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.

Once, one of the Rubens' disciples fell onto a freshly painted canvas and damaged it, smudging the whole fragment. He asked another Rubens' disciple, the then unknown Anthony van Dyck, to redo that fragment. The next day Rubens was admiring his own (as he thought at first) painting ... And when the deception was revealed, he praised his disciple with the same admiration! Soon, van Dyck became Ruben's right-hand man and some customers were surprised at how the master's late works changed – as if the brush was sometimes held in someone else's hand! However, it is still uncertain which of Rubens' paintings were finished (or painted entirely) by van Dyck or his other disciples.

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.

In 1564, the famous Italian artist Jacopo Tintoretto, cunningly won the Scuola Grande Di San Rocco commission. His competitors were the best Italian painters of that time, but Tintoretto successfully implemented the "multi-way combination": instead of a sketch, he presented a finished work Saint Roch. Moreover, knowing that the statute of the Scuola (school) di San Rocco forbids refusing gifts, the master wrote on his painting "to Saint Roch from Jacopo Tintoretto". They had no choice but to give the commission to the inventive artist! And he got something to do for the next 23 years: it took so much time to create 69 compositions.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

US President Dwight Eisenhower became interested in painting before moving into the Oval Office. He claimed to be influenced by the prime minister of Great Britain Winston Churchill in his decision to take up the paintbrush. While he produced over 250 known works in his lifetime, the 34th President of the United States never took it too seriously. In a conversation with reporter Richard Cohen, after being asked about the symbolism in one of his pieces, he replied: "Let’s get something straight here, Cohen. They would have burned this [expletive] a long time ago if I weren’t the president of the United States."

All Aivazovsky's women were unusual. The artist's first wife, Julia Graves, was a governess. His second wife, Anna Sarkizova, was almost 40 years younger than him. But there was one more woman: ballerina Marie Taglioni, who was 13 years older than Aivazovsky. The story of their relationship is full of legends. Marie Taglioni helped Aivazovsky up when he fell on the road hurt by her carriage. He used to get tickets for Marie's performances, and she bought two of his paintings at the exhibition in Italy... And finally a personal meeting, followed by a lot of happiness, love, painting and ballet. The artist even proposed to his beloved one, but was refused – ballet above all! And, as they say, in memory of Marie, Aivazovsky kept her pink ballet for the rest of his life. When the artist died, his wife Anna burned this memento straight away.

Auguste Renoir liked painting pictures but didn't like talking about them. The connoisseurs of art, who grilled the artist about the sublime even on a train, would often hear his: "Sorry, I know nothing about high art, my works are pornographic". Yet, there's a grain of joke in every joke. The same Renoir was quite serious when saying: "I loved women even before I learned to walk... I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it.”

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 Renoir worked, he didn't notice anything around. He would come to the forest at Fontainebleau, set up his easel and forget about everything. After he noticed the deer gathering behind him, he started bringing them bread to eat. That was a big mistake. Since then, the artist found them every single time he tried to paint: "They started crowding behind my back, nuzzling against me and breathing into my neck. I had to be rough sometimes ... would you finally let me paint or not?"
But once, having come to the usual place, Renoir did not see the deer. They were scared away by hunters. The artist was indignant: "I wanted to shoot those blockheads in red caftans! If hell exists, then I know how they will be punished: the deer will chase them until they run themselves out of breath!"

Leonardo da Vinci enjoyed watching cats and sketching their varying moods and postures. Judging by eight preparatory sketches, he planned to create Madonna with an Infant and a Cat. It is clear from his sketch from the British Museum why the painting itself never materialized: this combination of models was a troublesome one. Leonardo has brilliantly caught the struggle between infant and cat, but the sketches he made were obviously dashed off at high speed. It must have dawned on him that any attempt to keep the cat there for the many hours needed for a detailed portrait painting would be doomed to failure. As a result, we have been robbed of a finished painting of a cat by the grand master.

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.

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 ... "

At the age of 15, Arkhip Kuindzhi started studying art under Aivazovsky. A shy, full-bodied young man arrived in Feodosia wearing a shirt, a colourful vest, checkered pants bubbling on his knees, and a straw hat. The young Kuindzhi really amused Ivan Aivazovsky and his daughter Elena, who had a good laugh at his naive village daub and crimson face. Arkhip lived under the shed in the yard for two months, since he was not allowed into the studio. At the end of his "training" the master entrusted Kuindzhi to paint his fence (though he got some practical advice from Aivazovsky's disciple Adolf Faessler). Kuindzhi learned this lesson for life and Kuindzhi never refused anyone anything.

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.

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".