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Sir Derek Alton Walcott KCSL OBE OCC (January 23, 1930 – March 17, 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. Walcott was a Caribbean poet who expressed both his spiritual and colonial roots in his writing. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the acclaimed Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990). He spent his later career teaching in Western universities where he was accused of sexual harassment. Walcott and the accuser settled the claim.

Édouard Manet (January 23, 1832 – April 30, 1883) was a French, modernist painter. His early masterworks The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia engendered great controversy, and served as rallying points for the young painters who would later launch the Impressionist movement. Today these two works are considered watershed paintings, which mark the genesis of modern art. As one of the first nineteenth-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, his art bridged the gap between realism and impressionism, from the older, representational aesthetic to the modern, impressionistic style of painting that more closely mimicked sense impressions.