Category: 131

Paula Modersohn-Becker was born on February 8, 1876 into a German family that valued art and culture. Because of this, she was enrolled into a school dedicated to art at the age of 16 where she developed a full interest towards art. Her dedication to art didn’t stop there as she went on to further her education in Paris in the early 1900s where she developed a passion towards nude figure painting.

She was then unhappily married in Worpswede which drew her towards advancing her artistic career as a way to escape with a heavy longing to go back to Paris. She eventually couldn’t handle it anymore and she ran away without notice in the middle of the night to live out her dreams which complicated things further with Otto, her husband. They had an incredibly unstable relationship as Otto refused to let her go even when she was thriving in Paris with her art career during this time. He moved in with her and got her pregnant which sadly resulted in her death 18 days after giving birth. I find her story to be quite inspiring as she stopped at nothing to pursue her love for art.

Simeon Solomon caught my attention when I started researching for artists from the Pre-Raphaelites period with his paintings, I quickly became invested in his life story and I would like to briefly share that with you. Being the final child of 7 other siblings in a relatively skilled household of artists, Simeon Solomon was born on October 9, 1840 in London. He was inspired by Shakespeare, the Bible and other popular Pre-Raphaelite artists, which, fun fact, he met, for example; Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais.

He later discovered a love for the classism style and went on to create some pieces that were previously deemed as controversial as he was figuring out his sexuality during the ripe times of blatant homophobia in Victorian England. I was shocked to later find out that he was arrested in a public urinal with an older man for sodomy, however when he was released, he still went on to become an influential figure with the help of others who were inspired by his works. 

Being a woman pursuing art, I gain inspiration from individuals such as French artist Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. She was able to make a mark in the Rococo period with her portraits, specifically ones of women, and her use of bright colours and loose brushwork. Her father, Louis Vigée, worked with pastel art which naturally put her in an artistic environment to grow, painting on any surface that was available to her. He was also able to educate her on the basics of art before he passed away when she was 12. All her hard work and dedication granted her a membership in a masters guild of painters and sculptors which led to her being brought to Versailles in order to paint a portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette in 1779. As time went by, she painted multiple portraits of the queen and ended up developing a friendship with her. Due to this relationship, she was permitted into the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture which caused some controversy. Since she was a woman tied to the social status of her husband’s profession of an art dealer. This proved her to be a very powerful artist of her time.

Simone Martini was an artist based in Siena after the generation of Duccio di Buoninsegna that helped to further develop a full Gothic style of painting. It is rumoured that he was taught by Duccio or at least by someone in his ring since it is evident in his work through the use of pure, harmonious colours that Duccio was known for. However, he was also able to implement the graceful lines that were influenced by French Gothic paintings at the time giving figures more depth. His earliest documented painting is the fresco of the Maestà, and his finest example of this linear style is the Annunciation. He spent the rest of his life in the papal court and got acquainted with a great Italian poet named Francesco Petrarch, who painted him a portrait of the subject from Petrarch’s love-sonnets.