Passion for birds has become the main dominant of John Audubon's life. He was to manage the lead mines, but once he started drawing birds, he could not live without it, devoting his days and nights to his sketches. This led him to ruin, and Audubon found himself in a debt prison.
After getting free, the artist painted river ships, drew road signs and even taught dance, but continued to create exotic birds in huge albums, where he depicted them almost in half of human growth.

They say, manuscripts do not burn, but pictures do... In his youth, Modigliani was so poor that he paid with his pictures to the hostess of the cafe, where he boarded daily. The kind woman always agreed to "barter", but at the same time (o woe to us, the admirers of Modigliani!) she actually used them to kindle her stove. We’ll never know how many paintings by the famous artist were burned in such a villainous manner!

"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 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.

This happened when Kandinsky was about 30 years old. After visiting Wagner's Opera Lohengrin in Moscow, he suddenly realized that he could "see" music. Later he wrote: "The violins, the deep tones of the basses, and especially the wind instruments at that time embodied for me all the power of that pre-nocturnal hour. I saw all my colours in my mind; they stood before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me." Shortly afterwards, Wassily Kandinsky decided to leave the legal profession and became an artist.

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.

...According to the memoirs of their contemporaries, Raphael and Agostino Chigi (his richest customer) were friends. And yet, duty before friendship. Once Raphael painted several frescoes for Chigi. Having finished his work, the artist unexpectedly demanded to double the payment. At first, Agostino Chigi's cashier Julio Borghese refused to do that, but Raphael would not budge. "Call on the experts and you will see how moderate I am in my demands," he argued.
Knowing the strained relations between Raphael and Michelangelo, Borghese chose the latter to be an expert. Buonarroti came, slowly and silently examined the frescoes of his rival, and pointing to the head of one of the sibyls said, "That head alone is worth 100 ducats, the others are worth not less." He disliked Raphael, but would never allow himself to be biased.

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 the meetings of the young artists (future Impressionists) at Café Guerbois, Cézanne was a strange participant: he would break in all messy, wheeze, greet everyone, make a few rude jokes and then sit in silence listening to conversations about new art. When he didn’t like something said, he would just get up loudly and leave. When asked by the elegant painter Edouard Manet what he would show at the next Salon, Cézanne answered: "a pot of shit".
Every time, the judges of the Salon would squeamishly wait for this madman to bring his new masterpieces in a rattling truck or carrying them on his back. They got used to it. Cézanne would repeat that trick for 18 years until in 1882 his painting was accepted at the Salon.

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.

Ilya Repin was almost painfully stingy. Having learnt that tram tickets in St. Petersburg cost five kopecks in the morning, and ten kopecks in the afternoon, the artist tried to come to the city early in the morning. And when his daughter Vera needed massage sessions, Repin said a truly "brilliant" sentence: "You call the masseuse once, remember the massage techniques, and massage yourself then!".

Henri Matisse gained fame quickly, but his financial situation remained precarious. And only his acquaintance with Russian patrons and collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov helped him to get out of poverty once and for all.
In 1908, an art connoisseur Sergei Shchukin commissioned him two panels, which he intended to hung on the walls of his Moscow mansion. It was then when the first Dance appeared. Shchukin invited Matisse to Russia, where the artist was completely overwhelmed by Russian icons.

At age 26, an American portraitist John Singer Sargent had a misfortune of meeting with a model Virginie Gautreau, a Frenchwoman, the wife of a large banker from Paris. The beauty, capable of very extravagant deeds, easily agreed to pose for the artist. But her full-growth portrait in a black dress, favorably emphasizing her curves, caused a real scandal in the Salon: everyone recognized the heroine of the "Portrait of the Lady X". In her profile, decorated with half-moon of the Roman goddess of hunting, the husband of the model saw a hint not at the majestic Diana, but at the hunting "hound", which sniffs, preparing to take the trail. At the behest of Pierre Gautreau, Sargent was accused of sexist attitudes and even immorality. As a result, the artist had to say goodbye to Paris.

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 famous American photo artist Richard Prince sold Instagram online pictures of Selena Mooney for 90 thousand dollars at the exhibition in the Gagosian gallery. Now she sells the same photos for 90 dollars. This is her Roland for an Oliver dor his plagiarism. Prince took her photo for his project without permission, and yet he steals other people's works in a broad manner since the 1970's – such a "pop art trick"! Sometimes it comes to trial, but without much shock for the "projector": one of the verdicts was simply canceled a couple of years ago.

When Jan Vermeer died, he left behind enormous debts. His widow, Catharina Bolnes, had to transfer ownership of her late husband's masterpiece Painter in his Studio (The Allegory of Painting) to her mother, Maria Thins, to keep it out of creditors' hands. However, a year later it was sold at auction and disappeared for more than 130 years. In 1813, the piece became part of Count Czernin's collection. He bought the painting for an extremely low price, having no idea that it was created by the great master from Delft. The aristocrat thought it was a painting by Pieter de Hooch, whose works cost much more at that time. It was only in the autumn of 1860 that the director of the Berlin museum, Gustav Waagen, recognized The Allegory of Painting as an authentic Vermeer.

English landscape painter John Constable exhibited his Hay Wain (which is now considered one of the greatest English paintings) in 1921. However, back then it was given a cool reception: critics considered the artist's energetic brushstrokes careless. The Frenchman Théodore Géricault, who at that time was on a visit to London, came home and praised his English colleague in front of a dealer John Arrowsmith. The latter bought four of the artist's paintings, including The Hay Wain, and it paid off: it was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1824, winning a gold medal. Moreover, Eugène Delacroix repainted the background of his Massacre de Scio after seeing the artist's "careless brushstrokes".

With the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War, Renoir, who had never ridden a horse before, was sent to serve in cavalry regiment ... to tame horses. When the young artist came to the captain and told him about his profession, the man made a joke: "At least they didn’t send you into artillery!"
But it turned out that Renoir had the natural abilities of a rider. He learned to handle horses in a couple of months and got the most capricious and stubborn animals for taming. During his service, the artist had only one horse, with which he couldn't cope. "The recalcitrant found a way to get rid of me: the horse leaned against the wall of the arena with all its weight, trying to crush my leg. I tried the whip, tenderness and sugar – nothing helped," Renoir later said.

Aivazovsky resourcefully attracted rich customers. Before the arrival of the guests, the artist's apprentice applied diluted ink or sepia-stains on paper with a sponge for some indeterminate outlines to emerge. Then Aivazovsky cut the paper into small pieces, stained the spots (still a brilliant brush!), to get quite spectacular seascapes with waves and clouds. They were inserted into the frame and presented to every noble person who visited the artist's studio. After that, the "flattered" visitor considered it his duty to buy a big picture from Aivazovsky for hundreds or even thousands of rubles.

The favorite place of residence of artists in Paris at the beginning of the last century was the subject of jokes. So, the artist Federer in difficult times loved to encourage his friend Amshey Nyurenberg:
"You have a magnificent workshop on Rue de la Santé, 32, next to the famous Santé prison". Above its entrance, at the top of the gate there is a historical revolutionary inscription: "Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood". Of course, you would say what an irony. Then," he added, "in front of your workshop, there is a nunnery. Every morning, in the open window at the gate, you see gentle female hands. A mug of milk is in one of them, a piece of white bread in the other. Here's your breakfast ready! And not far from the studio is the famous Parisian venereal Hospital Cochin. What do you want, my friend?”