--- title: Famous paintings and the stories behind them — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Famous paintings and the stories behind them», a lesson of the arts course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Famous paintings are famous for more than looks: a theft, a war, a mystery or a brave choice of style can make a picture known a --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Arts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/) / Famous paintings and the stories behin… # Famous paintings and the stories behind them Lesson 15 of the arts course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/0/) — Famous paintings are famous for more than looks: a theft, a war, a mystery or a brave choice of style can make a picture known all over the world. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/1/) — Picture Chen at the Louvre in Paris, squeezed in a crowd of phones, staring at the Mona Lisa: it is small, about 77 by 53 centimetres, and part of its fame comes from being stolen in 1911 and found two years later. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/3/) — Many paintings mix fact and legend, and some mysteries were later filled in by novels and films; it is wise to ask why an artist chose a style or a subject before mocking it, and to know which parts of a story are made up. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/4/) — People react in their own slang: in Britain "manky" means dirty or gross and "proper cracking up" means laughing a lot; "lit" means exciting, and "grim" means horrible. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/5/) — The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is about 77 by 53 centimetres; it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and found two years later, which made headlines everywhere. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/6/) — Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889 at a hospital in France where he was being treated for mental illness, using swirling brushstrokes on purpose and writing about his ideas in letters to his brother. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/7/) — Edvard Munch, from Norway, made several versions of The Scream from 1893; he said the figure hears a scream passing through nature and covers its ears. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/8/) — The Great Wave off Kanagawa is a woodblock print by the Japanese artist Hokusai, made around 1831, showing a huge wave over small boats with Mount Fuji in the distance. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/9/) — Most experts say the Great Wave shows a huge storm wave out at sea, not a tsunami; because it was printed, many cheap copies were sold. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/10/) — Van Gogh painted a series of sunflower paintings in 1888 and 1889, with flowers at every stage from fresh to wilting, to decorate a room for his friend the painter Paul Gauguin. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/11/) — Kateryna Bilokur was a self-taught Ukrainian folk painter of incredibly detailed flowers; it is reported that Picasso admired her work when he saw it in Paris in 1954. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/13/) — Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a Flemish painter of the 1500s, painted busy village scenes full of small stories, like a picture puzzle. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/14/) — Johannes Vermeer painted Girl with a Pearl Earring around 1665 in the Netherlands; who the girl was is unknown, and a later novel and film invented a story about her. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/15/) — Ilya Repin, born in Chuhuiv in Ukraine, finished Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks in 1891; it shows a legend of Cossacks writing a cheeky, insulting letter to the Ottoman sultan. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/15-famous-paintings-and-the-stories-behind-them/16/) — Paintings of history often mix fact, legend and the painter's imagination. - ← previous: [Painting: paints, brushes, mess and mistakes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/14-painting-paints-brushes-mess-and-mistakes/) - next →: [Famous artists, simply (Van Gogh, Kahlo, Picasso, Hokusai, Bilokur, Prymachenko, Qi Baishi...)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/16-famous-artists-simply/) - ↑ back to [Arts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/)