Latest Stories

Our growing archive of info about art, design, and culture.

  • Inspiration: “Admiration,” by Karl Witkowski

    Inspiration: “Admiration,” by Karl Witkowski

    Karol Dominik Witkowski was born to a Polish family in Jazłowiec (Jaslowiec), near Buchach, Czortków (Podole, Poland, now Ukraine). As young boy he showed unusual talent in making drawings and his parents…

  • Biography: El Greco (Doménikos Theotokopoulos)

    Biography: El Greco (Doménikos Theotokopoulos)

    Doménikos Theotokopoulos, famously known as El Greco, which means “The Greek” in Spanish, was born on the island of Crete in 1541, then part of the Republic of Venice. His early life…

  • Inspiration: “In Repaus,” by Nicolae Grigorescu

    Inspiration: “In Repaus,” by Nicolae Grigorescu

    He was born in Pitaru, Dâmboviţa County, Wallachia now called Romania. In 1843 the family moved to Bucharest. At a young age (between 1846 and 1850), he became an apprentice at the workshop of the…

  • Love Story: Edward Hopper and Jo Hopper

    Edward Hopper, born in 1882 in Nyack, New York, showed an early interest in drawing. He frequently sketched boats and other scenes from his hometown. As he grew older, his passion for…

  • Biography: Isaac Levitan

    Biography: Isaac Levitan

    Isaac Ilyich Levitan was born on August 30, 1860, in the small town of Kybartai, then within the Russian Empire’s western borders. His family was Jewish, and he came into the world…

  • Prater Amusement Park, Vienna

    The area that makes up the modern Prater was first mentioned in 1162, when Emperor Friedrich I gave the land to a noble family called de Prato. The word “Prater” was first used in…

  • Biography: Frederick Childe Hassam

    Biography: Frederick Childe Hassam

    Childe Hassam was born on October 17, 1859, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a neighborhood of Boston that was then still semi-rural. He came from an old New England family, descended from early colonial…

  • The Gloriette in Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace

    Walking towards the Gloriette, this is the right side of the structure. *** The largest and probably best-known gloriette is in the Schönbrunn Palace garden in Vienna. Built in 1775 as the last building constructed…

  • Biography: George Romney

    Biography: George Romney

    George Romney, born on December 15, 1734, in Beckside, Dalton-in-Furness, England, was a leading portrait painter of the 18th-century British art scene. His artistic career, marked by versatility and prolific output, positioned…