You can find a huge amount of information about famous artists - how they lived, how they created their immortal works.
Many people usually do not think about the characteristics of the artist’s character and lifestyle. But some facts from the biography or the history of the creation of this or that picture are sometimes very entertaining and even provocative.

Pablo Picasso

/Good artists copy, great artists steal./

-When Pablo Picasso was born, the midwife considered him stillborn. The child was saved by his uncle, who was smoking cigars and, seeing the baby lying on the table, blew smoke in his face, after which Pablo began to roar. Thus, we can say that smoking saved Picasso's life.
-Apparently Pablo was born an artist - his first word was PIZ, short for LAPIZ (pencil in Spanish).
-In his early years in Paris, Picasso was so poor that he was sometimes forced to burn with his paintings instead of firewood.
-Picasso wore long clothes and also had long hair, which was unheard of at the time
-Picasso's full name consists of 23 words: Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Martir Patricio Clito Ruiz -and-Picasso.

Vincent van Gogh

/Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Many people believe that they will become good if they do nothing bad./

- The abundance of yellow and yellow spots of different shades in his paintings is believed to be caused by the large amount of medication used for epilepsy, which developed from excessive consumption of absinthe. "Starry Night", "Sunflowers".
- During his troubled life, Van Gogh visited more than one psychiatric hospital with diagnoses ranging from schizophrenia to manic-depressive psychosis. His most famous painting, Starry Night, was painted in 1889 in a hospital in the town of San Remy.
- Committed suicide. He shot himself in the stomach while hiding in a farm yard behind a pile of manure. He was 37 years old.
- All his life Van Gogh suffered from low self-esteem. He sold only one of his works during his lifetime - Red Vineyard at Arles. And Glory came to him only after his death. If only Van Gogh knew how popular his work would become.
- Van Gogh did not cut off his entire ear, but only a piece of his earlobe, which practically did not hurt. However, there is still a widespread legend that the artist amputated his entire ear. This legend was even reflected in the behavior of a patient who operates on himself or insists on a certain operation - it was called Van Gogh syndrome.

Leonardo da Vinci

/He who lives in fear dies from fear./

- Leonardo was the first to explain why the sky is blue. In the book “On Painting” he wrote: “The blueness of the sky occurs due to the thickness of illuminated air particles, which is located between the Earth and the blackness above.”
- Leonardo was ambidextrous - he was equally good with his right and left hands. They even say that he could simultaneously write different texts with different hands. However, he wrote most of his works with his left hand from right to left.
- He played the lyre masterfully. When Leonardo's case was heard in the Milan court, he appeared there precisely as a musician, and not as an artist or inventor.
- Leonardo was the first painter to dismember corpses in order to understand the location and structure of muscles.
- Leonardo da Vinci was a strict vegetarian and never drank cow's milk, as he considered it barbaric.

Salvador Dali

/If I didn’t have enemies, I wouldn’t have become what I have become. But, thank God, there were enough enemies./

- Arriving in New York in 1934, he carried a 2-meter-long loaf of bread in his hands as an accessory, and while visiting an exhibition of surrealist creativity in London, he dressed in a diver’s suit.
- Dali wrote the canvas “The Persistence of Memory” (“Soft Hours”) under the impression of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The idea in Salvador's head took shape while he was looking at a piece of Camembert cheese one hot August day.
- Salvador Dali often went to bed with a key in his hand. Sitting on a chair, he fell asleep with a heavy key clutched between his fingers. Gradually the grip weakened, the key fell and hit a plate lying on the floor. Thoughts that arose during naps could be new ideas or solutions to complex problems.
- During his lifetime, the great artist bequeathed to be buried in such a way that people could walk on the grave, so his body was walled up in the wall at the Dali Museum in Figueres. Flash photography is not permitted in this room.
- Salvador Dali's nickname was “Avida Dollars”, which means “passionately loving dollars”.
- The Chupa Chupsa logo with a chamomile was drawn by Salvador Dali. In a slightly modified form, it has survived to this day.
- Each of Dali’s works contains either his portrait or a silhouette.

Henri Matisse

/Flowers bloom everywhere for everyone who wants to see them./

- In 1961, Henri Matisse's painting "The Boat" (Le Bateau), exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art, hung upside down for forty-seven days. The painting was hung in the gallery on October 17, and only on December 3 did anyone notice the mistake.
- Henri Matisse suffered from depression and insomnia, sometimes crying in his sleep and waking up screaming. One day, without any reason, he suddenly had a fear of going blind. And he even learned to play the violin so he could make a living as a street musician when he lost his sight.
- For many years, Matisse lived in poverty. He was about forty when he was finally able to support his family on his own.
- Henri Matisse never painted rocks, clear crystal houses, cultivated fields.
- During the last 10 years of his life, he was diagnosed with duodenal cancer and had to remain in a wheelchair.

Edvard Munch

/In my art I tried to explain life and its meaning to myself, I also tried to help others explain their lives./

- Munch was only five years old when his mother died of tuberculosis, and then he lost his older sister. Since then, the theme of death has arisen more than once in his work, and the artist’s life path from the very first steps declared itself as a life drama.
- His painting “The Scream” is the most expensive work of art sold at a public auction.
“He was obsessed with work and said this himself: “Writing for me is a disease and intoxication. An illness that I don’t want to get rid of, and an intoxication that I want to remain in.”

Paul Gauguin

/Art is an abstraction, extract it from nature, fantasize on its basis, and think more about the process of creation rather than the result./

- The artist was born in Paris, but spent his childhood in Peru. Hence his love for exotic and tropical countries.
- Gauguin easily changed techniques and materials. He was also interested in wood carving. Often experiencing financial difficulties, he was unable to buy paints. Then he took up the knife and the wood. He decorated the doors of his house in the Marquesas Islands with carved panels.
- Paul Gauguin worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.
- The artist painted still lifes mainly without resorting to a model.
- In 1889, having thoroughly studied the Bible, he painted four canvases in which he depicted himself in the image of Christ.
- Frequent and promiscuous relationships with girls led to Gauguin falling ill with syphilis.

Renoir Pierre Auguste

/At the age of forty I discovered that the king of all colors is black./

- Around 1880, Renoir breaks his right hand for the first time. Instead of being upset and grieving about this, he takes the brush with his left, and after a while no one doubts that he will be able to paint masterpieces with both hands.
- Managed to paint about 6,000 paintings over 60 years.
- Renoir was so in love with painting that he did not stop working even in old age, suffering from various forms of arthritis, and painted with a brush tied to his sleeve. One day his close friend Matisse asked: “Auguste, why don’t you give up painting, you’re suffering so much?” Renoir limited himself to answering only: “La douleur passe, la beauté reste” (The pain passes, but beauty remains).

Even those masterpieces of painting that seem familiar to us have their secrets.

Recently, a strange and unusual discovery was made in art history - an American student deciphered the musical notation depicted on the buttocks of a sinner from a painting by Bosch. The resulting tune has become one of the Internet sensations of recent times.

We believe that in almost every significant work of art there is a mystery, a “double bottom” or a secret story that you want to uncover. Today we will share a few of them.

Music on the buttocks

Hieronymus Bosch, "The Garden of Earthly Delights", 1500-1510.

Fragment of the right side of the triptych.

Disputes about the meanings and hidden meanings of the most famous work of the Dutch artist have not subsided since its appearance. The right wing of the triptych entitled “Musical Hell” depicts sinners who are tortured in the underworld with the help of musical instruments. One of them has music notes stamped on his buttocks. Oklahoma Christian University student Amelia Hamrick, who studied the painting, translated the 16th-century notation into a modern twist and recorded “a 500-year-old butt song from hell.”

Nude Mona Lisa

The famous “La Gioconda” exists in two versions: the nude version is called “Monna Vanna”, it was painted by the little-known artist Salai, who was a student and sitter of the great Leonardo da Vinci. Many art historians are sure that it was he who was the model for Leonardo’s paintings “John the Baptist” and “Bacchus”. There are also versions that Salai, dressed in a woman’s dress, served as the image of the Mona Lisa herself.

Old Fisherman

In 1902, the Hungarian artist Tivadar Kostka Csontvary painted the painting “The Old Fisherman”. It would seem that there is nothing unusual in the picture, but Tivadar put into it a subtext that was never revealed during the artist’s lifetime.

Few people thought of placing a mirror in the middle of the picture. In each person there can be both God (the Old Man's right shoulder is duplicated) and the Devil (the Old Man's left shoulder is duplicated).

Doubles at the Last Supper

Leonardo da Vinci, "The Last Supper", 1495-1498.

When Leonardo da Vinci wrote The Last Supper, he attached particular importance to two figures: Christ and Judas. He spent a very long time looking for models for them. Finally, he managed to find a model for the image of Christ among the young singers. Leonardo was unable to find a model for Judas for three years. But one day he came across a drunkard on the street who was lying in a gutter. He was a young man who had been aged by heavy drinking. Leonardo invited him to a tavern, where he immediately began to paint Judas from him. When the drunkard came to his senses, he told the artist that he had already posed for him once. It was several years ago, when he sang in the church choir, Leonardo painted Christ from him.

The innocent history of "Gothic"

Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930.

Grant Wood's work is considered one of the most strange and depressing in the history of American painting. The picture with the gloomy father and daughter is filled with details that indicate the severity, puritanism and retrograde nature of the people depicted. In fact, the artist did not intend to depict any horrors: during a trip to Iowa, he noticed a small house in the Gothic style and decided to depict those people who, in his opinion, would be ideal as inhabitants. Grant's sister and his dentist are immortalized as the characters Iowans were so offended by.

"Night Watch" or "Day Watch"?

Rembrandt, "Night Watch", 1642.

One of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings, “The Performance of the Rifle Company of Captain Frans Banning Cock and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburg,” hung in different rooms for about two hundred years and was discovered by art historians only in the 19th century. Since the figures seemed to appear against a dark background, it was called “Night Watch,” and under this name it entered the treasury of world art. And only during the restoration carried out in 1947, it was discovered that in the hall the painting had managed to become covered with a layer of soot, which distorted its color. After clearing the original painting, it was finally revealed that the scene represented by Rembrandt actually takes place during the day. The position of the shadow from Captain Kok's left hand shows that the duration of action is no more than 14 hours.

overturned boat

Henri Matisse, "The Boat", 1937.

Henri Matisse's painting "The Boat" was exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1961. Only after 47 days did someone notice that the painting was hanging upside down. The canvas depicts 10 purple lines and two blue sails on a white background. The artist painted two sails for a reason; the second sail is a reflection of the first on the surface of the water. In order not to make a mistake in how the picture should hang, you need to pay attention to the details. The larger sail should be the top of the painting, and the peak of the painting's sail should be toward the top right corner.

Deception in self-portrait

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with a Pipe, 1889.

There are legends that Van Gogh allegedly cut off his own ear. Now the most reliable version is that van Gogh damaged his ear in a small brawl involving another artist, Paul Gauguin. The self-portrait is interesting because it reflects reality in a distorted form: the artist is depicted with his right ear bandaged because he used a mirror when working. In fact, it was the left ear that was affected.

Two "Breakfasts on the Grass"

Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1863.

Claude Monet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1865.

The artists Edouard Manet and Claude Monet are sometimes confused - after all, they were both French, lived at the same time and worked in the style of impressionism. Monet even borrowed the title of one of Manet’s most famous paintings, “Luncheon on the Grass,” and wrote his own “Luncheon on the Grass.”

Alien bears

Ivan Shishkin, “Morning in the Pine Forest”, 1889.

The famous painting belongs not only to Shishkin. Many artists who were friends with each other often resorted to “the help of a friend,” and Ivan Ivanovich, who painted landscapes all his life, was afraid that his touching bears would not turn out the way he needed. Therefore, Shishkin turned to his friend, the animal artist Konstantin Savitsky.

Savitsky painted perhaps the best bears in the history of Russian painting, and Tretyakov ordered his name to be washed off the canvas, since everything in the picture “from the concept to the execution, everything speaks of the manner of painting, of the creative method peculiar to Shishkin.”

Did you know that the very first paint used by people of all continents since the advent of painting was ocher - iron oxide. Painting originated first in Australia, where artists painted with ocher more than 40,000 years ago.

From ancient times until our time, the aborigines revered their ocher mines, around which customs and legends developed. . For example, Aboriginal people living in the Lake Eyre area made an annual pilgrimage, setting out on a two-month, 1,000-mile journey to collect “red gold” (about 20 kg of ocher in the form of round tiles, folded into a kangaroo skin backpack). The Aborigines used ocher for ritual painting, and red (burnt) ocher was applied to the chests of boys when they were initiated into men.

On the protected Arnhem Land Peninsula there are thousands of ocher rock paintings illustrating the life of the ancient inhabitants, telling about rainbow snakes, hunting spirits and hunters. Ancient paintings using the “spray technique” also remained on the rocks and caves, when the artist, taking a mouthful of wet ocher, sprayed it over the palm of his hand applied to the surface of the wall.

About the shoemaker and Apelles

This story goes back more than 2,300 years. Apelles was a friend and court artist of Alexander the Great. In an effort to achieve accuracy in creating images, Apelles exhibited paintings for the judgment of passers-by, and he himself eavesdropped on their opinions, hiding nearby. One day a shoemaker noticed that the outline of the sandals drawn did not correspond to the foot. By the next day, Apelles had corrected this defect. When the shoemaker appeared again and continued his criticism, this time turning his attention to

painted foot, the angry artist came out of his hiding place, shouting to the shoemaker to shut up and not express opinions that had nothing to do with sandals.

This is how the ancient Roman proverb was born: “Ne sutor ultra crepidam” “Let the shoemaker not judge above the shoes.”

Two Alexanders worthy of admiration

When they talked about Alexander the Great - invincible and great, they meant the son of Philip II. When they talked about the inimitable, it was about the same Alexander, only created by the artist Apelles. For this painting, the artist received a royal payment of 20 talents in gold, this payment was measured according to the weight of the painting. By modern standards, the weight of gold and fresco is about 500 kg.

The genius of Leonardo da Vinci

For almost five centuries, the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci has been of constant interest among scientists. He was a talented researcher and inventor, thinker, engineer and scientist. A man whose genius was recognized during his lifetime was in many ways ahead of his time. Today he is known primarily as an artist, whose masterpieces adorn the most famous museums in the world.

Astrology and painting

One of the most famous paintings by the Flemish artist Paul Rubens, “The Feast of the Gods on Olympus,” had a long unknown date of creation. Finally, astrologers took a closer look at it, and it turned out that the characters were positioned exactly as they were located on the planet’s horizon in 1602. But did Rubens, a prominent diplomat, a famous artist, really decide to simply illustrate a star atlas in his painting? And is it possible to understand the meaning of his painting without going into astrological symbolism?

At that time, as now, there were many negative prophecies about the coming century. Rubens, with his canvas, proposed a different interpretation of the horoscope of the coming century, clearly asserting that worries have no basis and the century will be imbued with peace, harmony and harmony.

A mediocre artist became the Great Forger of the 20th century

The first exhibition of the Dutch artist van Meegeren was a miserably failure. In the press, he was assessed by critics and experts as a mediocre artist. Subsequently, Meegeren began to earn his living by selling antiques, and after World War II he was accused of selling paintings by old masters to the Nazis and sentenced to death for selling state valuables. Fearing a verdict, Meegeren was forced to admit that the paintings sold were fakes.

Art is part of a person’s spiritual culture, a form of artistic activity of society, a figurative expression of reality. Let's look at the most interesting facts about art.

Not everyone knows that art dates back to the times of primitive people, and many of those who are aware of this are unlikely to think that the caveman owned polychrome painting.

Spanish archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautola discovered the ancient Altamira cave in 1879, which contained polychrome painting. Nobody believed Sautola, and he was accused of forging the creations of primitive people. Later in 1940, an even more ancient cave with similar paintings was discovered - Lascaux in France, it was dated back to 17-15 thousand years BC. Then all charges against Sautole were dropped, but posthumously.

Raphael "Sistine Madonna"

The true picture of the painting “The Sistine Madonna” created by Raphael can only be seen by looking closely at it. The artist's art deceives the observer. The background in the form of clouds hides the faces of angels, and on the right hand of St. Sixtus is depicted with six fingers. This may be due to the fact that his name means “six” in Latin.

And Malevich was not the first artist who painted “Black Square”. Long before him, Allie Alphonse, a man known for his eccentric antics, exhibited his creation “The Battle of Negroes in a Cave in the Dead of Night,” which was a completely black canvas, at the Vinyen Gallery.
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Picasso "Dora Maar with a cat"

The famous artist Pablo Picasso had an explosive temperament. His love for women was cruel, many of his lovers committed suicide or ended up in a psychiatric hospital. One of these was Dora Maar, who suffered a difficult break with Picasso and subsequently ended up in a hospital. Picasso painted her portrait in 1941, when their relationship was broken. The portrait “Dora Maar with a cat” was sold in New York in 2006 for $95.2 million.

When painting “The Last Supper,” Leonardo da Vinci paid special attention to the images of Christ and Judas. He spent a very long time looking for models, as a result, for the image of Christ, Leonardo da Vinci found a person among the young singers in the church, and only three years later he was able to find a person to paint the image of Judas. He was a drunkard whom Leonardo found in a ditch and invited to the tavern to paint a picture. This man later admitted that he had already posed for the artist once, several years ago, when he sang in a church choir. It turned out that the image of Christ and Judas, by coincidence, was painted from the same person.

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Interesting facts: sculpture and architecture

• Initially, an unknown sculptor worked unsuccessfully on the famous statue of David, which was created by Michelangelo, but he was unable to complete the job and abandoned it.
• Rarely has anyone wondered about the position of the legs on an equestrian sculpture. It turns out that if a horse stands on its hind legs, then its rider died in battle, if one hoof is raised, then the rider died from battle wounds, and if the horse stands on four legs, then the rider died a natural death.
• 225 tons of copper were used for the famous statue of Gustov Eiffel - the Statue of Liberty. And the weight of the famous statue in Rio de Janeiro - the statue of Christ the Redeemer, made of reinforced concrete and soapstone, reaches 635 tons.
• The Eiffel Tower was created as a temporary exhibit to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. Eiffel did not expect the tower to stand for more than 20 years.
• An exact copy of the Indian Taj Mahal mausoleum was built in Bangladesh by millionaire film producer Asanullah Moni, which caused great discontent among the Indian people.
• The famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, whose construction lasted from 1173 to 1360, began to lean even during construction due to a small foundation and erosion by groundwater. Its weight is about 14453 tons. The ringing of the bell tower of the Leaning Tower of Pisa is one of the most beautiful in the world. According to the original design, the tower was supposed to be 98 meters high, but it was possible to build it only 56 meters high.

• Joseph Niepce created the world's first photograph in 1826. 35 years later, English physicist James Maxwell managed to take the first color photograph.
• Photographer Oscar Gustaf Reilander used his cat to control the lighting in the studio. At that time there was no such invention as an exposure meter, so the photographer watched the cat’s pupils; if they were too narrow, he set a short shutter speed, and if the pupils dilated, he increased the shutter speed.
• The famous French singer Edith Piaf often gave concerts on the territory of military camps during the occupation. After the concerts, she took photographs with prisoners of war, whose faces were then cut out from the photographs and pasted into false passports, which Edith handed over to the prisoners during a return visit. So many prisoners managed to escape using fake documents.

Interesting facts about contemporary art

Sue Webster and Tim Noble

British artists Sue Webster and Tim Noble created an entire exhibition of sculptures made from garbage. If you just look at the sculpture, you can only see a pile of garbage, but when the sculpture is illuminated in a certain way, different projections are created, embodying different images.

Rashad Alakbarov

Azerbaijani artist Rashad Alakbarov uses shadows from various objects to create his paintings. He arranges objects in a certain way, directs the necessary lighting onto them, thus creating a shadow, from which a picture is subsequently created.

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3D painting

Another unusual method of creating paintings was invented by the artist Ioan Ward, who makes his drawings on wooden canvases using molten glass.

Relatively recently, the concept of three-dimensional painting appeared. When creating a three-dimensional painting, each layer is filled with resin, and a different part of the painting is applied to each layer of resin. Thus, the result is a natural image, which is sometimes difficult to distinguish from a photograph of a living creature.

When visiting a city or country, travelers do not ignore famous museums. There they closely examine famous paintings, trying to understand what is special about them. Some facts will help you understand this.

The most mysterious smile in the world: “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

• The most mysterious painting in the world is considered to be “La Gioconda (Mona Lisa)”.
• It is not known for certain who the model was and for whom the painter painted. There is an opinion that the painting was commissioned by a wealthy Florentine. But who would wait that long for a job? Other researchers believe that the woman depicted is the ideal of the Renaissance. There is an opinion that Leonardo da Vinci painted the picture from himself.

• No one knows exactly when the painting was started.
• The canvas is not finished.
• The title is a spelling error. "Mona" is a short form of "Madonna".
• The Mona Lisa is not entirely perfect. The woman has no eyebrows.

• Damaged painting. In 1956, a stone was thrown at the area above the woman's left elbow.
• Leonardo da Vinci was an unusual person. He is not only a painter, but also an inventor, scientist, sculptor, engineer, and architect. He even came up with designs for handbags!
• The artist made personal notes from right to left, with his left hand and in a mirror manner, dismembering corpses to understand the structure of muscles.

• The painter left behind a small artistic legacy - only 20 canvases.
• Leonardo da Vinci played the lyre very well and sang well.
• Most often the master depicted women.

“The first day for the Russian brush”: Karl Bryullov (1799-1852) and “The Last Day of Pompeii”

• Thousands of people besieged the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1834 to see The Last Day of Pompeii.
• The artist devoted six whole years to creating this painting.
• In the first drafts there was another character - a robber. But then the artist removed it.

• K. Bryullov created the picture for Demidov. The breeder then gave her as a gift.
• A walk through the ruins of Pompeii greatly inspired the painter. He even participated in archaeological excavations.
• Bryullov made himself one of the characters - a man with a sketchbook on his head.
• Several women in the picture have the features of the creator’s beloved, Yulia Samoilova.

• The dead woman in the foreground is a symbol of the fall of Antiquity.
• Bryullov was the one who opened the way for Russian artists. His paintings were exhibited as a guide for beginning painters. · After painting “The Last Day of Pompeii,” the master began to be called “the divine Charles.”

• The painting became the first Russian painting to make a splash throughout the world.
• The artist was deaf in one ear due to a slap in the face that his father gave him.
• “And the “Last Day of Pompeii” became the first day for the Russian brush,” so exclaimed the poet E. A. Baratynsky.

• In Bryullov’s studio one could often hear poetry – reading aloud made it easier for the artist to work.
• Some of the painter’s paintings were completed by his students.
• He even dedicated a poem to this picture.

Union of 14 best artists: the Wanderers

• Their story began in 1863, when graduates of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts demanded the right to freely choose the theme of their competition work in order to receive a gold medal. They were refused. Then the "Artel of Artists" appeared, including painters from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
• The more well-known name of the association is “Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions.”

• The artists were dissatisfied with the slogan of the Academy of Arts - “Art for art’s sake.” They proclaimed that art should be for the people.
• The first exhibition took place in St. Petersburg in 1871.
• One of the founders of the community was. His most famous paintings are “Unknown” and “Inconsolable Grief.”

• There are many opinions about the canvas “Unknown” by I. N. Kramskoy. Some believe that I. N. Kramskoy portrayed Anna Karenina. Others suggest that this is the wife of the Decembrist. Sometimes you hear the idea that this is an actress or the daughter of an artist. Many people confuse the woman with the heroine of the poem “Stranger”.
• The artists were actively supported by P. Tretyakov, many of the works of the Peredvizhniki are now kept in his gallery - one of the largest and most famous museums in Russia. It is in it that you can see the canvas “Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan”, “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution”, “Above Eternal Peace” by I. I. Levitan and much more.

Painting by Ilya Repin "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan"

• I. N. Kramskoy often worked in portraiture; M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, I. I. Shishkin, P. A. Tretyakov painted with his brush.
• The characters in genre works by I. N. Kramskoy are often women, and the characters in portraits are men.
• V.I. Surikov preferred to create paintings where the main character was the whole people, as in the painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution.”

• Almost all the paintings feature a church.
• It was Isaac Levitan who considered “the best Russian landscape painter.”
• Most of all, I. I. Levitan was inspired by the Volga. He especially liked the town of Ples, whose church is visible in the painting “Above Eternal Peace.”

• V.I. Surikov attached great importance to details. He always made a lot of sketches for such large paintings as “Lady Morozova”.
• The painting “Mermaids” by I. N. Kramskoy was created based on “May Night”.

Song of the Sea: Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817 – 1900)

• One of the most talented artists was a philanthropist and collector.
• He was born in Feodosia, and since childhood he saw the sea and ships.
• “I.K. Aivazovsky” really became the artist’s real name in 1841. Before that, he was officially addressed as Hovhannes Ayvazyan.

• The artist played the violin beautifully.
• He became the first Russian painter whose paintings were exhibited at the Louvre.
• The artist had four daughters. He was very worried that his last name had not been passed on to his grandchildren. And so he adopted the son of his eldest daughter.

• Some paintings are signed "Guy". After all, the marine painter’s father, having arrived in Feodosia, changed his surname to “Gayvazovsky”.
• The abyss and ships most often appear in the paintings of this artist. But there are also canvases with landscapes of the East, and on a religious theme.
• During his lifetime, the painter was called the pioneer of the genre of marine painting in Rome.

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky "Battle of Navarino"

• The creator was adored by the fleet for his battle paintings of sea battles.
• In 1846, during an exhibition marking the tenth anniversary of I.K. Aivazovsky’s creative activity, a squadron of warships under the command of V.A. Kornilov arrived in Feodosia to congratulate the hero of the day.
• The most famous painting by I.K. Aivazovsky is “The Ninth Wave”. In terms of skill, it was compared to Karl Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii.”

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky "The Ninth Wave"

• The name “Ninth Wave” appeared because in many countries sailors consider this wave to be the most destructive.
• Tretyakov liked the painting “The Ninth Wave” so much that he wanted to buy it for his gallery, but the canvas is kept in the Russian Museum. In the Tretyakov Gallery you can see more than two dozen paintings by the marine painter, including “Rainbow” and “Black Sea”.

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky "Black Sea"

• The painter created about 6,000 paintings in a variety of formats during his life.
• Aivazovsky never painted from life, he only thoughtfully and carefully examined the object, and then painted it in his studio.
• Aivazovsky didn’t do well with people, so the painting “Pushkin’s Farewell to the Sea” was painted in a duet with Repin.

Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky "Pushkin on the Black Sea"

• On any artist’s canvas, be it a storm or a battle, there is always an image of hope.
• The artist's canvases often become targets of theft.
• The Marinist received ten orders. He threw five of them (those that were given to him in Turkey) into the sea.