When the house is under repair, the true artists paint from nature! Caillebotte submitted his painting Les raboteurs de parquet (The Floor Scrapers) to the jury of the Salon, the official exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. The work was rejected, but it caught the attention of Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir, who encouraged Caillebotte to exhibit with the impressionists. The painting became one of the sensations of the Second Impressionist exhibition in 1876! And the reviews were mixed: the admirers appreciated it being "beautifully truthful and accurate", the critics deemed it "unfinished, vulgar and anti-artistic", and Émile Zola denounced this work as being "photographic" and "bourgeois." Now this painting is considered to be one of the pearls of the Musée d'Orsay collection.

Van Gogh's Sunflowers are fading. This was confirmed by experts who have studied the version of the painting from the artist’s museum in Amsterdam. The thing is that the artist used two differing yellow pigments in the work, one of which is extremely sensitive to light and is fading to a brownish colour over time as a result. It seems that the artist himself was all too aware that the colours in his work were transient. "Paintings fade like flowers," he wrote in a letter to his brother Theo. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has already lowered its galleries’ lighting in an attempt to slow the aging process of 200 paintings and 400 drawings by the artist.

The "Fresco" is considered a landmark work by Pollock, for he never painted huge artworks before. However, Peggy Guggenheim ordered a mural for the wall of her house, and the surrealist Marcel Duchamp advised to make it not on plaster, but on canvas. Jackson Pollock nearly put the order on the back burner, as he spent several months contemplating a blank canvas, and "gradually fell into a real depression," according to his wife Lee Krasner. However, he got out in just one night: the creator was visited by inspiration, and in less than a day he created a work later recognized as a masterpiece. Well, he got over his fear of big canvases, and they eventually became his mega-"business card".

After Ruben's death in 1640, van Dyck received a letter from the King of Spain. The artist had almost no doubts he would be offered a place at court. But Philip IV asked him to complete unfinished Rubens' commission first. "He managed to humiliate me even from his grave!" – said van Dyck discontentedly. He only had 12 months to live: a year after Rubens ' death, on December 9, 1641, the 42-year-old van Dyck died of a mysterious illness and was buried the same day as his daughter Justinia's baptism.

One druggist commissioned Paul Gauguin to paint him a picture. "Only you know what, the point is to make the picture simple and clear," he said. In response, Gauguin, without a long thought, drew the "White Horse". Upon seeing the picture, the apothecary exclaimed: "Monsieur, but this horse is green! Have you even seen green horses?!" "Just recall how everything seems green, when you watch the sunset with half-closed eyes in the evening, sitting in a rocking chair," Gauguin retorted. "Well, no, that wasn't the agreement," persisted the druggist, "I need a picture to admire in the daylight with eyes wide open!" And even Gauguin found nothing to object.

One of the treasures of the Matisse’s art collection was "Three Bathers" by Cezanne, he bought the picture from Ambroise Vollard (along with the bust of Rochefort) for fifteen hundred francs. Henri Matisse, with his flawless artist's flair, appreciated the Cézanne's "Bathers" even when the painter was considered an unsuccessful loser. Matisse fell in love with this picture, and neither his poverty and need, nor even his friends’ irony could reduce his admiration for Cézanne's masterpiece and make him sell it. In 1934, when an American collector offered the artist more than a million, Matisse refused to part with the canvas in a royal manner. A few years later, he made a royal gift to the Museum of Contemporary Art of France – the Cézanne’s “Bathers”.

Artist Domenico Beccafumi wanted to please his customer, collecting all the Roman attractions, including the Colosseum, in one picture. He also took care of an entertaining story. "The Story of Papirius" is the story of a boy who was drawn to debate and vote in the Senate and had to keep a secret about what he had heard. But at home, his mother came up with questions, so he had to invent on the go, and he said that a very delicate matter was discussed: what is better to allow - men have two wives or women to have two husbands? Mom immediately spread the rumour around the city, and a women's rebellion began (they didn’t really like the first option)!

A well-known story: having seen The Bathers by Gustave Courbet at the Paris Salon of 1853, Napoleon III stroke it with his whip. But why did he do that?

Common version: the emperor was outraged by the rough naturalism: instead of the goddess there was a dumpy peasant with dirty feet.

Alternative version: It wasn't about Courbet at all – that’s how Napoleon responded to his wife’s brilliant joke. The Empress Eugénie accompanied him at the exhibition. After she had been struck by the way Rosa Bonheur endowed her horses with large rumps, it had to be explained to her that these were sturdy percherons and not slim-built chargers. When she reached The Bathers, Eugénie indicated the one who was removing her chemise and revealing her buttocks, and asked with a smile if she was a percheron too. Napoleon III was delighted with the joke and took advantage of it, apparently, by cracking his whip over the painting.

A young singer became a model for the Christ in the famous Da Vinci’s painting. Then for another three years, Leonardo was looking for a model to depict Judas. And suddenly, when he saw a drunkard lying about in the gutter, the artist decided that it was the man to pose for Judas! He dragged his "find" into a tavern, where he immediately began to paint him as Judas. When the drunk man sobered up, he told the artist that he had already posed for him when he sang in the church choir: it was the same man who was da Vinci's model for Christ.

In 2015, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts issued an apology and cancelled a program, displaying Claude Monet's painting of his wife and giving the visitors the opportunity to put on a kimono similar to the one depicted in the painting, and encouraging them to pose for photographs. Before that, the painting La Japonaise. Camille Monet in Japanese Costume was shown all over Japan where the viewers posing in a kimono was an organic part of the special program. What could go wrong in America? And yet, an innocent event caused protest actions and accusations of cultural insensibility: some of the visitors noticed there "Orientalist flirtations with the exotic".

"Women of Algiers (Version O)" by Pablo Picasso set a new world record as the most expensive painting sold at auction. On May 12, 2015 at Christie's auction in New York they paid more than $179 million for it. Previously, the most expensive work sold at auction was Francis Bacon's triptych " Three Studies for Portrait of Lucian Freud". In November 2013, it was auctioned at Christie's for $142.4 million, taking the priority from Edward Munch’s "Scream".

The third place on the list of the most expensive living female artists is taken by Yayoi Kusama with her polka dots obsession. There are polka dots on her canvases, objects and even people... Actually, "obsession" here is far from being a metaphor: the Japanese artist admitted herself into a psychiatric hospital and confessed: "I am deeply terrified by the obsessions crawling over my body, whether they come from within me or from outside. I fluctuate between feelings of reality and unreality. My artwork is an expression of my life, particularly of my mental disease. If it wasn't for art, I would have killed myself long ago." Indeed, the saving art is polka-dotted.

The paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian artist of the 17th century, are full of drama. The artist herself experienced a tragedy: the Florentine artists Agostino Tassi, in whose workshop she studied, raped his young student. Artemisia filed lawsuit against him and experienced a humiliating public hearing, ending with a mild one-year jail sentence for Tassi. Disappointed, but not subdued, the artist rendered justice in her paintings: she depicted the main characters of her paintings Jael and Sisera and Judith Slaying Holofernes with Agostino Tassi's face.

This is about a magnificent canvas of a mystical genre uncharacteristic for Aivazovsky. Being inspired by the biblical line "and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters", he embodied it on canvas. Pope Gregory XVI wanted to acquire the painting. Aivazovsky's studio was visited by endless processions consisting of prelates, cardinals and other high-ranking officials, but all these commissions could not find any flaws in the work that would make it unworthy of the Vatican gallery. The Pope bought the painting and awarded Aivazovsky with a golden medal. In this regard, Gogol, with whom Aivazovsky became friends in Rome, came up with a great pun: "Well done, Vania! You, a little man from the banks of the distant Neva, came to Rome and your Chaos immediately caused a chaos in the Vatican! And it's frustrating that if it had been me, a scribbler, who caused chaos in the Vatican, I would have been thumped, and Vania Aivazovsky was given a golden medal ... "

Gerrit van Uylenburgh, Saskia's (Rembrandt's first wife) relative, was a successful art dealer. Not the fairest one, though. He took whole collections of paintings from his French colleagues for sale in Holland. He hired local artists to make replicas of those paintings. The forgeries then were sold, while the originals were sent back to Paris: Sorry, but your French masterpieces do not sell well here.

The funniest thing is that in such a way, Gerrit van Uylenburgh messed around with the Parisian art dealer Everhard Jabach. And Jabach was also known for selling forgeries. That is, there is a high possibility that Uylenburgh sold replicas of replicas.

The swindler had to flee the country because of the rumours and notoriety. Uylenburgh ended up in England and eventually managed to become a conservator of the royal collection of Charles II.

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."

Yvette Guilbert, the Moulin Rouge cabaret singer, hugely impressed the artist Toulouse-Lautrec. He told all his friends about her, took them to concerts, and didn't miss her single performance himself. Once, Toulouse-Lautrec made a charcoal sketch for a poster and sent it to Guilbert with a proposal for collaboration. That sketch was cruel and striking, offensive and sensitive. Guilbert was ready to print the poster, but it turned out that she was the only one who wanted to do it. Her friends and family were offended by that ugly, grotesque caricature, and her entrepreneur threatened to break the contract. Soon Guilbert and Lautrec met in person. He conceived a 14-page album of lithographs dedicated to her – and she agreed to pose. The album appeared to be scandalous – this time the outraged friends recommended Yvette to sue Lautrec without hesitation. Instead, she put her signature on each copy of the album.

Vasily Vereshchagin burned his paintings at least three times. For the first time it happened in the Academy of Arts. Student Vereshchagin was supposed to copy the sketch for the painting Massacre of Penelope’s Suitors by the Returning Ulysses onto cardboard (by the way, the piece was awarded a silver medal), but instead burned his work in the furnace. Vereshchagin answered the amazed questions of his mentors by saying: "So that I never had to return to this nonsense." A pencil sketch with the same plot is kept in the Russian Museum and it looks like it's been through a lot, too.

Titian was a handsome man and a famous artist. Venetian ladies – from duchesses to courtesans – posed for him, and sometimes stayed in his studio a little bit (or even much) longer than they had to. But it was before Cecilia. She was different: shy, bright, smiling, and yet steady and reliable. Titian painted mistresses and wives of dukes and kings, but when his own wife saw herself on the canvas naked, she burst into tears and asked him not to disgrace her. They say that the artist changed the features of Cecilia's face in his painting Venus Anadyomene.

It was a time of the Paris Commune. Once the artist was mistaken for a spy drawing a plan of the Seine embankments and was nearly drowned there. Quickly gathered onlookers got excited and demanded immediate reprisal for spying. But a miracle happened: the guards decided to shoot Renoir instead of drowning him. The execution was decided to take place in the city hall, but on the way there Auguste suddenly saw a familiar face – it was Raoul Rigault, a fugitive Republican journalist, whom Renoir saved from starvation and capture a few years before. Now Rigault was a police commissioner and a big man; the guards who caught the artist cheerfully sang Marseillaise and let him free.