December 28, 1479 Leonardo sketches the hanging of corpse of Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli, who is executed for last year’s murder of Giuliano de Medici. That murder is organized by the Pazzi family, in a power grab, as they hope to replace the incredibly influential Medici family as political and civic leaders. A gang of

December 22, 1960 Jean-Michel Basquiat, painter, player, attention-getter, friend/frenemy to Andy Warhol, is born.

December 20, 1933 After almost four years of living in the US to work on Diego’s various mural projects, Diego and Frida depart NYC for Mexico.

December 19, 1928 Nathan Oliveira, one of my favorites, is born.

December 18, 1511 Within a landscape drawing of Milan, Leonardo draws a fire set by Swiss invaders.

December 16, 2004 Agnes Martin, abstract painter and tough old bird, dies at age 92.

December 9, 1960 Willem de Kooning, drunk at the Cedar Tavern, punches an Air France engineer in the teeth and is subsequently sued for $100,000.

December 8, 1940 After being divorced for a little more than a year, Frida and Diego marry for the second time, at the courthouse in San Francisco. He goes to work later that day, on the murals on Treasure Island. When he takes off his shirt, his assistants and the public spectators who are there

December 4, 1884 After receiving a commission from Century Magazine to illustrate an article about Nassau, Winslow Homer travels there with his father to execute it. I love Homer, and his work from this period is especially vibrant.

November 13, 1894 Louis Comfort Tiffany trademarks the term Favrile (from the old French word for handmade). He will use this word to describe all of his glass, enamel and pottery. This piece is lovely, and is one of my favorites in the Met. November 13, 1934 Frida writes a letter to her friend Dr.

November 2, 1699 French still life master Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin is born. Unlike many still life paintings full of elaborate and expensive objects, the beauty in a Chardin still life comes from the simplicity of the objects. They are made for use by real people: everyday bowls, simple fruits, plain wooden tables and plain but shiny

November 1, 1867 Thomas Eakins writes a letter to his sister Fanny, about his annoyance at being forced to entertain a difficult artist and his family, who are new to Paris. The early part of the letter sets the stage for how Eakins comes to be involved in this situation: their mutual friend, who is

October 28, 1863 Edouard Manet marries Suzanne Leenhoff, the childhood piano teacher his father hired to provide music lessons to Edouard and his brother. After a relationship of more than ten years, they finally marry after Manet’s father dies. At the time of the wedding, Leenhoff has an 11-year old son named Léon Koëlla, who

October 22, 1906 Paul Cezanne dies. He’s very important to 20th century art, and ushers in ideas about abstraction, especially reducing forms to their essential shapes, which other artists run with. He paints the same mountain over and over, dozens of times, to really investigate it. Watching Mt. Rainier now, with all of its different

October 13, 1984 Alice Neel dies. She is a highly regarded painter, especially revered by feminists in the 1970s and beyond, though her mother once told her that her options were limited due to her gender. She lives through various personal tragedies, which fuel her portraiture. Despite the death of her infant daughter, her husband’s

October 12, 1654 The city of Delft’s gunpowder reserves, which are being stored in a former convent, explode; the blast kills somewhere between 500-1000, including painter Carel Fabritius (a student of Rembrandt).

October 3, 1929 The Communist Party officially expels Diego Rivera, due to suspicions that he was more personally and ideologically aligned with Leon Trotsky. However, he and Frida continue to support Communist Party ideas.

September 23, 1912 Stars, they’re just like us: Picasso moves into a new apartment at 242 Boulevard Raspail, in Paris.

September 21, 1973 Jackson Pollock’s painting Blue Poles sells for $2,000,000.

September 20, 1873 Winslow Homer’s Snap the Whip, one of my favorite paintings, is published in Harper’s Weekly magazine. There are multiple versions of this work; they publish the version with a mountainous landscape.

September 17, 1925 As a teenaged Frida Kahlo rides through Mexico City, her bus is hit by a train. In the collision, an iron handrail breaks off and pierces through her body, from abdomen to vagina. The sheer force of the impact peels her clothes from her body, and in a moment that’s straight out

August 26, 1870 Pierre-Auguste Renoir is drafted into the 10th Cavalry Regiment of the French Army. Several other of his Impressionist peers, including Monet, also serve in the Army because they are too poor to buy themselves an exemption. In fact, Monet credits his time in the Army looking at different landscapes as invaluable training

August 12, 1988 Jean Michel Basquiat dies of a heroin overdose. According to many of his friends, it’s a death in slow-motion, one they had predicted for years. In the months before his death, Basquiat claims to shoot up to a hundred bags of heroin a day. To those who see the huge quantities of

August 11, 1956 Jackson Pollock dies in a car crash while driving drunk. He has been a serious alcoholic for most of his life, going on binges, getting in fights, losing jobs, and alienating friends. He’s been to rehab, and even quit drinking for one prolonged period. Also in the car are his mistress Ruth

August 6, 1880 Mary Cassatt’s sister-in-law, Lois, lays out her true feelings in a letter to her own sister Harriet: …the truth is I cannot abide Mary and never will. I have never heard her criticize any human being but in the most disagreeable way. She is self-important and I can’t put up with it.

August 1, 1499 Leonardo mentions in his notebook: “I wrote…on motion and weights.”

July 22, 1490 Leonardo writes in his diary about a young assistant nicknamed Salai (“the devil” or “the little unclean one”) joining his household: Giacomo came to live with me on St. Mary Magdalene’s day [22 July] 1490, aged ten years. The day I had two shirts cut out for him, a pair of hose,

July 21, 1948 Arshile Gorky goes to a shed near his home, writes “Goodbye My Loveds” on a wooden crate, removes his neck brace, and dies by hanging. His barking dog leads searchers to his body. Gorky regularly uses the the words “beloveds” or “loveds” to refer to anything close to him—friends, family, and paintings.

July 18, 1610 Caravaggio dies at age 38; the cause of death is unknown but rumors posthumously swirl around the painter: that he died of syphilis, or malaria, or was killed by one of his many enemies. In 2010, Italian forensic scientists announce that they believe they’ve found Caravaggio’s remains, and that he died of

July 17, 1948 A distraught Arshile Gorky roams the streets of New York. He tells a former student that his wife has left him, and that he is unhappy. Another former student suggests that someone stay with Gorky until his psychiatrist appointment in three days’ time. That night, Gorky tries to visit an old friend

July 15, 1948 Arshile Gorky and his wife Mougouch have a massive argument. He asks her if she loves the artist Matta, whom she recently had an affair with; her reply is that she does, but that she loves Gorky more.

July 14, 1862 Gustav Klimt is born. He is commercially successful, even in his lifetime, and rarely at a loss for commissions. His stylized works that focus on flat patterns, stylized, elongated bodies (mostly female), and use gold leaf as a material are still famous today.

July 12, 1884 Amadeo Modigliani is born. He’s known for painting very stylized, elongated figures. The woman in this portrait is his girlfriend and the mother of his daughter. He’s not a nice person: an addict, womanizer, and wife beater.

July 11, 1834 James Abbott McNeill Whistler is born. His motto is “art for art’s sake.” One of his best moments (which we’ll cover later in the year) is filing suit against the art critic John Ruskin who unnecessarily slams his work; his bon mots and Oscar Wildesque zingers in the courtroom have everyone laughing

July 8, 1869 Thomas Eakins writes a letter to his sister Fanny in which he observes: “The Bostonians are a very sharp people.” Why thank you.

June 22, 1923 Monet writes a letter excoriating his eye surgeon, Dr. Charles Coutela, who had performed a cataract operation on Monet’s right eye in January, when Monet was 82. I might have finished the Décorations which I have to deliver in April and I’m certain now that I won’t be able to finish them

June 20, 1902 John Henry Twachtman writes in a letter that he’s rented a studio in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he’s about to spend his third summer. He will die in less than three months of a brain aneurysm, but the paintings he creates in Gloucester in the last three summers of his life are some

June 19, 1867 While studying in Paris, Thomas Eakins writes a letter home to his sister Fanny. It’s mostly a discussion of Latin tenses, but near the end he gets more personal: I regret having wasted so much of my time from want of experience, but everyone must do bad things before starting on a

June 16, 1907 The New York Herald says of Edward Curtis’ attempt to document all Native American tribes: The most gigantic undertaking since the making of the King James edition of the Bible.”

June 12, 1938 Jackson Pollock is committed to rehab by his brother, in the Westchester Division of NY Hospital. This is three days after he was fired by the Federal Arts Project for “continued absence.”

June 5, 1994 Artist Felix Partz dies of AIDS, and his collaborator AA Bronson documents the event in a heartbreakingly grotesque photograph. This is a real photo–even if it looks staged, or like a drawing based on a photograph–that shines light on AIDS, if only because it’s so hard to wrap your head around. Bronson

June 2, 1894 The Gauguin painting, Forest Interior (Sous-Bois), is bought by one Ambroise Vollard in Paris, for 76 francs; the money goes to benefit the widow of Gauguin’s dealer. After Gauguin went to Tahiti in 1891, he consigned a few paintings to a collector and dealer named Julien-François Tanguy, who died three years later.

June 1, 1877 The Society of American Artists forms, as an alternative to the National Academy, which they find too conservative. Initial members include sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Julian Alden Weir, John Henry Twachtman, and Louis Comfort Tiffany, with most of the best-known artists of the day becoming members. The Society eventually merges

May 28, 1606 Caravaggio, known for his temper and frequently on the run from the law, kills Ranuccio Tomasoni following a tennis match. Of all things.

May 27, 1939 Augusta Savage‘s work is reviewed in ArtNews: …an accomplished practitioner…Miss Savage seemed to be at her best in such expressions of personal humor as the small group of nuns, Sisters in the Rain, and in her strong portraits.”

May 26, 1899 Aaron Douglas is born. Douglas is the leading artist of the Harlem Renaissance, a circle that is known also for jazz and writing. His engagement with African and Egyptian design brings him to the attention of W. E. B. Du Bois and Dr. Locke, who were pressing for young African American artists

May 25, 1914 Henry Ossawa Tanner, a successful Black painter, writes a letter to a friend, Eunice Tietjens, and relays his anger and disappointment at racism he had encountered. As a winner of the purchase prize and medal of the Third Class from France, Tanner was in company with past winners such as Sargent and

May 22, 1989 A memorial service is held for Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

May 13, 1962 Abstract Expressionist painter Franz Kline dies of a rheumatic heart condition.

May 12, 1933 It’s a rough week for Diego Rivera; three days after being fired from the Rockefeller Center murals in New York for his insistence on celebrating Communism in the artwork, Diego receives a telegram cancelling his commission at the Chicago World’s Fair.

May 8, 1922 Monet writes to the author Marc Elder about his failing eyesight, specifically, cataracts: …in the end I was forced to recognize that I was spoiling them [the paintings], that I was no longer capable of doing anything good. So I destroyed several of my panels. Now I’m almost blind and I’m having

May 3, 1941 Jackson Pollock’s physician, Dr. de Laszlo, writes to the draft board and requests a deferment for Pollock on psychological grounds, namely, a stay in rehab in 1938 for alcoholism.

May 2, 1519 Leonardo da Vinci dies.

April 29, 1982 Twelve years after Mark Rothko ends his own life, the Italian writer Gabriella Drudi writes a letter to the art critic Dore Ashton, and recalls visiting Rothko at his house on East 95th Street in NYC: We went together to visit the house. There was happiness. The festiveness of the poor when

April 25, 1483 Leonardo signs a contract with the Milanese Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in San Francesco Grande; they have commissioned him to produce several paintings including Virgin of the Rocks, and to polychrome their altarpiece in Milan. Interestingly, art historians believe that Leonardo sold this painting, instead of fulfilling the commission. Later, he

April 23, 1519 Leonardo da Vinci writes his last will and testament. He asks that 60 beggars follow his coffin, stipulates the number of masses to be held in the church on the day of his funeral, and dispenses his property. His friend and apprentice Francesco Melzi is the principal heir, receiving money, as well

April 20, 1968 Mark Rothko suffers an aneurysm. He’s told by his doctor to exercise, eat more heathily, slow down on drinking and smoking…he does none of this. His one concession is to work on smaller paintings, and he switches to acrylics on paper. His poor health after the aneurysm contributes to marital stress, and

April 19, 1958 Salvador Dalí is a guest on the television show The Mike Wallace Interview. You can watch the video here. My favorite part may be hearing Mike ask in all seriousness: “Well, what is philosophical about driving in a car full of cauliflowers or lecturing inside a diving helmet?”

April 17, 1506 Michelangelo is turned away by Pope Julius II in his latest attempt to meet and move forward on the commission for Julius’s tomb. Adding insult to injury, the Pope doesn’t cover the freight charges for the marble which Michelangelo has already selected and shipped to Rome. “Overwhelmed with despair,” Michelangelo tells his

I try to feature artists who are female, gay, or of color whenever possible, but the fact is, most of recorded art history involves men. Because today is my birthday, and because there are two events involving female artists, here’s a bonus post. April 14, 1939 Georgia O’Keeffe leaves Honolulu, a trip paid for by

April 14, 1886 Letter from Mary Cassatt’s father about Mary’s painting, Girl Arranging Her Hair: Mame [Mary] is feeling pretty well and working like a beaver…on a little red-headed girl in demi-costume, dressing her hair before a glass. The two or three experts and artists who have seen it praise it without stint. As for