Famous Paintings quiz

More questions about Famous Paintings

These visible examples show the question style. LearnClash turns the full topic into ranked duels and spaced repetition.

1. 1 Easy

   What aquatic flower did Claude Monet paint across roughly 250 Impressionist canvases?

   Answer: Water lilies

   Why: Monet gave the series to France the day after the 1918 Armistice, and eight compositions have filled two oval rooms at the Orangerie since 1927.

2. 2 Medium

   Which plant represents mourning in Van Gogh's The Starry Night?

   Answer: Cypress tree

   Why: He told his brother Theo in June 1889 that cypresses were as beautiful in line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk.

3. 3 Hard

   What is the official title of the painting known as Whistler's Mother?

   Answer: Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1

   Why: It became No. 1 only after Whistler painted Thomas Carlyle as No. 2, and France bought the canvas in 1891.

4. 4 Easy

   Which surrealist painted the melting pocket watches in The Persistence of Memory?

   Answer: Salvador Dalí

   Why: Dalí claimed the idea came to him while contemplating the extreme softness of runny Camembert cheese on a hot day.

5. 5 Medium

   Why did Picasso use blue almost exclusively from 1901 to 1904?

   Answer: A friend's suicide

   Why: Picasso's palette only turned blue in late 1901, months after Vollard's Paris gallery showed him that June as a painter of dazzling colour.

6. 6 Hard

   What unusual element is hidden in Holbein's The Ambassadors?

   Answer: A distorted skull

   Why: Head on it is only a grey smear across the floor, but step close to the right edge and the shape snaps into focus.