19th Century Fine Art Paintings & Artworks

Featured 19th Century Fine Artists

Edgar Degas was born as Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas in 1834 in Paris, France. He died in 1917 at the age of 83, also in Paris. Degas showed works in all but one of the Impressionist exhibitions, from 1873 to 1886. He is generally included among the Impressionists, such as Edouard Manet, Paul Cezanne, and Vincent Van Gogh. He painted in more of a Classical than an Impressionist style and did not paint en plein air, but always in his studio. However, his subject matter, scenes from modern Parisian life, was Impressionistic in intent. Degas was one of the first painters to use photography as an aid in depicting action. Degas is best known for his oils, pastels, and sculptures of dancers. [More...]

Paul Gauguin was born in 1848 in Paris, France. He died in 1903 at the age of 54 in French Polynesia. From age three to seven, Gauguin lived with his mother and sister in Lima, Peru (his father had died on the voyage from France). Initially pursuing a career as a stockbroker, he continued to pursue art and paint on the side, and began showing in Impressionist exhibitions beginning in 1881, encouraged by friends such as Camille Pissaro and Paul Cezanne. Among the artists he associated with most closely during that time was Vincent Van Gogh. In 1891, Gauguin sailed to Tahiti where he was to paint many of his most famous paintings, and where he was to remain for the rest of his life, except for one visit to Paris to sell paintings. [More...]

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi, France (in the Midi-Pyrenees region) in 1864. He died at the age of 36 in 1901 at his family's estate in Malrome, France. Following fractures of both legs, his legs ceased to grow after age 14, although his torso developed to full adult size, leaving him standing five feet tall as an adult. In 1882, he went to Paris to study art, where he met many of the artists associated with the Post-Impressionist group of artists, including Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Paul Gauguin, with which Toulouse-Lautrec is usually included. [More...]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in 1844 in Limoges, France. He died at the age of 78 in 1919 in Cote d'Azur, France. He began studying painting in Paris in 1862 under the academic painter, Charles Gleyre. He became identified as one of the principal Impressionist painters, along with Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissaro. In later life, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis, which caused him to move to the south of France in search of warmer weather. Eventually, he had to have his brush strapped to his hand to paint. [More...]

Winslow Homer was born in 1836 in Boston, Massachussets. He died in 1910 at the age of 74 in his studio at Prout's Neck, Maine. His early works were mostly illustrations and engravings, many done while working as an illustrator in the American Civil War. Among European painters, he was influenced by Barbizon painters, especially Jean-Francois Millet. Other notable American painters who were contemporaneous with Homer include Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Eakins, Eastman Johnson, and William Merritt Chase. View more Winslow Homer paintings.

John William Waterhouse was born in 1849 in Rome, Italy, to British parents who were both painters themselves. He died at the age of 67 in 1917. Initially, he studied painting under his father, William Waterhouse. Waterhouse's earlier works feature classical or mythological subjects that were typical of the academic painting of his time. His mature works often feature literary subjects of a romantic character from Shakespeare, the Arthurian Legends, etc., which became typical of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood group of artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Frederick Leighton, and , Frank Dicksee. View more Waterhouse paintings.