Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Some variations of the term genre works specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on.

Rather confusingly, genre works, especially when referring to the painting of the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting - the great periods of genre works - may also be used as an umbrella term for painting in various specialized categories such as still-life, marine painting, architectural painting and animal painting, as well as genre scenes proper where the emphasis is on human figures.

The following concentrates on painting in pictures, but genre motifs were also extremely popular in many forms of the decorative arts, especially from the Rococo of the early 18th century onwards. Single figures or small groups decorated a huge variety of objects such as porcelain, furniture, wallpaper and textiles.

Edward Lamson Henry (January 12, 1841 – May 9, 1919), commonly known as E.L. Henry, was an American genre painter, born in Charleston, South Carolina.

Though born in Charleston, by age seven his parents had died and Henry moved to live with cousins in New York City. He began studying painting, there and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1860 he went to Paris, where he studied with Charles Gleyre and Gustave Courbet, at roughly the same time as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley.

In 1862, he returned to the United States, where he served as a clerk on a Union transport ship in the American Civil War. After the war he resumed his painting, with many works inspired by his experiences in the war. He moved into the prestigious Tenth Street Studio Building in Greenwich Village, where Winslow Homer also had a studio. In 1869, Henry was elected to the National Academy of Design, New York.

As a painter of colonial and early American themes and incidents of rural life, he displays a quaint humour. Among his best-known compositions are some of early railroad travel, incidents of stage coach and canal boat journeys, rendered with much detail on a minute scale.

Miklós Barabás (February 10, 1810 in Mărcuşa, now Romania - February 12, 1898 in Budapest) was a Hungarian painter. He is mostly known for his portrait paintings, including a famous portrait of a young Franz (Ferenc, in Hungarian) Liszt done in 1847 and an 1853 portrait of Emperor Franz Joseph I.

Barabas was born in Kézdimárkosfalva, Mărcuşa in Romanian. Miklos Barabás was educated at the protestant school of Nagyenyed. He painted from an early age and in 1829 he was a pupil of J. Ender in Vienna for a while. Back in Kolozsvár (Cluj, in Romanian) in 1830 he learned lithography from Gábor Barra. In 1834-1835 he traveled to Italy, where he learned watercolor painting from the Scottsman William Leighton Leitch who was six years his senior; they became friends and toured and painted in the Lago Maggiore region in 1834, and Leitch was a great influence on Barabás's future work. He finally settled in Pest in 1855.

He won the great support of the literary and political leaders of the Reform Age, and was undeniably a pioneer of Hungarian national art. He was a founder and active member of art life in Hungary, and the beginnings of Hungarian genre painting are also linked with his name. His "Romanian Family Going To The Fair" (1844) was considered the most beautiful folk genre painting of its time. It met with great success at the 1844 exhibition of the Vienna Art Association, and later in Pest. He spent most of his life in Pest. During absolutism, he had to face financial problems, forcing him to take photos and to paint altars for some time. As a result of his struggle, the Art Society was established in 1859, of which he was the President from 1862 until his death

George Dunlop Leslie RA (2 July 1835 – 21 Feb 1921) was an English genre painter, author and illustrator.

Leslie was born in London, the son of notable genre painter Charles Robert Leslie, R.A. His uncle Robert Leslie was a marine artist. He studied art first at "Cary's art academy", then from 1854 at the Royal Academy. His first exhibition at the Academy was in 1859, and he showed his work every year thereafter. He became an Associate (ARA) in 1868 and a full Royal Academician (RA) in 1876.

Leslie lived early on in St John's Wood (London), and was part of the St John's Wood Clique, a group of artists who favoured light-hearted genre subjects. From 1884-1901 he was resident at "Riverside", St. Leonard's Lane, Wallingford, Oxfordshire. His sister Mary Leslie (1833–1907), also an artist, lived at "Cromwell Lodge" next door. Fellow artist, James Hayllar, was also a resident of the village and they painted a portrait of Queen Victoria together for her Golden Jubillee in 1887. From 1906 he lived at "Compton House" in Lindfield, Sussex

Pierre Hantaï, (born 28 February 1964, Paris) is a French conductor and harpsichordist. The son of painter Simon Hantaï, he took up the harpsichord at the age of 11 and studied in Paris with the American teacher Arthur Haas followed by two years in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt. In 1982 he won the second prize in the Bruges harpsichord competition.

He sometimes performs with his two brothers, Marc (a player of the baroque flute) and Jérôme (a viol player and pianist). He has played in many baroque orchestras, including La Petite Bande under the direction of Sigiswald Kuijken and Le Concert des Nations under the direction of Jordi Savall. He has collaborated with many other musicians, including Philippe Herreweghe and Marc Minkowski. In 1985, he founded his own ensemble with his brothers, le Concert Français, which he directs from the harpsichord.