Belgian painter Evariste Carpentier started in an academic style. During his time in France, he was infulenced by the French Realists, the naturalism of painters like Jules Bastien-Lepage and Jules Breton, the Barbizon painters and the move toward what would become Impressionism and eventually, Luminisim.

In many of his stylistic experiments, he was undoubtedly influenced by his almost lifelong association and friendship with Belgian painter Emile Claus, also a noted proponent of Luminism in Belgium.

Carpentier became director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Liège, and was an influential teacher.

His paintings of lyrical domestic scenes and pastoral views are often filled with bright but gentle light, at times softly diffused by haze or overcast. Carpentier also did at least one major series of illustrations, or history paintings used as illustrations.

Benn Blatt is a dimension-hopping xenobiologist/dreamscape botanical artist based, perhaps fittingly, in Brooklyn, NY.

Blatt takes natural forms of flora and fauna — both real and wildly imaginary — bits of architecture, sculptural elements, jewelry and metalware; filters them through his fascination with 15th and 16th century masters like Bosch and Brueghel, 20th century Dadaists and Surrealists like Max Ernst and Dalí, throws in a good dose of 17th century Dutch still life and 19th century botanical illustration and perhaps a touch of Tantric art; and weaves them into intricate bio-architectural wonderlands of Boschian delights.

Blatt studied Fine Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, and is now on the Illustration faculty there. His pieces, which are large, but perhaps not as large as one might expect, are primarily done in varying combinations of watercolor, gouache, ink and colored pencil.

The online gallery on his own website is somewhat limited and poorly arranged for browsing; you will find a better selection on his Picasa gallery, as well as on the sites of the Halsey McKay Gallery and Half Gallery.

The largest and best reproductions of his work are to be found on Monster Brains.