The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe.
Tourism in Spain is a major contributor to national economic life, contributing to about 11.8% of Spain's GDP. Ever since the 1960s and 1970s, the country has been a popular destination for summer holidays, especially with large numbers of tourists from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Turkey, France, Germany, Italy, the Benelux, and the United States, among others. Accordingly, Spain's foreign tourist industry has grown into the second-biggest in the world.
Jean Paul Gaultier is a French haute couture and prêt-à-porter fashion designer. He is described as an "enfant terrible" of the fashion industry and is known for his unconventional designs with motifs including corsets, marinières, and tin cans. Gaultier founded his eponymous fashion label in 1982, and expanded with a line of fragrances in 1993. He was the creative director for French luxury house Hermès from 2003 to 2010, and retired following his 50th-anniversary haute couture show during Paris Fashion Week in January 2020.
The Naked Maja or The Nude Maja is an oil-on-canvas painting made around 1797–1800 by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, and is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. It portrays a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows, and was probably commissioned by Manuel de Godoy, to hang in his private collection in a separate cabinet reserved for nude paintings. Goya created a pendant of the same woman identically posed, but clothed, known today as La maja vestida, also in the Prado, and usually hung next to La maja desnuda. The subject is identified as a maja or fashionable lower-class Madrid woman, based on her costume in La maja vestida.
The year 1899 in art involved some significant events.
Antonio Muñoz Molina is a Spanish writer and, since 8 June 1995, a full member of the Royal Spanish Academy. He received the 1991 Premio Planeta, the 2013 Jerusalem Prize, and the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for literature.
Paul Graham is a British fine-art and documentary photographer. He has published three survey monographs, along with 17 other publications.
La maja vestida is an oil painting on canvas created between 1800 and 1807 by the Spanish Romantic painter and printmaker Francisco Goya. It is a clothed version of the earlier La maja desnuda, which was created between 1795 and 1800. The identity of the model and that of the commissioner have not been confirmed. However, art historians and scholars have suggested she is María Cayetana de Silva or Godoy's mistress Pepita Tudó. The Clothed Maja was created during the peak of Romanticism.
The Royal Conservatory of Brussels is a historic conservatory in Brussels, Belgium. Starting its activities in 1813, it received its official name in 1832. Providing performing music and drama courses, the institution became renowned partly because of the international reputation of its successive directors such as François-Joseph Fétis, François-Auguste Gevaert, Edgar Tinel, Joseph Jongen and Marcel Poot, but more because it has been attended by many of the top musicians, actors and artists in Belgium such as Arthur Grumiaux, José Van Dam, Sigiswald Kuijken, Josse De Pauw, Luk van Mello and Luk De Konink. Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, also studied at the Brussels Conservatory.
Federico Heraclio Cantú Garza was a Mexican painter, engraver and sculptor. While considered to be a member of the Mexican muralism movement, his style was noticeably different, mostly for adhering to older and more academic forms of painting and sculpture. He had his most success exhibiting in the United States and Europe, but he did murals and sculptures in Mexico. His best known work is a sculpture called La maternidad which was adapted as the logo of the Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social (IMSS).
Eduardo Paniagua is a Spanish architect and musician, specializing in medieval Spanish music.
The Carlos de Amberes Foundation is a private non-profit institution created in 1594 to house the poor and the pilgrims who, arriving from the former Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands were travelling to the Court in Madrid. Nowadays, it promotes programs, activities, and publications in the humanistic and scientific areas, as well as exhibitions, concerts, conferences, and seminars. Its main lines of action are focused on the Modern History of Europe, especially that of Spain and the Benelux, and the reflection on the construction of Europe.
The Brussels massacre was an anti-Semitic episode in Brussels in 1370 in connection with an alleged host desecration at the Brussels synagogue. A number of Jews, variously given as six or about twenty, were executed or otherwise killed, while the rest of the small community was banished. The event occurred on May 22.
Despite its size, Belgium has a long and distinguished artistic tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, considerably pre-dating the foundation of the current state in 1830. Art from the areas making up modern Belgium is called in English Netherlandish up to the separation with the Netherlands from 1570 on, and Flemish until the 18th century.
Jacky June was a Belgian jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and bandleader.
Gloria Price Kirby, was an American gallerist, art collector and photographer, she founded the Vandrés Gallery in Madrid.
Events in the year 1859 in Belgium.
Louis Buisseret was a Belgian painter, draftsman and engraver. His style of art mainly focused on realistic portraits, nudes, and still life. Works by Buisseret can be found in museums in Belgium, Barcelona, Madrid, Riga, and Indianapolis.
The Garden of Sefarad or the Jewish Cemetery of Ávila is a commemorative work of the discovery of a medieval Jewish cemetery in the city of Ávila, Spain. It was built on an old necropolis of the Jewish quarter, whose community buried their dead in this space between the 12th and 15th centuries. In October 2012, during the construction work of Collector Norte II in Ávila, 100 tombs were discovered. When starting the exhumation, the archaeologists discovered that the remains belonged to an old cemetery of a Jewish community (Kehilla), founded 1,000 years ago. The works were stopped, and the Ávila City Council collaborated with the Jewish Community of Madrid and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain. The architects of the project were Darío Álvarez Álvarez and Miguel Ángel de la Iglesia. Its construction was sponsored by the Ministry of Development and Environment and the City Council of Ávila. The budget was 61,000 euros, of which 50,000 were provided by the Ministry of Development and Environment, and 11,000 by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The Garden has been included into the Heritage and Development program (PADE). The Garden of Sefarad is part of the patrimonies of Ávila's and belongs to the Network of Jewish Quarters of Spain.
Alain Arias-Misson is an American-Belgian poet, writer, critic and visual artist whose multimedia literary works range from typewriter poetry, sound poetry, concrete and visual poetry to stories and experimental novels. He is particularly known for his three-dimensional poem objects and the so-called public poems - happenings with performers who carry life-sized letters through the streets of various cities.
