Historical Archives & Public Figures

Alexandre Cabanel

France

1823 – 1889 (65 years old)

French academic master whose sensuous 'Birth of Venus' was personally purchased by Emperor Napoleon III in 1863, and whose 'The Fallen Angel' remains an icon of Romantic pathos.

Montpellier, France

29 Full Record →

Arts & Music

26

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Alexander Borodin

Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin

Russia

1833 – 1887 (53 years old)

Russian composer of The Mighty Handful and distinguished professor of organic chemistry, celebrated for 'Prince Igor', the 'Polovtsian Dances', and his Second Symphony.

Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire

26 Full Record →

Arts & Music

35

🕯️ 975

Franz Liszt (Liszt Ferenc)

Liszt Ferenc

Austria

22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886 (74 years old)

Hungarian musical titan and greatest piano virtuoso in history, who invented the solo piano recital and the orchestral symphonic poem, composed the Hungarian Rhapsodies, and anticipated modern harmony.

Bayreuth, Germany

35 Full Record →

Arts & Music

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Bedřich Smetana

Austria

1824 – 1884 (60 years old)

Father of Czech classical music, celebrated worldwide for his comic opera 'The Bartered Bride' and the magnificent symphonic cycle 'Má vlast' containing the beloved river poem 'Vltava'.

Prague, Bohemia (Austria-Hungary)

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Arts & Music

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Eva Gonzalès

France

1849 – 1883 (34 years old)

French Impressionist painter and sole formal pupil of Édouard Manet whose tender, luminous canvases like 'A Box at the Théâtre des Italiens' captured Paris cultural life.

Paris, France

34 Full Record →

Arts & Music

3,078

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Édouard Manet

France

1832 – 1883 (51 years old)

French modernist painter who served as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

Paris, France

3,078 Full Record →

Arts & Music

34

🕯️ 985

Wilhelm Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Germany

22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883 (69 years old)

Revolutionary German composer and dramatist who revolutionized Western music with the 'Gesamtkunstwerk' (total work of art), the leitmotif system, chromatic breakdown of tonality in Tristan und Isolde, and the 16-hour Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Venice, Italy

34 Full Record →

Arts & Music

30

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Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Great Britain

1828 – 1882 (53 years old)

Founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, poet, and painter whose haunting portraits of Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris ('Proserpine', 'Beata Beatrix') launched the Aesthetic movement.

Birchington-on-Sea, United Kingdom

30 Full Record →

Arts & Music

3,974

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Modest Mussorgsky

Модест Петрович Мусоргский

Russia

1839 – 1881 (42 years old)

Visionary Russian composer of 'The Mighty Handful' celebrated for Boris Godunov and Pictures at an Exhibition.

Saint Petersburg, Russia

3,974 Full Record →

Arts & Music

3,349

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Honoré Daumier

Honoré-Victorin Daumier

France

1808 – 1879 (70 years old)

Master French caricaturist, painter, and sculptor who fiercely exposed bourgeois hypocrisy and social injustice.

Paris, France

3,349 Full Record →

Arts & Music

2,347

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Gustave Courbet

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet

France

1819 – 1877 (58 years old)

Bold pioneer of 19th-century French Realism who rejected academic idealism to portray real working-class life.

Ornans, France

2,347 Full Record →

Arts & Music

2,363

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Georges Bizet

France

1838 – 1875 (36 years old)

French Romantic composer who created Carmen, one of the most popular and influential operas in the global repertoire.

Paris, France

2,363 Full Record →

Arts & Music

1

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Cornelius Krieghoff

Cornelius David Krieghoff

Netherlands

1815 – 1872 (56 years old)

Nineteenth-century European-born painter whose detailed, colorful depictions of French-Canadian habitants, Indigenous hunters, and winter sleigh scenes became defining images of early Canadian settler life.

Chicago, United States

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Arts & Music

1

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Paul Kane

Ireland

1810 – 1871 (60 years old)

Pioneering artist who traveled over 10,000 kilometers across the Canadian Northwest by canoe and horseback between 1845 and 1848, producing over five hundred sketches of Indigenous peoples and buffalo hunts.

Toronto, Canada

1 Full Record →

Arts & Music

26

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Jean Frédéric Bazille

Frédéric Bazille

France

1841 – 1870 (28 years old)

Brilliant early Impressionist painter who shared his studio with Monet, Renoir, and Sisley, painted 'The Family Reunion', and died tragically in battle at age twenty-eight.

Montpellier, France

26 Full Record →