Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) started his career as a porcelain painter. However, the young man had clearly grander ambitions, and he soon found himself in the company of the academic artist Charles Gleyre, Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. The

500 years ago, on 6 April 1520, one of the greatest painters and architects of the High Renaissance died suddenly at the age of 37. Raffaello Santi, better known simply as Raphael, hailed from the Italian town of Urbino, a

In 1982, American artist Julian Schnabel mixed what we might consider high and low culture in his four Maria Callas paintings. These highly abstract works, entitled Maria Callas #1, #2, #3, and #4, were painted on a beautiful dark red/purple

The very idea of making music inspired by the art form known as Abstract Expressionism seems an anathema. How do you pin down the undefinable? The music style that might match the art form of expressionism has come and gone

In recent years, migration has meant the vast movement of peoples across West Asia and Europe and the Americas, seeking shelter from military action or economic inaction. At the turn of the 20th century, in America there was also a

The classicist painter Anselm Feuerbach was one of the artists who formed a close friendship with Brahms, and who was often compared to him. He sought in his art to both follow a stringent aesthetic and a Classical restraint, while

In his ground-breaking book on physiognomy, the Swiss writer Johan Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801) sought to find the face of God in the men around him. Taking literally the notion that God created man in his own image, Lavater, sought to

The American composer and critic Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) believed in the ‘discipline of spontaneity.’ His music aimed at a clarity and simplicity that was unusual in 20th century composers. One of the outcomes of this search for spontaneity was his