In 1942, artist Max Ernst selected paintings for an exhibition in the gallery of his wife Peggy Guggenheim. One of the pictures, depicting a young beautiful topless woman with an anxious gaze at the open door, interested him very much... as well as the author of the work, Dorothea Tanning. The picture was "nameless", and he suggested Dorothea to call her "The Birthday"... She divorced her husband, he divorced his wife, and they went to Hollywood to get married. The artist Man Ray and his girlfriend Juliet Brauner were their witnesses, but they also decided to ... get married! It was a double marriage.

In the White House, they always treated painting with piety. So, during the war of 1812, Dolly Madison saved the portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stewart. Jacqueline Kennedy borrowed eight paintings by Cézanne from the permanent collection of one of the museums. Hillary Clinton withstood the abstract painting “Mountain at Bear Lake—Taos” by Georgia O'Keefe, while critics assured that the work will break the restrained elegance of the Green Room, created by the paintings of the XIX century. Laura Bush convinced the committee that oversees the art collection of the White House to accept the painting by her contemporary Andrew Wyeth as a gift, although it contradicted the rules: before getting to the White House, the painting must be aged for at least 25 years. Therefore, the collection of the residence contains the minimum number of works of living artists.

At one time, Maurits Escher made attempts to translate Bach's works into a graphic language. However, when musicians came to him with a request to illustrate the cover of their new album, he categorically refused. The same cold shoulder received the leader of The Rolling Stones Mick Jagger, who wished to decorate his plate with an engraving "Verbum". However, many musicians did not feel confused about the artist’s position, and they used Escher's drawings without permission, which disturbed him very much.

At 24, Diego Velázquez was in Madrid and for a long time created only portraits. He was appointed court painter of King Philip IV almost immediately – the king established the artist near himself, arranged him a workshop in The Royal Palace to watch the master at work, conferred him court ranks and didn't allow anyone but Velázquez to portray him. This caused great jealousy among other artists, who spun intrigues against Velázquez. Once the agitated king came to the artist's workshop and stated right off the bat: "They say, you are good only at painting faces! Is it really true?" In order to calm the king down, Velázquez created a painting The Triumph of Bacchus (The Drunkards, 1628-29), which is now in the Museo del Prado.

One day, in the gallery of the collector spouses from New York Maya and Anatoly Bekkerman, the bell rang: the outfitter’s granddaughter offered them a picture, which Fyodor Chaliapin paid 100 years ago with ... for a tailcoat! The lady spelled the surname of the great singer as "Shatapkin", but the canvas was undoubtedly of Korovin's brush. The creators were friends, Korovin painted a portrait of Chaliapin’s daughters, so he had several works by the artist. Four of them were used to pay the merchant for the clothes.

The First President of the Royal Academy of Arts Joshua Reynolds had an obsessive tendency of retouching and reworking the paintings of his great colleagues. For example, during the study of Rembrandt's "Susanna and the Elders" in 2015, the restorers came to a shocking conclusion: a significant part of the canvas was repainted in the XVIII century, some areas were simply washed off with solvent and painted anew in a lighter palette, which was more fashionable at that period. Scientists believe that in this "barbarism" was engaged none other than Reynolds, as this kind of "editing" refers to the period when "Susanna and the Elders" was in his collection.

For some time, the painting Fishing upon the Blythe-Sand, Tide Setting In by William Turner was used as a... cat flap. The canvas was exhibited in Turner's home gallery in 1809, along with other views of Thames. Judging by the correspondence, the artist offered the painting to his patron Sir John Leicester at the end of 1810. And also refused to sell it to Sir George Beaumont, who wasn't a big fan of his art. In subsequent years, a canvas measuring 89 cm by 119 cm seemed to cover a cat's hole in the door of Turner's house – this is stated on the museum's website: now this landscape painting is exhibited in Tate Britain gallery and is perhaps the most expensive cat flap in the world.

In 2015, a geologist and art historian Ann Pizzorusso questioned the attribution of the painting Virgin of the Rocks from National Gallery in London to Leonardo da Vinci. It was all about... flowers. The flora in the Louvre version of the piece is painted as perfectly as possible, while the British version contains some irregularly-shaped and unidentifiable flowers. It is unlikely that one and the same person could paint a grotto so neatly in one work and so unnaturally in another. Especially when taking into account Leonardo being immersed in the comprehension of nature and depicting it. By the way, the London painting had long been considered a work of the master’s students and da Vinci's authorship was asserted only in 2010. And the National Gallery refused to comment on a new research.

13-year-old Auguste felt like the church boys’ choir was where he belonged: large organ pipes hid him from the eyes of the worshippers, while he could see and feel everyone. Loaders, traders, workers and many others came to morning mass. "It was on a cold morning like that I understood Rembrandt," recalled Renoir later. He had a beautiful baritone, learned musical notation and performed complex passages. At that time, the regent of the choir and the church organist was Charles Gounod, still young and unknown (the opera Faust would appear only in 10 years). The regent was sure that Renoir stood a pretty good chance of becoming a famous opera singer. He gave the boy private lessons and persuaded his parents to choose a musical education for their son

William Turner was very reluctant to part with his paintings: he wanted the best of them to be preserved for descendants in a single collection. And if the thing was dear to him, willing to scare away a persevering buyer, he inflated the price wickedly. So it happened to "Dido building Carthage". In the bidding process, the price rose from 500 to 2,000 pounds and the angry buyer blurted out: "What are you going to do with it?" "They'll bury me in it, what else?" Turner joked spitefully. The artist's phrase became popular, so that when Turner died, the gossip spread across London. The abbot of St. Paul's Cathedral, having learned about the death of the artist, allegedly stated indignantly that he would not read the funeral prayer, if Turner was wrapped in a picture!

Zinaida Serebryakova moved to France in search of work, after the revolutionary peasants plundered her family estate. However, Parisians liked modernist trends, not "romantic realism", the favourite and vivid style of the artist. She went so badly that she had to make paints for herself, as there was no way to buy them. Now her paintings are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

All Claude Monet's friends and relatives recalled the artist's unpredictable fits of rage. His children and wife Alice knew that it was better not to bother Monet at such moments, and even not to call him for dinner. The neighbours got used to the fact that it wasn't necessary to greet the eccentric artist on such days – he didn't respond or even hear them anyway. But there was one thing everyone was sure about – that fit of rage would end with something huge.
One morning, Monet was furious because grey road dust settled on the flowers in his garden. He slammed the door and went to the mayor: the road in Giverny had to be paved! The city hall had already considered that project more than once, but they didn't have enough money for it – they lacked 2,800 francs.
"I will give you 1,200 francs," Monet suggested.
In a few days, they started to pave the road to Rue.

The projects of contemporary creators in Versailles are always bold. In the summer of 2015 in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles near Paris, there was installed a 60-meter steel sculpture, resembling a funnel – a project of the British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor. The sculpture is officially called The Dirty Corner (2011). However, the artist himself dubs the work the “queen's vagina”. He said that it symbolises "the vagina of the queen who took power". The work provoked angry criticism from conservative French commentators who criticized placing The Dirty Corner in such a historic place. This work of art was even subjected to the act of vandalism: the sculpture was spray-painted. The Dirty Corner had to be cleaned.

Critics liked to call the characters by the artist "cardboard dolls" or "lifeless caricatures". However, Seurat portrayed people in this way quite consciously, deliberately simplifying forms and styling figures following the spirit of flat Greek frescoes or Egyptian hieroglyphs. The artist chose such an image manner according to his philosophy: "I want to reduce the figures of modern people to their essence, make them move just like on frescoes by Phidias, and arrange them on the canvas in chromatic harmony."

During the restoration of the Caravaggio’s "Bacchus", on the decanter, they found a vague reflection of a man – probably a self-portrait by Caravaggio. It is interesting that the glass decanter is to the right of the young god (posed by a famous model), and he holds his glass in his left hand. Apparently, the artist used a pinhole camera when creating a picture – an optical device for transferring an image of a real object to the surface, for example, a canvas. At the same time, the artist "transferred" himself.

The Austrian Dieter Buchhart combined three generations of modernists in one exhibition "The Masters of Modernism: Edvard Munch, Peder Balke and Per Kirkeby", and showed their art quirks. Thus, the Norwegian artist Peder Balke (1804–1884), liked to draw not only with brushes but also with his fingers dipped in water and paint – he got special color transitions this way. And the famous Norwegian Edward Munch (1863–1944) often painted himself somewhere in the background of the picture, denoting his own presence on the canvases.

Alphonse Mucha made his way to his luck for a long time, and he became famous literally in one night. His success was brought by the unsurpassed Sarah Bernhardt, who approved his poster sketch, in which she acted in main role in the play "Gismonda". After the posters were spread, Mucha instantly became famous. It is rumored that the Parisians liked his posters so much that they bought additional copies from the distributors, and if they did not manage to agree with them, they stole posters, cutting them off in the dark from the walls with razor blades. Well, turning ordinary objects into works of art was a special gift of the famous artist.

On one of the Paris boulevards an artist was working on his painting, having put an easel right on the street. Passers-by, used to such phenomena, now and then stopped nearby, looked over his shoulder, commented the painting in a low voice, and sometimes asked questions. A couple of Russian tourists watched for a long time how the bold, shining brushstrokes of the artist came to life on his canvas. One of them couldn't resist saying: "These French artists are so good at colour rendering!" "And the Russian ones are not worse! " – answered the first Russian Impressionist Konstantin Korovin.

The author's copy of the famous "Portrait of Jacopo Foscarini", seized by the Nazis from art historian and collector August Liebmann Mayer, was kept in the Louvre since 1951. The picture, presumably, by Giovanni Batista Moroni was returned to the daughter of the owner, who died in a concentration camp, at a special ceremony at the Jewish Heritage Museum (New York, USA). The undisputed original work is stored in Budapest; it is a notable work in the artist's heritage.

The Russian artist had a legendary exclusive visual memory. One day, into the hometown of Vrubel, Saratov, they brought a large-scale copy of the "Last Judgment" fresco by the great Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo. The future brilliant Russian artist was just Misha then, he was 9 years old. The boy took pencils and brushes at the age of five, so he hastened to look at the work, housed in the church, together with his father, and for a long time he studied every detail of it, even though his father called him to return home. Afterwards, having retired to his nursery, he reproduced the seemingly impossible for the child composition with masterful precision.