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.

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.

By the age of 20, Matisse had studied to be a lawyer and got the right to start his own practice, which caused his return to his native wilderness in the north of France. But suddenly he was overtaken by an attack of appendicitis, and Matisse had to undergo several surgical interventions (it was 1889, and the patient had complications). To entertain his son and cheer him up, his mother brought paints to the hospital, he enthusiastically began to copy the old postcards. The mood improved so much that after the hospital Matisse headed straight for Paris, having decided to become an artist. His father, the shopkeeper was very upset: he hoped that the son would become a decent person.

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".

Aivazovsky loved to receive guests at home, looked forward to visitors and enthusiastically greeted them. He also knew how to surprise his guests with a dessert. Often the artist together with his cook worked on the menu for receptions. On his 50th anniversary they organized a sumptuous banquet. Toward its end, Aivazovsky got up and said: "Gentlemen, I offer my most sincere apology. My cook forgot about the dessert! That's why you'll have to try a dish made by me." The guests were served small trays of small landscapes by Aivazovsky.

When Paul Cézanne didn't like his own painting, he would just throw it out of the window. Old olives growing under the windows of the artist's studio were hung with unfinished still lifes. Sometimes Paul would think about some of his not completely hopeless sketches that had been hanging in the garden for several months and put them back on his easel. "Son, we must get down the Apples from the cherry tree; I think I'll work on that study some more, " he told his son, who brought a French art dealer Ambroise Vollard to Aix-en-Provence for new paintings.

One of the most revered Dutch painters of the seventeenth century Gerrit Dou is renowned for his small and yet incredibly meticulous and skilful works. His paintings are distinguished by a smooth, as if enamelled, surface, which was typical of the 'fijnschilders' ('fine painters') school. The amount of time the artist spent on the most minute details in his paintings can be illustrated be this legend: when Dou was complimented on his extreme patience in painting a broomstick which was hardly larger than a fingernail, the artist responded that he would require at least three more days to complete it.

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.

Towards the end of his life, Thomas Gainsborough often quarrelled with his wife Margaret Burr. With age, she became stingier and more grumbling. Gainsborough would flare up at the slightest provocation and curse. And yet, he was always the first one who would try to make it up with his wife: he would write a note of repentance, sign it with the name of his favourite dog, ‘Fox’, and address it to his wife’s pet spaniel, ‘Tristram’. This forbidden trick always worked with Margaret. She would immediately start writing an answer to Gainsborough's dog: "My own dear Fox, you are always loving and good, and I am a naughty little female ever to worry you as I too often do, so we will kiss and say no more about it. Your own affectionate, Tris."

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!"

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”.

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.

Zinaida Serebryakova moved to France in search of work, after the revolutionary peasants plundered her family estate. However, Parisians liked modernist trends, not "romantic realism", the favourite and vivid style of the artist. She went so badly that she had to make paints for herself, as there was no way to buy them. Now her paintings are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Paul Cézanne had his own creative method of work. He was always dissatisfied with himself and therefore worked for a very long time, and his models had to stay in one position for long hours. And the artist could leave a work before it was finished because it wasn’t perfect! So, Ambroise Vollard posed for Cézanne for 115 (!) times, but he saw his portrait. Cézanne postponed the painting to get back to it later when he "would achieve something". Well, except for he liked, "how the shirt chest is painted". Cézanne could only let his model to take a break under the force of the argument that the model would get tired and therefore become a bad poser. At the same time, the artist demanded complete silence at work: even the dog's barking could prevent him.

Piero della Francesca is the creator of "the greatest painting in the world": that's how English writer Aldous Huxley described the painter's Resurrection in his essay Along the Road. The fresco was created somewhere between 1450 and 1465 in the artist's hometown Sansepolcro on the wall of the town hall (which is now a museum). The masterpiece survived until the modern times: it had been hidden beneath a layer of plaster for nearly two hundred years. And during the Second World War, an officer of the Royal Horse Artillery, Anthony Clarke saved the fresco and the town by holding back from using his troop's guns to shell Sansepolcro. He’d read Aldous Huxley's essay about "the greatest picture in the world." And in return, the locals named in his honour a Sansepolcro suburban street. By the way, in translation from the Italian, the name of the tower means "the Church of the Holy Sepulchre" and the fresco depicts the risen Christ on the brim of the sepulchre. Read more about the artist on Arthive.