• as a child, Czech painter Kamil Lhoták was infected with poliomyelitis by his father, a physician?
• as an art student, Soviet painter Fyodor Pavlovich Reshetnikov was employed as an "artistic reporter" on an Arctic expedition aboard the doomed Chelyuskin steamship?
• although Norman Rockwell felt Freedom of Speech and Freedom to Worship were the most successful of his Four Freedoms painting series, Freedom from Want has had the most enduring success?
• a pentimento is an alteration to a painting that can often only be seen in an X-ray or an infra-red photograph?
• L'Origine du monde, Gustave Courbet's most provocative painting, remained in the privacy of its successive owners for almost 130 years before entering the musée d'Orsay?
• Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences is a 1792 work of American art that depicts the Goddess of Liberty and is the first known painting to celebrate the emancipation of slaves in the United States?
• of over 200 artworks known to have been created by Belgian painter Virginie Bovie, only 7 have been located?
• the British art collector Sir George Beaumont always took his favourite Claude Lorrain painting (pictured), with him on coach journeys in a specially-designed case?
• when asked if she wanted to focus on drawing, painting, or sculpting in art school, Ruth Duckworth said she wanted to study all of them just as Michaelangelo had?
• when the 18th century artist Alexis Simon Belle (pictured) had his son baptized, the godmother was only six years old?
• two of the four judges depicted in The Bench, a 1758 oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Hogarth, were half asleep in court?
• the Reverend John Thomson, distinguished landscape painter and former minister of Duddingston Kirk, is often credited with originating the famous Scots adage "We’re a' Jock Tamson’s bairns"?
• the Bulldozer Exhibition has got its name because the Soviet authorities actually used bulldozers to disperse the spectators and destroy the paintings of the participating Moscow nonconformist artists?
• William Frederick Yeames' painting, And When Did You Last See Your Father?, has been reproduced as a waxwork at Madame Tussauds, London?
• Vädersolstavlan (pictured) is the oldest known painting of Stockholm?
• Portuguese Josefa de Óbidos was one of the few women dedicated to painting (pictured: still life by her) in the Baroque era?
• Swedish modernist painter Torsten Andersson sometimes destroyed hundreds of sketches leading up to his finished works?
• painter and sculptor Roberto Aizenberg has been called the "best-known" orthodox surrealist in Argentina?
• New York abstract painter Dennis Ashbaugh is one of the first artists to employ DNA marking patterns in paintings?
• landscape and portrait painter Herbert A. Collins (pictured) made several portraits of naturalist John Muir as well as paintings of the evolution of Yosemite Valley?
• Lucian Freud described the Titian paintings Diana and Acteon and Diana and Callisto as "simply the most beautiful pictures in the world"?
• Togolese painter and sculptor Paul Ahyi, who designed the flag of Togo, was inducted as a UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2009?
• British Conservative politician Sir John Loveridge published poetry and exhibited paintings and sculpture after serving 13 years as a member of Parliament?
• Joan Snyder, a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow, has had her paintings exhibited at Jewish Museum in New York?
• Sun Prairie, Wisconsin is the birthplace of American painter Georgia O'Keeffe?
• Islamic influences on Christian art are visible in Christian paintings, cult objects, and most of all architecture (example pictured)?
• Derek Gardner became a leading British painter of marine subjects after retiring from a civil engineering career due to deafness?
• American illustrator, painter and printmaker Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer was the great-great granddaughter of Philadelphia artist Charles Willson Peale?
• German painter Ludwig Thiersch influenced the debate over Byzantine and Western influences in modern Greek art, and painted church frescoes in Greece, Austria, Germany, England, and Russia?

Facts on topics related to Painting

Modernism

• Bulgarian modernist painter Ivan Milev (pictured) is depicted on the five Bulgarian leva banknote?
• Jan Stanisławski, a Polish modernist painter, had his portrait (pictured) painted by another icon of Polish Modernism, Stanisław Wyspiański?
• Sigrid Hjertén (pictured), a crucial figure in Swedish modernism, suffered from schizophrenia and tragically died following an awkwardly performed lobotomy?
• Kallol was perhaps, the first conscious literary movement to embrace modernism in Bengali literature?

Art

• Puerto Rican journalist Hector Feliciano has shed light on an estimated 20,000 works of art stolen by the Nazis during World War II?
• textile arts are those arts and crafts that use plant, animal, or synthetic fibers to construct and decorate objects such as clothing, carpets, and curtains?
• twirling is a key component of many artforms, hobbies, and sports where an object, such as a pen, baton or stick is spun or rotated to achieve the desired effect?
• Vincenzo Ragusa was an Italian sculptor hired by the Meiji government of Japan from 1876 to 1882 to introduce Western art techniques in order to revive Japan's own ancient sculptural arts?
• the Russian avant-garde art collective UNOVIS signed most of their works with a single black square, partly as a homage to a similar work by their leader, Kazimir Malevich?

Romanticism

• Jorge Isaacs' only novel, María, became an immediate success in his native Colombia and is considered a representative work of the Spanish Romantic movement?
• Kordian, a romantic drama by one of Poland's Three Bards, Juliusz Słowacki, is a polemic with Dziady, an earlier work by another of the Three Bards, Adam Mickiewicz?
• a Romantic poem by Alexandru Hrisoverghi is credited with having inspired historic preservation in Moldavia?
• a little Switzerland was a 19th-century Romantic term in European languages for any steep landscape with rock outcrops, but later was used for a lakeland too?
• in 1833, romantic poet Panagiotis Soutsos envisioned the revival of the ancient Olympic Games, 63 years before the first International Olympics?
• the Blijde Inkomst (the "Joyous Entry") of January 1356 was the basic charter of freedoms for Brabant, compared by Romantic historians to Magna Carta?

Aesthetics

• Jonathan Richardson wrote "the first significant work of artistic theory in English"?
• in his 1933 essay In Praise of Shadows, Junichirō Tanizaki includes monastery toilets in his reflections on Japanese aesthetics?