All Claude Monet's friends and relatives recalled the artist's unpredictable fits of rage. His children and wife Alice knew that it was better not to bother Monet at such moments, and even not to call him for dinner. The neighbours got used to the fact that it wasn't necessary to greet the eccentric artist on such days – he didn't respond or even hear them anyway. But there was one thing everyone was sure about – that fit of rage would end with something huge.
One morning, Monet was furious because grey road dust settled on the flowers in his garden. He slammed the door and went to the mayor: the road in Giverny had to be paved! The city hall had already considered that project more than once, but they didn't have enough money for it – they lacked 2,800 francs.
"I will give you 1,200 francs," Monet suggested.
In a few days, they started to pave the road to Rue.

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."

Lucian Freud said: "I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be." Quite a psychological statement, while the works that cost millions may be a subject for "Freudian" analysis. Lucian Freud led a bohemian lifestyle. By the time he died in 2011, he had been married twice, acknowledged 14 children by different women and had at least 50 lovers. At the end of 80, he created a nude portrait of Kate Moss and inked a tattoo on her lower back.

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.

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".

The American artist John Singer Sargent was friends with the famous London art dealer Asher Wertheimer, and had painted 14 portraits of his family members. The favourite artist’s model was the youngest daughter Ena Wertheimer, who was 13 years away from the romantic portraitist, moreover, they belonged to different social circles. On the eve of her wedding, the artist painted Ena’s portrait, as if she sailed away in the suit of a naval officer, leaving Whitman's poetry lines in his notebook: "O we can wait no longer, We too take ship O soul, Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas". After that, he officially declared that he is all over with custom-made portraits. The artist only made exceptions for his friends John Rockefeller, Henry James, Woodrow Wilson.

Alphonse Mucha made his way to his luck for a long time, and he became famous literally in one night. His success was brought by the unsurpassed Sarah Bernhardt, who approved his poster sketch, in which she acted in main role in the play "Gismonda". After the posters were spread, Mucha instantly became famous. It is rumored that the Parisians liked his posters so much that they bought additional copies from the distributors, and if they did not manage to agree with them, they stole posters, cutting them off in the dark from the walls with razor blades. Well, turning ordinary objects into works of art was a special gift of the famous artist.

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.

The 18th century French pastelist Jean-Étienne Liotard was remarkable by his extravagant look and long, curled beard, which he grew during his four-year stay in Constantinople. Noble and wealthy Europeans, having a weakness for oriental exotics, were very eager to have the "Turkish gentleman" make their portraits. But before marrying Marie Fargues, the artist shaved off his magnificent beard, and the story was widely told (on the initiative of the bride). Even Voltaire wrote to the Austrian Count Karl von Zinzendorf that the beard was deposited in a special box with due ceremony.

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.

When Cézanne was passing the Saint-Lazare station on his way home, he met a stranger who asked him to show a sketch he was carrying. Having seen the landscape painting, the pale, skinny young man was amazed with its' unprecedented green colour, freshness, and artistic style. "If you like my trees that much, you can take them!" – said Cézanne. "I have nothing to pay with," answered the artist's new fan. Cézanne gave him the painting for free and both of them left the station completely happy.
Right from the station, happy Paul went to the studio, which he rented together with Renoir and Monet. "I've got a fan!" he solemnly declared from the doorway. That stranger appeared to be the poor composer and musician Ernest Cabaner, who was banned from all the cafés where he tried to play his own music.

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.

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.

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.

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.

William Turner was very reluctant to part with his paintings: he wanted the best of them to be preserved for descendants in a single collection. And if the thing was dear to him, willing to scare away a persevering buyer, he inflated the price wickedly. So it happened to "Dido building Carthage". In the bidding process, the price rose from 500 to 2,000 pounds and the angry buyer blurted out: "What are you going to do with it?" "They'll bury me in it, what else?" Turner joked spitefully. The artist's phrase became popular, so that when Turner died, the gossip spread across London. The abbot of St. Paul's Cathedral, having learned about the death of the artist, allegedly stated indignantly that he would not read the funeral prayer, if Turner was wrapped in a picture!

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.

The teachers of the Dutchman Van Meegeren found his own paintings stiff and imitative. The most notorious forger of the twentieth century earned millions on forgeries of paintings by Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. For example, he sold Christ and the Adulteress, a fake Vermeer, to Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring for 1.6 million Dutch guilders. After the war, World War II, van Meegeren confessed to fraud in order to avoid accusations of collaboration for the sale of national treasures. In 1947, he was sentenced to a year in prison but died of a heart attack the next month.

In 1942, artist Max Ernst selected paintings for an exhibition in the gallery of his wife Peggy Guggenheim. One of the pictures, depicting a young beautiful topless woman with an anxious gaze at the open door, interested him very much... as well as the author of the work, Dorothea Tanning. The picture was "nameless", and he suggested Dorothea to call her "The Birthday"... She divorced her husband, he divorced his wife, and they went to Hollywood to get married. The artist Man Ray and his girlfriend Juliet Brauner were their witnesses, but they also decided to ... get married! It was a double marriage.

Arkhip Kuindzhi adored birds. He considered himself a “birds' chosen one”, said that the birds understood his speech and let him pet them. Usually laconic Arkhip Kuindzhi became extremely talkative when it came to birds. He spent hours sitting on the roof of his house, "talking" with pigeons and crows. Every month he bought 60 French buns, up to 10 kg of meat and 6 sacks of oats to feed his feathered friends. Once the illustrator Pavel Scherbov published a caricature depicting Kuindzhi giving an enema to a bird. They say that Arkhip Kuindzhi, deprived of sense of humour, got terribly offended.