The American author of world-famous animation characters, Walt Disney painted his first drawings on a wall, being 4 years old. Young Walt spent his childhood on the farm and most liked to draw animals. At the age of eight, he received the first nickel for drawing the veterinary's favourite horse.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

During World War II, the Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window by Jan Vermeer was brought from Dresden to Saxony and kept there in a tunnel, which rescued it from destruction. The soldiers of the Red Army sent the painting to the Soviet Union, but after the death of Joseph Stalin, the Soviets decided to return it to Germany, "for the purpose of strengthening and furthering the progress of friendship between the Soviet and German peoples." Aggrieved at the thought of losing hundreds of paintings, art historians and museum curators in the Soviet Union suggested that "in acknowledgment for saving and returning the world-famous treasures of the Dresden Gallery" the Germans should perhaps donate to them Vermeer's masterpiece and Sleeping Venus by Giorgione. The Germans did not take to the idea, and the painting was returned to Germany in 1955.

With the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war, Mary Cassatt had to leave Paris and return to America. However, the Americans did not buy Cassatt's paintings. Two of her works were burned during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871... The artist got depressed and put her brushes off. Salvation came unexpectedly ant it was the Archbishop of Pittsburgh. He commissioned Mary copies of Correggio's paintings, located in Parma, and in 1871 Cassatt went to Italy. There she found out that her painting Two Women Throwing Flowers During Carnival was bought at the exhibition of the Paris Salon of 1872. A talented paintress came to light.

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!

Korovin made a name for himself with his stage design for Savva Mamontov's performances (Faust, Aida, etc.). And here's a story told by the stage designer and artist Alexandr Golovin.
Korovin's decorations were huge and the artist got very tired working on them and somehow fell asleep right in his studio, in the middle of the scenery. While sleeping, he accidentally knocked over a pot with white paint which stained the canvases. And while Korovin was sleeping, the carpenters took his decorations to the theatre. The artist rushed there and hid behind a chair, waiting for the reaction of the picky and strict Mamontov. The curtain went up, and everyone gasped in amazed delight – the white flowers decorating the scenery were incredibly beautiful. Mamontov rushed to shake Korovin's hand, congratulating him with extraordinary creative success. "The flowers really came up great," said Korovin calmly, seeing those white spots for the first time.

In 2008, Tiepolo's name was the talk of the art world: a picture of the great master was found in the attic of a French estate! Shy grandparents of the current owners prudently hid the luxurious topless lady depicted on the canvas. Thus they perfectly preserved the picture! It is believed that it was ordered by the Russian Empress Elizabeth to decorate the Winter Palace, as there are similar images of the series there. The canvas was called "Portrait of a Lady as Flora" and soon sold at Christie's auction for 4,227,780 dollars, almost three times "overlapping" the considerable estimate.

In 1993, the Tretyakov Gallery acquired Levitan's Portrait of a Little Boy Joseph Levin, made in the early 1880s. That 6-year-old boy with an inquisitive look would become a celebrity during Levitan's lifetime: Joseph Levin would later become a famous pianist Josef Lhévinne. Due to his extraordinary abilities, he would be taken to the senior "professorial" class of the Moscow Conservatory; he would be the first in his class, leaving his classmates Rachmaninoff and Scriabin behind. Later Joseph would go to Dresden to study under Anton Rubinstein, and in 1919 he would move to New York, where he would close his days, leaving a lot of grateful students and a short book Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing, that is considered a classic of musical and pedagogical literature.

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."

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.

Having become famous and rich, Renoir still wore the same suit for 10 years, didn't tip waiters, but dispensed money to those deceived by notaries and other unfortunate ones who daily asked him for money for a sick child, a dying aunt or an innocently convicted husband. The artist's relatives protected him from those arrogant canters, therefore most often the “unfortunate” ones were waiting for him on his way from home to the studio. But for these cases, Madame Renoir came up with a protection scheme: seeing the beggar, the model would run to the studio, take her clothes off and quickly take a beautiful pose. Only the fear that his model would catch a cold could make Renoir quickly see the visitor off and light the fireplace, which he never lit for himself alone.

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)!

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.

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.