Hidden stories

One discovery inside a painting,
one story a day

One object, one pigment, one anecdote.
Once you know, the painting looks different.

All stories

  1. Who is hiding behind the man in the yellow hat?Van Gogh painted his own face on a canvas that already held another picture. Why would he do that?Vincent van Gogh · 2 min · October 31
  2. Who is watching from the shadows at the boy's feet?Goya painted a sweet portrait of a little boy in red. Then he hid three pairs of glowing eyes in the dark beside him.Goya · 3 min · October 30
  3. While he has his palm read, what are the other hands doing?Follow the hands in The Fortune-Teller one by one. The well-dressed young man in the middle is being robbed as we watch.Georges de La Tour · 3 min · October 29
  4. Why is there a lamppost in the middle of this rainy street?Caillebotte planted a green pole down the center of his biggest canvas. Was it a mistake, or the whole point?Gustave Caillebotte · 3 min · October 28
  5. Who was standing in the open doorway behind the sleeping maid?Vermeer first painted someone else into this quiet room. Then he covered them up and left the doorway empty.Johannes Vermeer · 2 min · October 27
  6. Why is the face at the edge of At the Moulin Rouge green?Toulouse-Lautrec let one woman's face hang off the right edge of his nightclub scene, and he painted it a startling acid green.Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 2 min · October 26
  7. The Day a Man Stood Beside His Own PortraitIn Rome in 1650, Velázquez painted Juan de Pareja, the enslaved man who worked in his studio. Pareja later became a painter himself.Velázquez · 3 min · October 25
  8. What Is This Young Man Holding His Breath ForChardin put a single soap bubble, something that lasts a few seconds, at the center of a painting meant to last for centuries.Jean Siméon Chardin · 3 min · October 24
  9. Who Is Standing Outside the Goldsmith's ShopA small round mirror on a goldsmith's counter holds a whole street, and two men who seem to stand right where we do.Petrus Christus · 2 min · October 23
  10. The Faint Grid Hiding in the Third-Class CarriageThin straight lines run across the faces and the window of Daumier's railway car. They tell us how the picture was made.Honoré Daumier · 3 min · October 22
  11. When Did the Glassware Arrive on the Lavoisiers' Red TableA famous portrait of a chemist and his wife. Beneath the gleaming lab equipment, a different picture was hiding.Jacques Louis David · 2 min · October 21
  12. The Painter Who Needed a Police Permit to Wear TrousersTo study horses for this enormous canvas, Rosa Bonheur went to a Paris horse market. First, she needed a piece of paper from the police.Rosa Bonheur · 2 min · October 20
  13. Who are all the tiny people in Canaletto's Piazza San Marco?Under the great church and tower, the square is full of people no bigger than a fingernail. Each one has something to do.Canaletto · 3 min · October 19
  14. Why are there clouds inside this train station?Monet filled the roof of a Paris train station with billowing clouds. They did not come from the sky.Claude Monet · 2 min · October 18
  15. How do you paint a night lit by flames using only dots?Seurat built a nighttime circus stage out of countless tiny dots, including the lights, the dark, and the shadows of the crowd.Georges Seurat · 2 min · October 17
  16. What are the broken eggs on the floor trying to tell us?A tipped basket, one cracked egg, a young woman with her head bowed. Greuze lets the eggs do the talking.Jean-Baptiste Greuze · 2 min · October 16
  17. How did Hiroshige carve rain into a block of wood?Hundreds of hair-thin gray lines of rain fall across this print. They were cut with a knife, not drawn with a brush.Utagawa Hiroshige · 2 min · October 15
  18. What is hiding in the fog behind The Herring Net?The shining fish grab your eye first. But at both edges of the painting, faint shapes are waiting in the fog.Winslow Homer · 2 min · October 14
  19. Why won't these two men turn around?Two men watch the moon rise, and we never see their faces. So who is really standing on that hill?Caspar David Friedrich · 3 min · October 13
  20. Who are the two women standing behind the painter's chair?The French Academy allowed only four women members. So why did this painter put two of her students right beside her?Adélaïde Labille-Guiard · 2 min · October 12