Brush Up on Your Famous Painters With This Quiz

Claude Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" unintentionally led to the name of the impressionist movement in 1874. Artists such as Monet, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir originally called themselves the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. The "impressionist" label actually came from a critic, Louis Leroy. Using Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" as the inspiration for his critique, Leroy ridiculed the paintings as impressions or sketches, rather than finished art.

Paul Cézanne was one of the first artists to explore the reduction of the Western painting, thus paving the way for abstract art. A highly analytical thinker, Cézanne took inspiration from impressionism. He enjoyed using brushstrokes on landscapes in a reductionist way, using just a few to indicate groups of trees or a wall on a building. Cézanne’s use of various points of view of objects in a single painting influenced many painters that came after him, especially the cubists.

British artist Louis Wain (1860-1939) became famous for his images of cats. In particular, he anthropomorphized them and depicted them in a range of human activities, from riding bicycles to wearing top hats, often brightly colored and stylized.

Pointillism developed as an artistic style in the mid-1880s in France, where it was pioneered by Georges Seurat and his student Paul Signac. Also known as chromo-luminarism, pointillism is defined by its very distinct method of painting, in which tiny dots or strokes of color are added to the canvas. Each individual speck is too small to represent anything, but taken as a whole, they create color, shape, and image. The most famous example of Seurat's work in pointillism is "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884," which depicts visitors to a park.

Born in 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico, Diego Rivera was one of the greatest artists in Mexican history. Rivera was a champion of the working people of Mexico, and would paint huge murals on the exterior walls of buildings in his native country in the 1920s; in the 1930s and '40s, he also completed large murals in the United States. Rivera's work was part of the larger Mexican mural movement (or "muralism").

Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Goldfinch” references a 1653 painting of the same name by Dutch artist Carel Fabritius. The painting is now held by the Mauritshuis collection in The Hague, Netherlands. In the novel, the young protagonist steals the painting during an explosion at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother. Fabritius himself was killed in the explosion of a gunpowder magazine the same year "The Goldfinch" was painted, and much of his work was destroyed.

“Le Bateau” is a simple paper-cut gouache of a sailboat reflected on the water, painted by Henri Matisse toward the end of his life. It’s so simple, in fact, that the average person could be forgiven for not knowing which side of the painting was the top. In 1961, about 116,000 visitors to New York’s Museum of Modern Art passed “Le Bateau” without knowing that it had been hung upside-down. The museum eventually flipped the painting and apologized for the mistake.

They say the mark of a true artist is having an identifiable quality to your work. For Thomas Kinkade (1958-2012), that feature was his mastery of painting light — so much so that his estate has trademarked "Painter of Light" as part of his brand. As a Christian artist, Kinkade aimed to bring peace and joy to everyone who encountered his work.

Georgia O'Keeffe might be best-known for painting scintillating florals, but the landscape around her home was anything but lush; O'Keeffe lived in the arid desert of New Mexico. Not far from her ranch, scientists found a unique fossil of a toothless, two-legged species thought to be a distant relative of today's crocodiles. In honor of the artist, they named the discovery "Effigia okeeffeae."

Before becoming an artist, Vincent van Gogh spent nearly a decade experimenting with different professions, including art dealer, language teacher, lay preacher, bookseller, and missionary worker. His stint as a preacher stemmed from an increased devotion to God, and though his preaching contract was not renewed, he came away with a renewed sense of faith: He could serve God as an artist.

When the "Mona Lisa" went missing from the Louvre in 1911, one of the prime suspects was the artist Pablo Picasso. Picasso was questioned because he lived with a man whose secretary would occasionally steal pieces of art and sell them to his boss and Picasso. Police finally determined that neither of the men were involved in the theft, and two years later a former Louvre employee was found guilty, and the painting was recovered.

Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci kept copious notes detailing his research and ideas. Most of the time, he wrote in “mirror script,” starting at the right side of the page and moving left. The writing was only legible when held up to a mirror — assuming you could decipher his special personal shorthand, that is.

Vincent van Gogh painted “Starry Night,” now one of the most recognizable paintings in the world, while staying at a psychiatric hospital in the French town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The painting was loosely based on the view from his window, though the exact landscape is a work of the artist's imagination, as are the colorful, impressionist whirls.

“The Saturday Evening Post” featured Norman Rockwell’s work for 47 years, from 1916 to 1963. Rockwell always dreamed of having his art on the cover of the “Post,” deeming it one of the best ways for an illustrator to make a name for himself. He stopped illustrating for the magazine because he wanted the freedom to call attention to political matters editors did not allow him to feature.

Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous and successful Mexican artists in the country's history. Her work “Diego and I” depicts a low point in her marriage with fellow artist Diego Rivera, showing a weeping Kahlo with an image of Rivera above her unibrow. It was sold at auction in 1990 and made Kahlo the first Latin American artist to sell a work for more than $1 million.

Inarguably Johannes Vermeer’s best-known work, “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” was completed in 1665. The subject of the painting is meant to be ambiguous and generic; it’s known as a “tronie,” a Dutch word for a character or type of person. Vermeer’s technical expertise and use of light are especially admired in this piece, which inspired a bestselling novel and film (starring Scarlett Johansson) with the same name.

“I used to drink it,” Andy Warhol once said of Campbell’s Soup, one of the artist’s most famous subjects. “I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years.” Warhol completed his “Campbell’s Soup Cans” painting in 1962, painstakingly hand-painting each can. Shortly after this, he would start using the silkscreen process to reproduce products and portraiture.

"The Scream" was painted in 1893 by Edvard Munch. The artist was born in Norway in 1863 and had a rough childhood. Both his parents and two siblings died while he was still young, and another sister suffered from mental illness. Munch later said that he was forever accompanied by the black angels of illness and death. His paintings were often controversial, depicting sexuality and psychological isolation. "The Scream" now hangs in Oslo's National Gallery.

In 1508, Pope Julius II got tired of staring at the blue and gold ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, so he hired Michelangelo to improve it. Previously known for his sculptures such as David and Pietà, Michelangelo exceeded expectations. The artist used a fresco technique and meticulously depicted scenes of the Old Testament, including Noah and the flood. He finished the project in 1512.

"The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dalí was first shown in 1932 and quickly became one of the most recognizable works of surrealism. Most famous for its three melting clocks, the painting also shows distant cliffs, a dead tree, and a watch covered in ants. Scholars suggest the tree and ants may represent decay, while Dalí himself said the oozing clocks show “the camembert of time.”

One of the most recognizable paintings by an American artist is Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” which features a stern-looking pair of farmers, one holding a pitchfork, standing in front of their farmhouse. The 1930 painting captures the quaintness and isolation of rural America in the 20th century, and has become such an iconic part of our culture that it is frequently replicated and parodied. Fans of the artwork can see it in person at the Art Institute of Chicago.