George Inness (1825 - 1894)

Artist. Born near Newburgh, New York, was the fifth of thirteen children, his father, a prosperous grocer, tried to make a grocer out of him, but the youth decided instead to become an artist. Around 1841, he received a month’s instruction from John Jesse Barker, a painter living in Newark, New Jersey, where the Inness […]

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 - 1867)

Major French Neoclassicist painter of the 19th century. He was a hero of Degas’. He was a consummate draughtsman who worked most of his career in Rome. He was a master of the female nude and portraiture.

Jheryl Busby (1949 - 2008)

Record Executive. He began his career in music as a promotion agent at Stax Records Memphis, Tennessee and in 1984, become the president of the black music division of MCA Records. In 1988, he was named the president and chief executive officer of Motown Records, Los Angeles, serving until 1995. As Motown’s CEO, he helped […]

Pomeroy Burton (1970 - 1970)

Sir Pomeroy Burton was one of Britains leading newspaper magnates. He was General Manager of Associated Newspapers. He was one of the leaders who took over the famous “The Times” newspaper in 1908. (bio by: Kieran Smith)

Erik Höglund (1932 - 1998)

Acclaimed Glass Artist, Painter, Sculptor. For many years cooperating with famous glassworks Boda of Sweden, where he made many of his appreciated works, as well as famous designs. His glass works made international recognition and besides his pieces of art, he also made some 150 public adornments, in Sweden and abroad. His works are concidered […]

Washington Atlee Burpee (1858 - 1915)

Businessman. In 1876, the US was still recovering from the upheaval of the Civil War and a severe economic depression. Burpee’s boyhood hobby was poultry breeding and the science of genetics fascinated him. In 1888, he bought a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, called it Fordhook and began transforming it into what would soon become a […]

Franz Anton Högl (1769 - 1859)

Sculptor.

Daniel Huntington (1816 - 1906)

Artist.  As a descendant of two Mayflower passengers, William Brewster and John Alden, and the grandson of two famous Huntingtons, paternal-grandson of Benjamin Huntington, Senior who had been a Connecticut delegate to the Continental Congress, and also as a maternal-grandson of Revolutionary War Brigadier-General Jedediah Huntington, he was born into a privileged and highly respected […]

Leo Burnett (1891 - 1971)

Advertising Executive. He founded the highly successful Leo Burnett Advertising Company, which over time served giant corporate clients such as Proctor and Gamble, Philip Morris Company, Pillsbury, United Airlines, and General Motors, and created iconic advertising characters such as the “Marlboro Man”, and “Tony the Tiger”.  Family links:  Parents:  Noble I Burnett (1864 – 1928) […]

Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876 - 1973)

Artist.  Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father, Alpheus Hyatt, was a professor of paleontology and zoology at Harvard University and MIT, and served as a contributing factor to her early interest in animals and animal anatomy. She studied with sculptors Henry Hudson Kittleson in Boston and Hermon Atkins MacNeil at the Art Students League. She […]

David Burbank (1821 - 1895)

Businessman. A dentist originally from New Hampshire, in 1867 he bought 4,600 acres of the Rancho La Providencia, and more than 4,000 acres of the Rancho San Rafael. These he combined to form a large and extremely successful sheep ranch. In 1886, he sold his holdings to the Providencia Land, Water, and Development Company for […]

Clementine Hunter (1970 - 1988)

African-American folk artist whose works depicted scenes of daily life on Melrose Plantation, where she lived for approximately 85 years.  Although there is some doubt about her actual date of birth, it is generally believed that she was at least 100 years old when she died in 1988.  She is buried next to her close […]

Arde Bulova (1889 - 1958)

Businessman, Manufacturer. The son of Joseph Bulova, the Czech immigrant who founded the J. Bulova luxury watch making company, he took over the business from his father, and grew it into one of the market leaders among United States watchmakers. By the mid-1950s, under his direction, the company’s annual sales had reached $80 million.  Family […]

William Morris Hunt (1824 - 1879)

Artist. William was the son of a Vermont congressman. He learned to draw at an early age, his first teacher being an Italian artist named Gambadella. After leaving Harvard College in his third year. Following the untimely death of his father from cholera, William was taken in 1844 by his widowed mother Jane Leavitt Hunt […]

John Gillespie Bullock (1871 - 1933)

Businessman. Born in Ontario, Canada, in the 1890s, he moved to Los Angeles, California and with Arthur Letts, set up a dry goods store. Since it was located on Broadway Street, they called it “Broadway” in 1907. The store prospered so they opened a second store which was managed by John Bullock and the new […]

Dorothy Stimson Bullitt (1892 - 1989)

Broadcast Pioneer, Businesswoman. She was the first woman to own and operate a television station in the United States. She created one of the nation’s greatest broadcasting empires, establishing television and radio properties in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boise, Spokane and Honolulu, along with cable and business operations in Washington, Oregon and California. She acquired […]

William Holman Hunt (1827 - 1910)

Pre-Raphaelite artist and founder of the Pre-Raphaelite School. Eventually entering the Royal Academy art schools, having initially been rejected, William rebelled against the influence of its founder Sir Joshua Reynolds. He formed the Pre-Raphaelite movement in 1848, after meeting the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Along with John Everett Millais they sought to revitalise […]

Sumner Hunt (1865 - 1938)

American Architect. Hunt received architectural training as a draftsman in the offices of Clarence B. Cutler of Troy, New York. He moved to Los Angeles in 1888 and opened his own firm in 1893. That same year he designed the Casa de Rosas, a Spanish Renaissance style school near downtown Los Angeles. Hunt began work […]

Ephraim Wales Bull (1806 - 1895)

Farmer,  Politician.  Creator of the Concord grape.  Bull was born in Boston and learned the trade of a gold-beater. In 1836, he moved to Concord to a home now called Grapevine Cottage and there cultivated the Concord grape, a hardier grape capable of surviving in Massachusetts. He exhibited his new grape to the Massachusetts Horticultural […]

Richard Morris Hunt (1827 - 1895)

Distinguished architect, designer and influential taste-maker. One of five children of Jonathan Hunt, a prosperous lawyer and landowner, who served in Congress and in the House of Representatives in Washington. Richard was educated in the comfortable worlds of New Haven and Boston; receiving his architectural training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, being the […]

David Dunbar Buick (1854 - 1929)

Scottish-American inventor and automotive pioneer, best known for starting the car company that became the Buick Motor Division of General Motors Corporation (GM).  He was born David Dunbar Buick on September 17, 1854 at 26 Green Street, Arbroath, Scotland.  His father, Alexander Buick, a joiner, emigrated to America with his wife and son when David […]

Alain (1868 - 1951)

Philosopher.

Myron Hunt (1868 - 1952)

Architect.   Hunt, who graduated with a B.S. in Architecture from MIT in 1893, spent three years in Europe before returning to Chicago where he obtained a position as a draftsman for the local offices of a national architectural firm.  He moved to Los Angeles in 1903 where he formed a partnership with architect Elmer […]

Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892 - 1927)

Author.  He is best known for the short story “Rashomon”, which he published in 1915. During his career he refrained from writing full-length novels, focusing instead on the short story as his main medium of expression. He began writing after entering Tokyo Imperial University in 1913 and was further encouraged by the praise that novelist […]

Ettore Bugatti (1881 - 1947)

Automotive Pioneer. Ettore Bugatti was born in Milan to a family of talented artists. He worked for several car makers during his youth, and later started his own company in Molsheim in 1910. His work was characterized for the combination of advanced engineering and an artistic execution of technical details. His creations are considerated art […]

Lynn Bogue Hunt (1877 - 1960)

Artist. He specialized in 20th Century national wildlife painting published in periodicals. His paintings and illustrations of ducks, hunters, charging elephants, fish, and other wildlife appeared on the covers of ‘Field and Stream” magazine, beginning in August, 1904 and lasting through the 1940s. His work also appeared on the covers of such publications as the […]

Vasily Aksyonov (1932 - 2009)

Writer. He was a prolific Russian author best known for his novels critical of the Soviet system. He began his career writing for the Yunost (Youth) magazine in the 1950s and his first novel, “The Colleagues,” was published in 1959. In 1970s, Aksyonov with several other writers set up their own journal called Metropol, but […]

Edward G. Budd, Jr (1902 - 1971)

Businessman. His father, Edward Sr., founded the various Budd manufacturing companies in the late 1800’s. Edward Jr. took over the firms from his father, and was one of the main driving forces in the promotion of the light rail vehicle (LRV), which is widely used in the Orient and decreases the use of locomotives.  Family […]

Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928 - 2000)

Controversial Austrian Painter and Architect. He claimed that straight lines were an invention of the devil. Among others he built the “Hundertwasserhaus” in Vienna. The name he gave himself means something like “Empire of Peace Hundred Waters”. He owned property on New Zealand and was to be buried there in his “Garden of the Happy […]

Sergei Aksakov (1791 - 1859)

Author. His books “The Family Chronicle” (1856) and “Years of Childhood” (1858) are considered among the finest of Russian memoirs.  Sergei Timofeyevich Aksakov was born in Ufa, Russia, into a distinguished family that traced its roots back to Novgorod in the 11th Century. He fought in the Napoleonic Wars, an experience that shocked him so […]