Gillis van Coninxloo

On September 6, 2025 - 16th Century, 17th Century, Flemish, january 24

Gillis van Coninxloo, January 24, 1544–January 1607, was a Flemish landscape painter and draftsman. Born into a family of painters in Antwerp, he trained with Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Lenaert Kroes, and Gillis Mostaert, and became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1570.

After working in Antwerp, Coninxloo left the city in 1585, lived briefly in Middelburg, and worked in Frankenthal from 1587 to 1595 as a member of the group now called the Frankenthal school. He settled in Amsterdam in 1595; his pupils included Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Willem van den Bundel, and Hercules Segers.

His paintings and drawings are held by the State Hermitage Museum, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Museo del Prado, and other public collections.

Vasily Ivanovich Surikov

On March 16, 2025 - 19th Century, 20th Century, january 24

Vasily Ivanovich Surikov, January 24, 1848–March 19, 1916, was a Russian painter born in Krasnoyarsk to a family of Yenisey Cossack descent. He studied drawing with Nikolai Grebnev and attended the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, where he trained under Pavel Chistyakov.

Surikov moved to Moscow in 1877 and worked on murals for the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. He joined the Peredvizhniki in 1881 and produced large historical paintings including Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy, Boyarynya Morozova, and Yermak’s Conquest of Siberia.

He traveled in Russia and abroad, became a member of the Union of Russian Artists, and continued painting portraits, landscapes, and historical subjects. Surikov died in Moscow in 1916; major holdings of his work are in the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, and the Vasily Surikov Estate Museum in Krasnoyarsk.