Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi was a highly regarded Ukrainian/Russian landscape painter and a member of the amazing group of Russian painters known as the Peredvizhniki (“Itinerants” or “Wanderers”, see my related posts).

Kuindzhi was noted for his unorthodox compositions and daring experiments with lighting effects, perhaps partly stemming from his limited formal training.

He grew up in a poor family, son of a Greek shoemaker, and lost his parents at an early age. He was largely self-taught, though he eventually attended the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts for a time. During his early years he was influenced by the Russian (Crimean) landscape artist Ivan Aivazovsky.

Kuindzhi’s compositions play with extreme positioning of the horizon, large, almost empty spaces, striking contrasts of light and dark, and experiments with brushwork and the application of color.

He sometimes revisited the same or similar scenes, altering the light and handling of color in subsequent compositions.

Italian artist Laura Fantini, who divides her time between Bologna, Italy and Brooklyn, NY, creates large scale images of intimate still life subjects.

Her compositions feature unassumingly simple objects like leaves, seed pods and flower blossoms, rendered in large sizes, perhaps 30×40 inches (74x98cm). Her subjects are observed with the precision of botanical art, but presented with a visual drama and freshness that pull them out of their normal context and present them to us as something to be viewed and considered anew.

She works primarily in colored pencil, a medium that seldom receives the respect warranted by the effects that can be achieved in the hands of an artist like Fantini. She procedes by working up layers and layers of intricate cosshatching, gradually building up her subtle areas of color.

There are photographs, though not descriptions, of her working process in the In Progress section of her website.

The major presentation of work on her website is in three sections but you will also find a gallery of cityscapes — works in gouache, ink pastel and colored pencil in a photorealist vein, as well as portraits and a section of sketches.

The use of colored pencil, like pastel, can blur the definitions of “drawing” and “painting”. Fantini’s finished works combine elements of both, but her sketches (images above, second from bottom) are firmly in the category of drawings, and have their own aesthetic and visual appeal.

Fantini also maintains a blog, with announcements of shows and images of work in progress.

Viktor Bykov is a Russian painter living in the general vicinity of Moscow. He studied at the Cheliabinsk Art College and the Stroganov Art and Design Institute in Moscow.

Outside of that I can find little information, at least in English.

Bykov paints landscapes in oil that walk an interesting line between naturalistic and invented color, at times playing with color combinations that threaten to fall into the range of treacle, but usually pulling back from that and managing to restrain them in interesting, somewhat unorthodox compositions.

Unfortunately, I can’t find a dedicated website for Bykov, though again, I may be limited in my inability to search effectively in Russian.

I don’t normally link to Facebook pages, but in this case, this page, evidently not maintained by the artist himself, is the best source I could find for his paintings.

There is a video slideshow of his work on YouTube.

Claude (born Claudine) Raguet Hirst was a beautifully skilled still life painter active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Her intimate, strikingly rendered paintings are considered to be in the American “trompe l’oeil” (fools the eye) style, a genre in which she was the pioneering woman artist.

Though she started her career painting still life subjects like fruit, and particularly florals, she shifted her attention to arrangements with subjects common to the genre — pipes, candles, reading glasses and other objects often found on desks.

Her best known paintings, however, add to these subjects richly textural representations of antique books. Not just books, but specifically recognizable books, the titles or subjects of which are sometimes featured in her painting titles.

She later dropped the pipes and other objects usually associated with paintings meant to appeal to men, and concentrated on subjects both men and women might enjoy; and her choice of books frequently included titles by women authors whose attitudes would be considered feminist by the standards of the day.

Hirst worked in watercolor, an unusual medium for trompe l’oeil, but common among women artists of the time. She also mastered oil and her oil and watercolor still lifes are often similar in appearance.

The best online source I’ve found for her images it on The Athenaeum. You can zoom in on these images from Sotheby’s past lots (click on the lot number).

There is a book on Hirst and her work: Claude Raguet Hirst: Transforming the American Still Life by Martha M. Evans. You can see a preview of it on Google Books.