An important Post-Impressionist French painter, Georges Seurat moved away from the apparent spontaneity and rapidity of Impressionism and developed a structured, more monumental art to depict modern urban life. For several of his large compositions, Seurat painted many small studies. He is chiefly remembered as the pioneer of the Neo-Impressionist technique commonly known as Divisionism, or Pointillism, an approach associated with a softly flickering surface of small dots or strokes of color. His innovations derived from new quasi-scientific theories about color and expression, yet the...

George Stubbs was marvelous English animal painter and anatomical draftsman, famous for his paintings of horses. Stubbs also painted a wide range of other animals, including the lion, tiger, giraffe, monkey, and rhinoceros, which he was able to observe in private menageries. According to the Ozias Humphrey, Stubbs was so convinced of the importance of observation that he visited Italy in 1754 only to reinforce his belief that nature is superior to art. Among Stubbs's best-known pictures are several depicting a horse being frightened or attacked by a lion (Horse Frightened by a Lion, 1770)....

George Frederic Watts was a admired English Victorian artist related with the Symbolist movement. He became famous his allegorical works "Love and Life" and "Hope." These paintings were in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language. Watts was a hard-working artist who twice refused a baronetcy and other honors, including an offer to become president of the Royal Academy. His declared aims were clear: to paint pictures that appealed 'to the intellect and refined emotions rather than the senses': "I paint ideas, not things. I paint...