Anton Ažbe was a Slovene realist painter and teacher of painting. Ažbe, crippled since birth and orphaned at the age of eight, learned painting as an apprentice to Janez Wolf and at the Academies in Vienna and Munich. At the age of 30, Ažbe founded his own school of painting in Munich that became a popular attraction for Eastern European students. Ažbe trained the "big four" Slovenian impressionists, a whole generation of Russian painters, Serbian painters Nadežda Petrović, Beta Vukanović, Ljubomir Ivanović, Borivoje Stevanović, Kosta Miličević, and Milan Milovanović or a Czech painter Ludvik Kuba.

Rihard Jakopič was a Slovene painter. He was the leading Slovene Impressionist painter, patron of arts and theoretician. Together with Matej Sternen, Matija Jama and Ivan Grohar, he is considered the pioneer of Slovene Impressionist painting.