With his signature graphic style, embrace of figural distortion, and bold defiance of conventional norms of beauty, Egon Schiele was one of the leading figures of Austrian Expressionism. He was an Austrian painter, a protege of Gustav Klimt and important figurative painter of the early 20th century. The twisted body shapes and the expressive line that characterize his paintings and drawings mark the artist as one an earliest exponent of Expressionism. In Schiele's early years, he was strongly influenced by Klimt and Kokoschka but soon evolved into his own characteristic style. He focused on...

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form. Amedeo Modigliani was born July 12, 1884 in Livorno, Italy. After studying in Italy, Modigliani settled in Paris and exhibited at the Salon des Independants. Following the advice of Brancusi, he studied and was influenced by African sculpture. In 1917 he began painting a series of female nudes that are among his best works. Modigliani died in 1920 in...

One of the most brilliant and original artists of the eighteenth century, Antoine Watteau had an impact on the development of Rococo art in France and throughout Europe lasting well beyond his lifetime. Living only thirty-six years, and plagued by frequent illness, Watteau nonetheless rose from an obscure provincial background to achieve fame in the French capital during the Regency of the duc d'Orleans. His paintings feature figures in aristocratic and theatrical dress in lush imaginary landscapes. During Watteau's lifetime, a new term, fete galante, was coined to describe them. Watteau was...

This Art Book contains selected and annotated detailed color reproductions of paintings from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 -1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy. Ingres is a puzzling artist and his career is full of contradictions. Yet more than most artists he was obsessed by a restricted number of themes and returned...

This Art Book contains selected and annotated detailed color reproductions of paintings from Amedeo Clemente Modigliani. Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form. Amedeo Modigliani was on born July 12, 1884 in Livorno, Italy. After studying in Italy, Modigliani settled in Paris and exhibited at the Salon des Independants. Following the advice of Brancusi, he studied and was influenced by African...

Giovanni Boldini enjoyed a long and successful artistic career. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting. His paintings showed his subject in soft-focus, elongated, in movement, alive, and sophisticated. The brush work on his paintings was swift and bold. It is the masterful brushwork that gives his paintings the sense of motion. Boldini painted mostly portraits and also landscapes in the naturalistic style of his day, influenced by the Macchiaioli schooled artists he knew in Florence, and worked on...

Ever wonder what your hamsters do while you are not looking? When Miah Pluta was four years old she wrote a story about all the fun things hamsters do together and her friend Jessica Findley joyfully illustrated all the silly scenes. Take a peek into the imagined lives of our furry friends in "Hamster's on the Run" What will the Hamsters do next?