Delacroix supported the French Revolution against the Catholic monarchy and was an ardent rationalist.

It was on this date, November 14, 1840, that the founder of French impressionist painting, Claude Monet was born. The term “Impressionism” is derived from the title of his 1872 painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant). From his earliest days, Claude-Oscar Monet wanted to paint. He was enrolled in Le Havre secondary school of the […]

It was on this date, March 24, 1834, that English poet, artist, writer, and libertarian socialist William Morris was born in Walthamstow. As a youth he was an avid reader and at Oxford he was a zealous student of theology, ecclesiastical history medieval poetry and art. From there he was expected to join the Roman […]

Charles M. Schulz (1922) It was on this date, November 26, 1922, that the creator of Snoopy, Lucy, Charlie Brown and the other characters of the "Peanuts" comics world, cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, was born in St. Paul Minnesota. There is little dispute that Schulz, or "Sparky," as his friends called him, started out his […]

Jacques-Louis David (1748) On this date, August 30, 1748, that the most important European painter of the French Revolutionary period, from 1785-1815, Jacques-Louis David, was born into the Parisian merchant class. David's father must have been both prideful and foolish, because he died in a duel when his son was 10. Educated at the Académie […]

James McNeill Whistler (1833) It was on this date, July 11, 1834, that American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. His father was an Army Major and Whistler himself was educated at West Point, from which he was dismissed. Whistler was a leading proponent of the credo, “art for art’s sake” […]

About religion, Wright said, "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature… And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see."

Turner "did not profess to be a member of any visible Church," and he "had no religious hope to cheer him" when he died.

This deathbed conversion, by so critical a thinker as Leonardo, who would have nothing to lose by professing piety all his life, can only mean that during his prime years he was a secret freethinker.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, while praising his morality, industry and artistic talent, can find no words to describe his religious faith.