was George Lambert and what was he like? That is a difficult question to answer. His stunning image of himself baring his chest, Chesham Street 1910, like the man himself, is an enigma. It appears to have a meaning but is not strictly narrative. It invites us to provide our own interpretation. He sits boldly in front of the viewer, holding up his shirt and revealing his entire torso. The painting is a metaphor: this man seems to have nothing to hide, to be literally and metaphorically baring his chest, exposing his heart and soul to the world. But was he? Many writers have referred to Lambert’s extrovert personality, characterising him as an entertaining raconteur and mimic, with a keen sense of humour.

Approach nature with a simple palette but an extravagant love of form.

Some found Lambert’s flamboyance appealing, while others objected to it or sought to explain it away as if it were something disagreeable – frivolous and effete, a divergence from the typical easygoing, hardy, resolute Australian. Some suggested that Lambert’s posing was a shield against his sensitive nature, and others maintained he had two personalities, one for his friends (gentle, kindly and sympathetic) and another for his acquaintances and the public (brilliant, witty and flamboyant).His wife, Amy, agreed that Lambert’s theatricality and love of laughter was a mask behind which he hid his sadness.

Lambert was a versatile artist, with great audacity and considerable finesse, a more broad-ranging artist than any other in Australia at this time. George Lambert retrospective is the result of generous inter-gallery cooperation. It will selectively draw together around 110 works by Lambert that are scattered throughout major art museums and collections in Australia, as well as private collections in Britain. It will present us with the opportunity to look at the full scope of his work, including three of Lambert’s large-scale battle paintings, kindly lent by the Australian War Memorial, and viewed for the first time in many years alongside other icons such as The squatter’s daughter and A sergeant of Light Horse in Palestine.