Jim D -

"kiss" alone in Google will get the image, on about the third page or maybe sooner. The problem is that the only "citation" to the finished drawing is sort of hearsay on what amounts to a blog page, until some history on the artist and a "credible" link between the artist and the picture is found - or at least that's my sort of loose standard for thinking I know something about a painting. The Russian site looks like it has a credible citation, but of a "study" rather than a finished painting; and a decent translation, of at least some snatches, would be needed to be sure what it says. It does seem to be more of a "music oriented" than "art centered" site - but even that's a guess. The Google translater bombs out completely on the Cyrillic text, but might give some usable clues on a "transliterated" version. I just don't have the time or energy at the moment to investigate it.

JenniG -

I actually found quite a lot about Bessie Davison, although only a few of her paintings. Those few were quite nice, and her work seems to have been popular. Biographical sketches on her appear at several of the poster sites, implying that she's still marketable. While these sites can't always be trusted for accuracy, I didn't see any glaring discrepancies on Bessie's bio information.

A search on "Academie de la Grande Chaumiere" turned up an astonishing number of recognized (by me) artists who cite it as a place they've studied, but the majority that pop up are well after the period when Prinet would have been there. Google translates it as "The School in the Large Hut with a Thatched Roof," but that's about the extent of what I found out about what the Academie IS - other than that artists seem to think it makes their credentials more impressive. Informations for the few I recognized who might have been there in his time (including Lempicka and Oppenheim, for example) don't indicate with whom they studied at the Academie.

Despite not finding anything much that I was looking for, the search on the "Academie" did turn up some sites with information on a number of interesting "more modern" artists than those I've been looking at, so I guess once again Google has created more subjects for me to research than answers.

John