Painting

Painting is the art of applying coloured paint to a surface to create a picture. Painting materials may include oils, acrylics, pastels, inks, watercolours or other substances...

Drawing

Drawing is the art of making a picture with a mark. The earliest drawings were made around 30,000 years ago on the walls of caves by our ancestors. Drawing first became popular as...

History of Western art A-Z

Michelangelo

The Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo (1475–1564) was one of the greatest artists who ever lived. He worked in the early 1500s in Italy during the...

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, engineer, scientist, anatomist, geologist, mapmaker, botanist and writer. Leonardo has been...

Rembrandt

The painter Rembrandt (1606–69) lived and worked in the mid-1600s in the Dutch Republic during the Dutch Golden Age of art. Widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest European...

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was one of the most famous painters in history. During his short lifetime, he created more than 2000 artworks, including drawings...

Impressionists

The Impressionists were a group of French painters who became well known during the 1870s and 1880s. They took their name from a painting by Claude Monet called Impression, soleil...

Pablo Picasso

The Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was the most famous artist of the 20th century. He spent most of his life in France. Over the course of a long career, lasting nearly...

Sculpture

Sculpture is a three-dimensional form of art, in contrast to the flat, two-dimensional style of painting. You can sometimes walk all around a sculpture to see it from different...

Photography

Photography is the art of taking pictures with a camera. When photography was first invented in the 1820s and 30s, people questioned whether photography could be considered art...