In 1905, just prior to such works being derisively labeled as the creations of Les Fauves ("the wild beasts"), Matisse painted The Green Stripe, also known as Portrait of Madame Matisse. One of his most famous paintings, it depicts Matisse's wife, Amélie Noellie Matisse-Parayre.

Although his Cubist works approach abstraction, Picasso never relinquished the objects of the real world as subject matter. Prominent in his Cubist paintings are forms easily recognized as guitars, violins, and bottles.

Rodin's most famous sculpture was originally conceived as the central component in a much larger work called The Gates of Hell. Inspired by Dante's Inferno, The Thinker was originally entitled The Poet and conceived as a representation of Dante himself.

Considered by some critics to be Matisse's masterpiece, The Dessert: Harmony in Red, was originally commissioned in blue, but Matisse was dissatisfied with the result and repainted the entire painting red. When it was delivered to the Russian collector Shchukin, he had no problem with the fact that his "Harmony in Blue" had become "Harmony in Red".

Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of works from his personal collection (both his own works and those of other artists he had traded with). These paintings form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris.

Monet's father disapproved of his painting. He wanted him to go into the family grocery business.

Nine months before Salvador Dalí was born, his older brother (who was also named Salvador) died of gastroenteritis. When he was five, Dalí's parents took him to visit the grave and told him he was a reincarnation of his brother. The artist came to believe this was true and once said that his brother "was probably a first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute." Images of his deceased sibling appear scattered throughout his later works, including Portrait of My Dead Brother.

Grant Wood thought his mother would be perfect to depict the ideals of rural America in American Gothic, but he was worried that standing for so long would be too exhausting for her, so he asked his sister Nan to wear his mother's apron and pin while posing, and recruited his 62-year-old dentist to model the man.

Camille Doncieux, Monet's wife, posed for many of his paintings, including "The Woman in the Green Dress", "On the Bank of the Siene", and "Woman with a Parasol". She did NOT pose for "The Road to Chailly".

In the early morning of August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from its glass case at the Louvre. The police thought the modernist enemies of traditional art might be involved. Pablo Picasso was arrested and questioned along with avant-garde poet and playwright Guillaume Apollinaire. Both were later cleared and released.