Ernest Biéler was a Swiss artist active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries whose works incorporates elements of Art Nouveau and Symbolism.

Biéler studied in Paris at the académie Julian, returned to Switzerland and later moved back and forth between there and Paris, staying for years at a time.

His painting style varied from naturalistic oils to beautifully graphic watercolors, including a fascinatingly graphic series of watercolor and tempera portraits.

One of the best sources I’ve found for his work is a LiveJournal blog in Russian, with a section on his watercolor portraits. (You can use Google Translate to roughly translate from Russian to English, or another language.)

This site is in French, with a selection of works. There is also a sampling of works on Art Inconnu.

You can also look for Bieler tagged posts on Tumblr, and I’ve listed what other resources I could find below.

Kehinde Wiley, an artist originally from Los Angeles and now based in New York, paints striking, larger than life portraits that often incorporate intricate patterns.

These can be naturalistic, as in repeated patterns of realistically rendered leaves or flowers, or decorative, sometimes borrowing from the baroque or Art Nouveau, but often reflecting the cultural heritage of countries visited in the course of his “World Stage” project.

The galleries on his website are divided into series, the World Stage series is further divided into regions he visited in his pursuit of the project.

The works are large scale, sometimes 8×25′ (2.5×7.5m), though that aspect is unfortunately lost (along with any hint of paint handling or surface quality) in the small scale images provided on the site (you can get an idea of scale from this photo of an installation).

Wiley has pursued classical painting technique and is willing to take on daunting challenges of foreshortening, as well as taking chances with backgrounds and patterns that might threaten to overwhelm his subjects, were they not painted with enormous strength and visual punch.

He frequently uses backlighting to emphasize the dimensionality of his figures and faces, and has enough control of his backgrounds that, despite their intensity of color, they can actually serve to push the subjects forward rather than distract from their presence.

Some of his backgrounds are rendered in the kind intense paired complimentary colors found in op art or 1960’s psychedelic poster art.

Wiley sometimes allows his background patterns to come forward, passing in front of his subjects or interacting with them like physical structures. At other times they are more lightly suggested and drift in and out of naturalistically depicted scenery.

In spite of the terrible navigation on his website (links that disappear and move when you mouse over or click – WTF?), it’s worth reading his artist’s statement and FAQ (in the Research section). There is also a series of interview videos in the Media section.

Wiley’s painting Three Wise Men Greeting Entry into Lagos (above, top) was recently acquired for the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts here in Philadelphia, though I haven’t had a chance to see it yet.

Some of the galleries listed below have larger images of the work than the artist’s own site.

Americans in Florence: Sargent and the American Impressionists is an exhibition at the Florence Palazzo Strozzi that looks to be amazingly good.

Fortunately, someone let me know about this before it ended.
Unfortunately, it closes in a few days (15 July, 2012).

Fortunately, those in reach can still see the show.
Unfortunately, I’m not one of them.

Fortunately, there is a website for the rest of us with some information and images.
Unfortunately, they are not large or great in number (see links in right column).

Fortunately, there are nice 360° panoramas of the galleries (use fullscreen option).
Unfortunately, you can only zoom in on a few of the works.

Fortunately, there is a catalog of the exhibition available as an iBook.
Unfortunately, you can only view it on an iOS device.

Fortunately, I have written previously about a number of the artists in the show, and my posts list resources for images.
Unfortunately, they are not all recent or up to date, but you can use Google to search from there.

Fortunately, I’m done with the fortunately/unfortunately stuff!

[Thanks to Donald C. O’Shea for the suggestion and information]

Though also an accomplished landscape painter, Valentin Alexandrovich Serov was known as a portraitist, and was undoubtedly one of the best of the 19th century (which is saying something) and perhaps the best portrait painter in Russian art.

Originally from St. Petersberg, a Russian cultural center, Serov was the son of parents who were both respected composers, and grew up in an atmosphere of rich with interesting visitors and guests. He had the opportunity to study with the great Russian painter Ilya Repin at a young age.

Amid his commissions for royalty and the wealthy elite, artists like Repin and Issac Levitan (above, 6th down) would later become favorite subjects, along with writers and musicians.

Serov took some influence from the Russian and French Impressionists, though originally just the painterly brushwork without the bright palette, and from the other members of the Peredvizhniki (The Itinerants), the famous group of 19th century Russian painters whose ranks he eventually joined, and later left (see my post on Ivan Kramskoy).

At his best, Serov’s portraits seem to carry a drama and emotional content sometimes missing from those of his fellow Peredvizhniki and contemporaries like John Singer Sargent and William Merrit Chase (perhaps giving him more in common with the remarkable Cecilia Beaux).

The best source I’ve found on Serov is the official vserov.ru site, which is in Russian as you might expect, but can easily be navigated with the links at the top of the page, and responds well to being interpreted in English using Google Translate.

The primary galleries are Masterpieces and Paintings.

You can also find a good selection of reasonably large images on this unofficial Russian site (worthwhile, despite the ads). WikiPaintings also has a broad selection, and you can find five high resolution images on the Google Art Project.

In addition to painting in oil, Serov was accomplished in various drawing media, pastel (above, 4th down), graphics and watercolor.

There is a new book available, Valentin Serov (Best Of Collection) by Dmitri V. Sarabianov from Parkstone Press.

[Via Outdoor Painter]