The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is located in London, England. It is commonly called the Houses of Parliament after the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two legislative chambers which occupy the building. The palace is one of the centres of political life in the United Kingdom; "Westminster" has become a metonym for the UK Parliament and the British Government, and the Westminster system of government commemorates the name of the palace. The Elizabeth Tower of the palace, nicknamed Big Ben, is a landmark of London and the United Kingdom in general. The Palace of Westminster has been a Grade I listed building since 1970 and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.
William Kent was an English architect, landscape architect, painter and furniture designer of the early 18th century. He began his career as a painter, and became Principal Painter in Ordinary or court painter, but his real talent was for design in various media.
John William Waterhouse was an English painter known for working first in the Academic style and for then embracing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter. His paintings are known for their depictions of women from both ancient Greek mythology and Arthurian legend. A high proportion depict a single young and beautiful woman in a historical costume and setting, though there are some ventures into Orientalist painting and genre painting, still mostly featuring women.
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington and Arabella Huntington in San Marino, California. In addition to the library, the institution houses an extensive art collection with a focus on 18th and 19th century European art and 17th to mid-20th century American art. The property also has approximately 120 acres (49 ha) of specialized botanical landscaped gardens, including the "Japanese Garden", the "Desert Garden", and the "Chinese Garden".
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BM&AG) is a museum and art gallery in Birmingham, England. It has a collection of international importance covering fine art, ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, natural history, archaeology, ethnography, local history and industrial history.
The Chandos portrait is the most famous of the portraits that are believed to depict William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Painted between 1600 and 1610, it may have served as the basis for the engraved portrait of Shakespeare used in the First Folio in 1623. It is named after the 3rd Duke of Chandos, who formerly owned the painting. The portrait was given to the National Portrait Gallery, London, on its foundation in 1856, and it is listed as the first work in its collection.
Stowe House is a grade I listed country house in Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is the home of the private Stowe School and is owned by the Stowe House Preservation Trust. Over the years, it has been restored and maintained as one of the finest country houses in the UK. Stowe House is regularly open to the public.
A Shakespeare garden is a themed garden that cultivates some or all of the 175 plants mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. In English-speaking countries, particularly the United States, these are often public gardens associated with parks, universities, and Shakespeare festivals. Shakespeare gardens are sites of cultural, educational, and romantic interest and can be locations for outdoor weddings.
Franko B is an Italian performance artist based in London, where he has lived since 1979. He studied fine art at Camberwell College of Arts (1986–87), Chelsea College of Art (1987–90) and the Byam Shaw School of Art (1990–91). His work was originally based on the bloody and ritualised violation of his own body. Later on he embraced a wide variety of media including video, photography, painting, installation, and sculpture.
Cornelia Ann Parker is an English visual artist, best known for her sculpture and installation art.
Alma Woodsey Thomas was an African-American artist and teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. Thomas is best known for the "exuberant", colorful, abstract paintings that she created after her retirement from a 35-year career teaching art at Washington's Shaw Junior High School.
The Birmingham Group, sometimes called the Birmingham School, was an informal collective of painters and craftsmen associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement, that worked in Birmingham, England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All of its members studied or taught at the Birmingham School of Art after the reorganisation of its teaching methods by Edward R. Taylor in the 1880s, and it was the School that formed the group's primary focus. Members of the group also overlapped with other more formal organisations, including the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft, the Ruskin Pottery and the Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts.
Henry Albert Payne RWS, also known as "Henry Arthur Payne", was a British stained glass artist, watercolourist and painter of frescoes.
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery. Unlike the Royal Academy it admitted only connoisseurs, dominated by the nobility, rather than practising artists to its membership, which along with its conservative taste led to tensions with the British artists it was intended to encourage and support. In its gallery in Pall Mall the Institution held the world's first regular temporary exhibitions of Old Master paintings, which alternated with sale exhibitions of the work of living artists; both quickly established themselves as popular parts of the London social and artistic calendar. From 1807 prizes were given to artists and surplus funds were used to buy paintings for the nation. Although it continued to attract members and visitors, in 1867, when the lease on its quarters expired, instead of renewing the society wrapped up its affairs.
David Payne was a Scottish landscape painter.
Lady Lilith is an oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti first painted in 1866–1868 using his mistress Fanny Cornforth as the model, then altered in 1872–73 to show the face of Alexa Wilding. The subject is Lilith, who was, according to ancient Judaic myth, "the first wife of Adam" and is associated with the seduction of men and the murder of children. She is shown as a "powerful and evil temptress" and as "an iconic, Amazon-like female with long, flowing hair."
Alex Da Corte is an American conceptual artist who works in painting, sculpture, installation, and video. Da Corte often uses surreal imagery and everyday objects in his practice and explores ideas of consumerism, pop culture, mythology, and literature.
