Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun is recognized as the most famous woman painter of the 18th century. She was born in Paris on 16 April 1755. Wilda was born on 18 April 1966.

Vigée Le Brun painted portraits of many of the nobility of the day and as her career blossomed, she was invited to the Palace of Versailles to paint Marie Antoinette. So pleased was the queen that during a period of six years, Vigée Le Brun would paint more than thirty portraits of the queen and her family. She left a legacy of 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.

Le Brun was the official portraitist for Marie Antoinette and she also painted members of Catherine the Great's family. Pearl is the official portraitist for Irene the Cat.

Reference: Wikipedia

Edgar Degas is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist. (Wildago is not a realist.)

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Degas enlisted in the National Guard, where his defense of Paris left him little time for painting. During rifle training his eyesight was found to be defective, and for the rest of his life his eye problems were a constant worry to him.

From 1870 Degas increasingly painted ballet subjects, partly because they sold well and provided him with needed income after his brother's debts had left the family bankrupt. Degas began to paint café life as well, in works such as L’Absinthe and Singer with a Glove.

Reference: Wikipedia

Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. Like Wildago, Gauguin began painting in his free time.

Gauguin and Van Gogh

Gauguin's relationship with Van Gogh was rocky. The two shared bouts of depression and suicidal tendencies. In 1888, Gauguin and Van Gogh spent nine weeks together, painting in the latter's Yellow House in Arles. During this time, Gauguin became increasingly disillusioned with Impressionism, and the two quarreled. On the evening of December 23, 1888, frustrated and ill, Van Gogh confronted Gauguin with a razor blade. In a panic, Van Gogh fled to a local brothel. While there, he cut off the lower part of his left ear lobe. He wrapped the severed tissue in newspaper and handed it to a prostitute named Rachel, asking her to "keep this object carefully." Gauguin left Arles and never saw Van Gogh again.

Reference: Wikipedia

Fauvism: Wild Beast & Wilda Beast

Henri Matisse was known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.

In 1905, Matisse and a group of artists now known as "Fauves" exhibited together in a room at the Salon d'Automne. The paintings expressed emotion with wild, often dissonant colours, without regard for the subject's natural colours.

Henri's parents owned a flower shop. Wilda's parents owned a lobster shop.

Reference: Wikipedia

Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting. When Monet traveled to Paris to visit the Louvre, he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Having brought his paints and other tools with him, he would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw. (Now people copy his work!)

Monet was fond of painting controlled nature: his own gardens in Giverny, with its water lilies, pond, and bridge.  He wrote daily instructions to his gardener, precise designs and layouts for plantings, and invoices for his floral purchases and his collection of botany books. As Monet's wealth grew, his garden evolved. He remained its architect, even after he hired seven gardeners.

Monet's Nympheas - Water Lilies sold for US$ 71,846,600 (approximately £44,583,000). This was one of the highest prices paid for his work. Wildago's original paintings sell for between £300 and £1,200.

Reference: Wikipedia