In 1818, Théodore Géricault read a book about the terrible story of the raft of Méduse: the French frigate crashed, of the 147 passengers set adrift on an open raft, only 15 survived – the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades; some resorted to cannibalism to survive. This terrible story delighted the artist: he finally found the plot for a big painting! Big in all senses: Géricault started working on a painting which was more than seven meters long.
But the artist was only 27. How could he keep himself from going to parties and devote all his time and effort to the painting? Géricault shaved his head bald. At that time, it was impossible to dally with ladies, drink sparkling wine and crack jokes in the salons, while having a buzz cut. He locked himself in the studio with the help of his socially unacceptable hairstyle.

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.

On a bright August day of 1806, a plump, handsome elderly man entered one of the Parisian confectioneries and ordered an ice cream. The sun was warm and the visitor dozed off. The café employees knew that it was their regular visitor, Monsieur Fragonard, and therefore did not wake him up, letting him rest. After a couple of hours, it became clear that the visitor was not asleep – he was dead. Death under the gentle rays of the sun in anticipation of ice cream – it is difficult to come up with a more suitable departure of the last artist of the Rococo era.

The idea of the main masterpiece of the legendary surrealist Méret Oppenheim was born by chance, during a visit to a Parisian cafe with Pablo Picasso. During the conversation, he noticed the bracelet on Oppenheim's hand, which she made of ordinary wire wrapped in fur. "You can cover anything with fur," he remarked. "Yes, even this cup and saucer," she replied. And in May 1936, at an exhibition of surreal objects in the Paris gallery of Charles Ratton, Oppenheim presented her "Breakfast in Fur" – a cup, a saucer and a spoon, their surface covered with the fur of Chinese gazelle.

One of the most revered Dutch painters of the seventeenth century Gerrit Dou is renowned for his small and yet incredibly meticulous and skilful works. His paintings are distinguished by a smooth, as if enamelled, surface, which was typical of the 'fijnschilders' ('fine painters') school. The amount of time the artist spent on the most minute details in his paintings can be illustrated be this legend: when Dou was complimented on his extreme patience in painting a broomstick which was hardly larger than a fingernail, the artist responded that he would require at least three more days to complete it.

Ellen Andrée is a famous Parisian actress who performed in the Palais-Royal and in the bar at the Folies-Bergère. She was a model for Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, and Edgar Degas; she also spent time with the artists and poets in the café New Athens, which was unprecedented audacity for the time. Ladies could visit drinking establishments only accompanied.
The painting L'Absinthe, for which Andrée posed together with the artist Marcellin Desboutin, also negatively affected her reputation. It caused a big fuss; the painting was called disgusting and immoral, they saw a challenge in it and, of course, suspected models of heavy drinking. Edgar Degas had to make an official statement that neither Ellen, nor Marcellin was an alcoholic – they just perfectly played their roles. To make up for such a blow to her reputation, Degas even offered Ellen one of his works as a gift.

Did you know that Auguste Renoir has the most organized and active opponents? In the past several years, Renoir Sucks At Painting movement has been demanding removal of the artist’s works from museums and staging demonstrations (not particularly crowded, but very reckless). They usually hold homemade signs reading "God Hates Renoir" and "Stop Aesthetic Terrorism". The community has an eponymously-named page on Instagram, where users post their own photos with Renoir's most awful (in their opinion) paintings in the background.
Admittedly, the activists have nothing against his Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette or La Grenouillère. All protests are focused mainly on the late works of the aging Renoir, when all his characters began to look the same, pursuing the artist's conceptual ideal.

By the age of 20, Matisse had studied to be a lawyer and got the right to start his own practice, which caused his return to his native wilderness in the north of France. But suddenly he was overtaken by an attack of appendicitis, and Matisse had to undergo several surgical interventions (it was 1889, and the patient had complications). To entertain his son and cheer him up, his mother brought paints to the hospital, he enthusiastically began to copy the old postcards. The mood improved so much that after the hospital Matisse headed straight for Paris, having decided to become an artist. His father, the shopkeeper was very upset: he hoped that the son would become a decent person.

During the Second World War, the famous fresco "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci, which was in Milan in the refectory of the Santa Maria del Grazie church, had a miraculous survival. The church was almost destroyed under bombs, three walls and the roof were blown away. And only the wall with the fresco by Leonardo stood unharmed in some incomprehensible way. The wall with the artist's fresco is the only thing left of the building.

William Turner's love of money was widely known and became the subject of many jokes. One of them was described by the artist's biographer George Walter Thornbury. When Turner arrived in Yorkshire, he brought the bookseller Robinson a sealed letter of recommendation from London Longman publishers. It was written there that “Above all things remember that Turner is the Great Jew.” Most likely, it was about his commerciality, but Robinson took everything literally. He would loudly assume that the guest would not want to go to church on Sunday and apologize when pork was served at the table.

The "Retrospective Bust Of A Woman", created by Salvador Dalí in 1933 for the Surrealist exhibition in Pierre Colle Gallery (Paris) is quite original. On the porcelain bust of a woman, there is a loaf of bread (a surreal cap!) and a bronze ink-pot – the image of L'Angélus by Jean-Francois Millet. Plus, ants on the face, a paper "scarf", corn on the shoulders – well, just a parody of fashion! The original of which was spoiled... by the dog of Picasso. The artist visited the exhibition with his pet, and the dog devoured the loaf! The whole idea was actually wasted... Now its reconstruction with a fake loaf is in the Salvador Dalí Theater Museum in Figueres.

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.

Leon Bakst came to the conclusion about the advantages of lecturing over creating paintings in 1923, after delivering at the Plaza Hotel his most famous lecture on fashion and design L'art du Costume et les lois, ces applications selon toute individualité. Bakst was paid 2,000 US dollars for this lecture. Its text was published in Vogue magazine. Bakst really enjoyed it and wrote to his sister that he craved more lectures like that: "This is like Chaliapin’s tour – pleasant and much easier than painting."

"When I accept a picture by myself, it's more serious than if it were judged by all juries in the world!" this was the artistic creed of the perfectionist Paul Cézanne. Because of the fact that creating one picture took a very long time, Cézanne could not paint live flowers. He complained that they fade too fast, and the ripening fruit change colours. Therefore, he preferred to depict artificial flowers. But you can’t call the flowers by Cézanne artificial, can you?

The famous Florentine painter of the Pre-Renaissance period Giotto di Bondone once played a trick on his teacher Cimabue Giovanni, and drew a fly on the nose of one of the painted characters. The insect looked so plausible that Cimabue took it for real and tried several times to brush it off from the picture. And only after several unsuccessful attempts, he finally understood what was the matter.

A lot of artists tied themselves in knots trying to emulate Kuindzhi's palette. Speaking of the painting Ukrainian Night, Kramskoy wrote in a letter to Repin: "I'm a complete fool in front of this painting. The lighting on the white hut is so realistic that it tiresome for my eyes to look at it, as if it is real..." But the secret of Kuindzhi's palette was easier than it seemed. One day Kuindzhi (who was teaching at the Academy of Arts at the time) invited his friend Dmitry Mendeleev to his class. The latter brought a device estimating the spectral sensitivity of the human eye. Kuindzhi was far ahead of his young students in this indicator. He saw in a different way. Not in terms of creativity, but in the most literal physiological sense.

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.

One of the finest and most famous works created by Alfons Mucha is a gold bracelet called Médée Snake. The snake wrapped around the ring wraps the wrist, and the snake's sting passes into the ring through a thin chain. For the first time the image of this bracelet appeared on the playbill for the Médée play. The actress liked it so much that she commissioned jeweller to create a snake bracelet and a ring embellished with gemstones for her to wear on stage. This bracelet shows that his creator was an artist, for the beautiful decoration has no practical application. After all, in the world, there is no such thin and elegant hand, on which it could be put on! The Médée Snake is called "jewelery of the century".

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.