William Sutherland Beckett (1921 - 1977)

American Architect. Beckett, who graduated from Yale University and graduated in 1943 with a B.A. in architecture, moved to California and worked for Douglas Aircraft for a short time during World War II. He went to work for the architectural firm of Spaulding and Rex from 1944 to 1949, eventually achieving the title Chief Designer. […]

Edmund Beckett (1816 - 1905)

British Peer. Born at Carlton Hall, Nottinghamshire, the son of Sir Edmund Beckett, 4th Baronet Beckett. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1841, eventually becoming a very successful litigator. He was also a noted amateur horologist and published ‘Rudimentary Treatise on Clocks, Watches, and Bells’ in 1850. […]

Welton David Becket (1902 - 1969)

American Architect. Becket, who graduated from the University of Washington in 1927 with a Bachelor of Architecture degree, studied at the École des Beaux Arts, Fontainbleu in France for a year before working several years as a junior designer for firms in Los Angeles and his native Seattle. In 1933, he settled in Los Angeles, […]

Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980)

English society photographer, artist and film/theatre designer. Academy awards: Best Costume 1958 (‘Gigi’), 1964 (‘My Fair Lady’). (bio by: Dominic Druce) Cause of death: stroke

Aubrey Beardsley (1872 - 1898)

Artist-illustrator, pianist. Aubrey Beardsley, whose elegant, edgy and often erotic drawings helped to define the Art Nouveau style, first came to public attention as a musical child prodigy, giving piano recitals at the Royal Pavilion in his native Brighton, England. Stalked by tuberculosis nearly all of his brief life, he lived in the creative “fast […]

Elizabeth Bradley (1922 - 2000)

Actress. The youngest of two daughters born to senior civil servant Sir John Abraham and his wife, She attended Wentworth School, which she left at the age of 17 , and after studying nursing,  joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment with the British Red Cross where she worked at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London. […]

Mary Beale (1633 - 1970)

Artist. Famed British portrait painter and is regarded as Britain’s first professional female artist. Born Mary Cradock in Suffolk, Mary Beale was one of the very few women artists working in England during the seventeenth century. Mary Beale’s mother died when she was young, her father, who knew the artist Robert Walker, introduced her to […]

Peter Baumgras (1827 - 1903)

Artist. Born in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe,  Germany,  he studied painting at the Academy of Arts, Dusseldorf and in Munich with August von Kaulbach and Karl Schorn. He worked first as a lithographer and miniaturist. In 1849 he joined the Munich art association. In 1853, he emmigrated to the United States. First settling in […]

Willi Baumeister (1889 - 1955)

Artist, writer, stage designer. He studied under Adolf Hölzel at the Kunstakademie in Stuttgart, and his early works were displayed there and in Zurich, Berlin, and Cologne. He was acquainted with the Expressionist painters Franz Marc, Oskar Kokoschka, and Paul Klee. After his service in the World War, he participated in several artists’ alliances, among […]

Denise Borino Borino-Quinn (1964 - 2010)

Actress. She portrayed overweight mob wife Ginny Sacramone in the hit HBO series “The Sopranos” from 2001 until its conclusion in 2007. A graduate of West Essex High School, she was a legal assistant in New Brunswick, New Jersey, who accompanied a childhood friend to an open casting call for the successful Mafia-themed show; to […]

James Goodwin Batterson (1823 - 1901)

Architect. He was head of the New England Granite Works in Hartford, Connecticut when the Civil War began. Because of his position as chairman of the State War Committee he chose not to serve in the Army but sought to be a construction consultant for the Union. With strong political support in the General Assembly, […]

Ricardo Bastid Peris (1919 - 1966)

Painter, Writer. He was born in Valencia, Comunidad Valenciana. Loyal to the Government of the Spanish Republic, after the Spanish Civil War, he was enjailed. He made his first exhibition in the 50s, but he was forced to exile to France and later to Argentina. As painter, is remembered for works such as “Vista de […]

Saul Bass (1920 - 1996)

Graphic Designer. He was born in New York. He is known as one of the best ever graphic designers for film, specially for the Alfred Hitchcock Film “Psycho” (1960) of which he co-directed the very famous shower scene. Also he is remembered for his creations for Alfred Hitchcock films “Vertigo” (1958) and “North by Northwest” […]

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 - 1988)

Artist. The protege of pop artist Andy Warhol, he was the son of middle-class Brooklyn parents, and had a precocious success with his paintings from the start. His career was incubated by the short-lived graffiti movement, which started on the streets and subway cars in the early 1970s. Having no art training, he never tried […]

Gabriele Basilico (1944 - 2013)

Photographer. Called the “Genius of the Black and White” because of his photographic technique, he is regarded by many as one of the greatest contemporary documentary photographers and is remembered for his photographic reportages of the urban landscapes of some of the largest cities in the world. After studying architecture in 1973, he started his […]

Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 - 1884)

When she died at age 24 she had managed to fill 84 volumes of a diary with passionate observations and candid descriptions of the famous people she knew personally.  It was published posthumously to the consternation of many who were in the books.  She was a promising painter.  Most of her work went to the […]

Pedro Bas Codina (1899 - 1972)

Artist. He was born in Xàbia, Alicante, Comunidad Valenciana. He was disciple of the painter Leopoldo García Ramón. In 1925, he moved to Paris, where worked as fan’s painter. There, he knew the illustrator Bagarías and the musicians Amparo and José Iturbi and Joaquín Rodrigo. He was powerfully influenced by paintings of Maurice Denis. In […]

Antoine Louis Barye (1796 - 1875)

Sculptor. Antoine Louis Barye was born in Paris in 1796. At the age of 13 he began training with a master engraver learning metal techniques. Later, he became a passionate observer of living animals and studied their anatomy. He was known and admired for his sculptures in America long before his 1867 election to the […]

Ralph Barton (1891 - 1931)

Cartoonist, Illustrator. One of America’s most famous artists of the 1920s. His stylish celebrity caricatures, playful yet not mocking, became synonymous with the “Jazz Age” and were widely influential. “It is not the caricaturist’s job to be penetrating”, he said. “It is his job to put down the figure a man cuts before his fellows […]

Margaret “Maggie” Blye (1939 - 2016)

American Actress. Blye first appeared on television in a 1964 episode of ‘Channing’ and would go on have roles in such shows as ‘Hazel’, ‘The Virginian’, ‘Gunsmoke’, ‘Ben Casey’, ‘The Iron Men’, ‘The Rockford Files’, ‘Kodiak’, ‘Harry O’, ‘Hart to Hart’, ‘In the Heat of the Night’, ‘Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman’ […]

Albert Bartholomé (1848 - 1928)

Artist. Born in Thiverval-Grignon, Yvelines, France . Albert  began his career as a painter, studying briefly at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Wanting to prepare a monument to his dead wife, he turned to sculpture in 1886. Though he had no formal training, he made a careful study of nature and of the masterpieces of the […]

Lisa Blount (1957 - 2010)

Actress, Producer. She is best known for her role of Lynette Pomeroy in the hit 1982 picture “An Officer and a Gentleman”, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. Raised in Jacksonville, Arkansas, she attended the University of Arkansas, and landed her first movie part in the film “September 30, 1955” (1977), followed by […]

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (1834 - 1904)

French sculptor renowned for his monumental works, the most famous being the Statue of Liberty.  Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was born at Colmar, in Alsace, France, on April 2, 1834. At first he studied painting, but soon abandoned it for sculpture under the influence of the Parisian, Jean Francois Soitoux, working from the very first on […]

James Barry (1741 - 1806)

Artist. He is best remembered for his six part series of paintings entitled The Progress of Human Culture in the Great Room of the Royal Society of Arts. Born in Cork, Ireland his father was a builder and later a coastal trader between Ireland and England. He convinced his father to allow him to study […]

David Francis Barry (1854 - 1934)

Photographer. Went out on his own at about the age of 17 as a photography apprentice to Orland Scott Goff, and became a famous photographer of Native American Indians. He counted as friends such figures as Sitting Bull, Chief Gall, “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Kit Carson, General George Armstrong Custer among other late 1800s notables.  Family […]

Montgomery Barrett (1897 - 1949)

Cartoonist and author.  In 1927 he began the syndicated cartoon strip “Jane Arden.”  He wrote various magazine articles and historical novels.  Three of his books with Texas backgrounds were “Sun in Their Eyes” (1944), “Tempered Blade” (1946) and “Smoke up the Valley” (1949).  Family links:  Parents:  Edward W Barrett (1866 – 1950)  Clara Prow Barrett […]

Raoul Barré (1874 - 1932)

Pioneer Cartoonist.  Born Vital Achille Raoul Barré in Montreal,  Quebec,  he went to Paris in 1891 to study at the School of Fine Arts and remained there for several years as a political cartoonist.  His attacks of the French military over the Dreyfus affair (1898) proved too controversial and he returned home soon afterwards.  In […]

Francis James Barraud (1856 - 1924)

Artist. He is remembered for the painting of “Nipper”, the dog on the His Master’s Voice record label. The son of the painter, Henry Barraud, he studied at the Royal Academy Schools, at Heatherley’s Art School in London, and at the Beaux Arts in Antwerp. His brother, Mark, was a painter of stage sets in […]

Rafael Barradas (1890 - 1929)

Painter. Born of Spanish parents in Montevideo, Uruguay,  he moved to Barcelona in 1913, where he would spend most of his career. He worked as illustrator for the magazine “Alfar”,  and with Jorge Luis Borges for “Tableros.” Barradas became a leader of the avant-garde in Spanish painting. Among his works are “Los Emigrantes”, “García Lorca […]

Georgia Bitner (1926 - 2012)

Film and Television Actress. She was an African American film and television actress whose career expanded over a period of seven decades. Born Georgia Rose Bitner, in honor of the state in which she was born, “Georgia”. During her younger years she adored such actors as Hattie McDanial and Josephine Baker so much until her […]