7 Art History Facts to Drop at Your Next Dinner

Seven surprising facts guaranteed to make you the star of any dinner party.

[ FUN FACT #1]

🎨 Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" doesn't show the 1789 French Revolution.

䷰ It depicts the July Revolution of 1830 – a three-day uprising that overthrew King Charles X.

👦 Fun fact: The street kid in the painting likely inspired Victor Hugo's Gavroche in "Les Misérables."

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[ FUN FACT #2]

🎨 Vermeer had the coolest mother-in-law.

Maria Thins owned a painting called "The Procuress" by Dirck van Baburen, and Vermeer loved it so much he sneaked it into the background of two different paintings.

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[ FUN FACT #3]

In 2024, scientists analyzed Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and made a stunning discovery.

The swirls in the painting perfectly follow atmospheric fluid dynamics laws. The catch?

These physics principles wouldn't be discovered until decades after the artist's death. Van Gogh had an intuitive understanding of natural phenomena that borders on the supernatural.

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[ FUN FACT #4]

🌴 Henri Rousseau never left France.

But painted exotic jungle scenes for 25 years.

🌿 His tropical plants came from Paris's Jardin des Plantes.

He said visiting the greenhouse felt "like entering a dream."

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[ FUN FACT #5]

🐕 William Hogarth had a pug called Trump, who famously features in several of his paintings.

Louis-François Roubiliac created a sculpture of Trump in terracotta to accompany a bust of Hogarth in 1741.

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[ FUN FACT #6]

🍷 Many artists have produced wine labels, which are highly prized by collectors.

Famous names to put their art to the bottle include Picasso, Braque, Henry Moore, Miró, Kandinsky, Warhol, Keith Haring, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Anish Kapoor.

Château Mouton Rothschild is the label to look out for in these artistic collaborations, as even Dalí created an emblem for their 1958 vintage.

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[ FUN FACT #7]

🎨 Paul Gauguin abandoned his family and banking career at 35.

He left his wife and 5 children to become a painter.

💰 He gave up a lucrative job as a stockbroker.

His family never forgave him for choosing art over responsibility.

🏝️ In Tahiti, he took a 13-year-old girl as his wife.

Van Eyck The Mission That Changed Europe

Everyone knows Jan van Eyck the painter. No one knows Jan van Eyck the spy. In 1428, Jan van Eyck set out on a dangerous mission to Portugal that would change Europe forever.

The Woman Who Made Vincent van Gogh

Behind every legendary artist lies an untold story, but this one belongs to a woman history forgot, who held the power to make or break a genius. Discover Johanna's fabulous story.