• Aivazovsky, Ivan
• Anderson, Sophie
• Beard, William
• Botero, Fernando
• Bouguereau, William
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• Van Gogh, Vincent

WIlliam H Beard 1824 - 1900

William Holbrook Beard began his career as portrait painter. In 1856, he traveled to Italy, Germany, and Switzerland with fellow artists Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Worthington Whittredge. In 1858, Beard briefly settled in Buffalo, New York, helping to establish an art community that eventually culminated in the establishment of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy in 1862.

In 1859, Beard moved to New York City and opened a studio in the renowned Tenth Street Studio Building, specially built in 1857 to house artists. At that time, Edwin Church, William Merrit Chase, Albert Bierstadt, and Winslow Homer were fellow resident artists. Beard exhibited extensively in New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, Montreal, San Francisco, and Boston, but he reserved his best work for exhibition at the National Design Academy in New York City.

Beard became an immensely popular animal painter. He painted a large variety of animals, favoring rabbits, cats, monkeys, squirrels, and especially bears. Beard was both lauded and criticized for his humorous satires in which he substituted animals for humans: He represented the condition of man and universal concerns by painting allegorical and fantasy subjects. He also produced work drawn from high and low literature, depicting characteristics of jealousy, pride, drunkenness, and greed.

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