Luis Ricardo Falero

Luis Ricardo Falero was meant to be a naval officer. Born in Granada in southern Spain, he abandoned the navy to his family's dismay and walked to Paris to study painting, picking up chemistry and mechanics along the way.

That scientific streak never left him. He grew fascinated by astronomy, filled his canvases with real constellations, and painted women drifting among stars and comets in works with titles like Twin Stars and The Marriage of a Comet. He knew the night sky well enough that the celebrated French astronomer Camille Flammarion had him illustrate his popular books. Falero settled in London and made his name with these polished, sensuous scenes of witches, spirits and the heavens.

He died young, at 45, in a London hospital in 1896. That same year a former housemaid and model, Maud Harvey, won a paternity case against him and was granted five shillings a week to support their child.