Can You Name These Iconic Works of Art?

Painted in 1942, Edward Hopper's “Nighthawks” depicts customers in an all-night diner that looks as if it could be in any American city, although New York City’s Greenwich Avenue is said to have been the inspiration. The beaming fluorescent lights of the diner are indicative of the time period, and stand in stark contrast to the darkness of the rest of the painting, drawing your eyes to the ambiguous scene inside.

Seen here is Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's "At the Moulin Rouge," which depicts the city's denizens out for a night of drinking at the famous French nightclub. Toulouse-Lautrec frequented the location and painted posters for some of its shows, which gave him enough money to buy copious amounts of absinthe to help fuel his uniquely "green" perspective.

Mysterious English graffiti artist Banksy is known for their unique style, using satire and dark humor in much of their work. “Girl With Balloon” began in 2002 as a series of murals in London. In 2018, Banksy sold a painted version of the piece for $1.37 million at a Sotheby’s auction. Shortly after it was purchased, the painting slid down the frame, partially shredding itself in an intentional act by the artist. The work was given a new name after its partial demolition: “Love Is in the Bin.”

Hailing from the Netherlands, Hieronymus Bosch was a key figure in the Northern Renaissance and was known for his religious symbolism. His most famous painting, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” is a triptych that depicts tales from Christianity. The left panel depicts the Garden of Eden, the center represents paradise (the Garden of Earthly Delights), and the right panel is a portrayal of hell. Today, it hangs at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.

"Whistler’s Mother," by James McNeill Whistler, was painted in 1871 and now hangs in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The American artist painted this portrait of his mother, Anne, while they were on a trip to London — but this wasn't always the plan. Whistler originally had a different model, but when that fell through, his mother posed for him. The artist never anticipated that the piece would become his most famous work.

The 1950 drip painting “Number 1 (Lavender Mist)” is a mural-sized painting created in Jackson Pollock’s renovated art studio (an old barn), where he lived and worked in Long Island, New York. He signed “Lavender Mist” in the upper left and right corners using his handprints. Pollock is celebrated for his unique dip and splatter methods, which were innovative at the time.

This artwork was commissioned in 1642 for the Amsterdam civic guard company. It became known as “The Night Watch” by the end of the 18th century, but this wasn't the painting’s original name. Rembrandt first titled the work “Officers and Men of the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Wilhelm van Ruytenburgh.” It only became known as “The Night Watch” decades later, after layers of dust covered the varnish, turning it into a night scene — it was originally much brighter and set during the day.

One of the most famous paintings of any British monarch, Holbein’s “Portrait of Henry VIII” endures today only through copies. Some art historians speculate that the German artist created the painting to celebrate the king’s birthday in 1537. More than 100 years later, on January 4, 1698, the original painting was destroyed in a fire at the royal residence. Fortunately, many copies of the portrait were made, some by the original painter himself.

“The Weeping Woman” is considered to be a continuation of Pablo Picasso’s famed piece “Guernica.” It comes from a series of paintings, drawings, and prints the artist made in protest of the Spanish Civil War. The model for this painting was Dora Maar, a professional photographer Picasso met in 1936. Maar was the only person allowed to photograph Picasso during his creation of “Guernica.”

“The Kiss” was painted between 1908 and 1909, during Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s “Gold Period.” Seen in person, the artwork literally gleams — Klimt used gold leaf throughout the piece. It's also rumored that the painting could be a self-portrait of Klimt and his lover Emile Floge. The image is so popular in the artist’s home country that in 2016, it was selected to be minted onto an Austrian coin in his honor.

Italian artist Sandro Botticelli painted “The Birth of Venus” in 1485 for the home of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a member of the wealthy Medici family of Florence. Like other artists at the time, Boticelli used mythological figures in his secular paintings to illustrate different aspects of love. “The Birth of Venus,” for example, shows the Roman goddess of love and beauty arriving on shore on the winds of Zephyr, the Greek god of west wind.

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is known for her bold self-portraits. This one, “The Two Fridas,” was painted in 1939 after her divorce from painter Diego Rivera. It signified Kahlo’s two personalities: one broken-hearted and the other independent and strong. The artist later explained that the scene represented her sadness and loneliness after her divorce.

Hokusai Katsushika was 70 years old when he started his "36 Views of Mount Fuji" series. The works depict the legendary mountain from three dozen unique perspectives — sometimes in the foreground as the main object, sometimes in the background of another scene from Japanese life. The woodblock prints, including the series' most famous entry, "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," were a landmark contribution to Japanese printmaking.

This dramatic scene was painted by Emanuel Leutze in 1851. One of the most famous depictions of George Washington, it shows the United States' first President as an army general leading his troops across the Delaware River. Washington’s famous crossing, which occurred just before midnight on Christmas Day, was part of the small but pivotal Battle of Trenton during the American Revolutionary War.

Painted by famed French impressionist Claude Monet, “Water Lilies” is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings inspired by the artist's garden at home in Giverny, beginning in 1899. This particular painting’s alternate name is “The Agapanthus Triptych,” because it's part of a set of three panels that were painted together. This panel is on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

Venus de Milo is a marble carving created by Greek sculptor Alexandros around 150 BCE. Believed to be a depiction of the goddess Aphrodite, the statue was discovered in pieces on the island of Melos in 1820. The statue's arms were never found, so it was reconstructed without them. In 1821, the sculpture was donated to the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Arguably Salvador Dalí’s most famous painting, “The Persistence of Memory” is one of the finest examples of surrealist art. Dalí painted this dreamscape of melting clocks in 1931, using his self-proclaimed method of “the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling.” The golden cliffs in the background are the only real aspect of the painting. Dalí was inspired by the cliffs of Catalonia, Spain, where he was from.

Created between 1501 and 1504, Michelangelo's David is a 17-foot-tall marble statue of the biblical hero, a popular muse during the High Renaissance in Italy. The statue was unveiled in the heart of Florence at the Piazza della Signoria, where it remained until 1873, when it was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia.

Painted in 1930, “American Gothic” was inspired by Iowa native Grant Wood's experiences in the U.S. Midwest. Wood never revealed much about the ambiguous duo in his famous painting, except that the “farmer” was actually a dentist, and the “daughter” was modeled after Wood’s sister. Wood also deliberately posed the duo like the tintypes from the artist’s old family album.

Widely considered to be Renaissance artist Raphael’s greatest work of art, “The School of Athens” was painted on the wall of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. Raphael completed the fresco between 1508 and 1511, around the same time that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. It depicts some of the most prominent ancient philosophers in history, including Plato, at the center with his finger pointed, and Aristotle, walking alongside him.

The Thinker (“Le Penseur” in French) was conceived in the late 19th century by artist Auguste Rodin, originally as part of a larger project depicting scenes and characters from Dante's "Inferno." Many versions of the sculpture have been cast since, but the most famous one sits in the gardens of the Rodin Museum in Paris, where it greets museum-goers with a pensive gaze.

Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" is arguably his most famous work — and certainly his most powerful political statement. The dramatic black-and-white painting is Picasso's immediate reaction to the Nazi bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The imposing painting measures 11 feet tall and 25 feet wide, and is currently displayed in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.

One of the most famous paintings in history, Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” depicts the moon and Venus illuminating the sky over Saint-Rémy in southern France. Van Gogh painted this masterpiece in mid-June 1889, using the view from his window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole psychiatric institution as his inspiration. Today, the painting can be found in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.

Painted on a panel of walnut wood, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady With an Ermine” was created in the late 15th century. But it wasn’t until centuries later that French scientist Pascal Cotte discovered that Leonardo had painted over the work in three different stages. The first version had no ermine, the second had a small gray ermine, and in the third and final stage, Leonardo transformed the animal into the large white ermine we see today.

French painter Jacques-Louis David’s “Napoleon Crossing the Alps at the Saint-Bernard Pass” was commissioned in 1801 for King Charles IV of Spain’s portrait gallery of great military leaders. The real-life inspiration for the painting was Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Marengo on June 14, 1800. Napoleon directed his troops through the perilous Great Saint Bernard Pass in Switzerland, which was typically avoided by invading military forces.

On July 9, 1962, Andy Warhol’s “32 Campbell’s Soup Cans” debuted at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles during the artist’s first solo exhibition. The piece features 32 screen-printed canvases, each depicting a different variety of Campbell’s soup.