When you think artist, you often imagine a stereotypical Toulouse Lautrec figure, half mad but very talented. No pennies to rub together to pay the rent or the mortgage on their top floor dark and dingy Parisian apartment.
There is something romantic and appealing about the artists of the last few centuries, they do not even seem to belong to the same category of human beings as us!
Monet, famous for his pastels and his water lilies; Van Gogh who we all know for his madness and his sunflowers; Gauguin's brown skinned Tahitian beauties; and Renoir's classic style and iconic portrayal of people.
You can imagine them all hanging out together in the same Paris cafes (even those who were born at different times and never knew each other!), drinking jet black coffee and absinthe. Wearing paint spattered berets and long blue smocks, threadbare as they cannot afford new.
Flamboyant and irrational, just that little bit mad; and all completely obsessed by art, to the exclusion of everything else. Many of the old artists were never appreciated in their time and died penniless and alone.
The reality today is very different in fact! Many modern artists go through years of strict rigorous training in modern institutions and their strict and disciplined lives are very far away from those painters of old.