Art Quiz: Guess the Painting, Artist, Style, and Year

How well do you know your masterpieces? This free art quiz shows you a famous painting and asks you to guess the title, the artist, the art style, or the year it was made. Choose Easy, Medium, or Hard, play 10 or 20 questions, or take the daily art quiz that everyone gets on the same day. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something new with each question.

How to Play the Art Quiz

The quiz runs right on this page, with no sign-up and no app to install. To play:

1. Pick a question type: Guess the painting, Guess the artist, Guess the style, Guess the year, or Mixed.
2. Choose a difficulty: Easy, Medium, or Hard.
3. Choose the length: 10 or 20 questions.
4. Click “Start quiz” and pick one of the four answers. You can also press the keys 1 to 4 on your keyboard.
5. Read the explanation after each answer, then click “Next question” or press Enter.

At the end you see your score, your best streak, your results by era, and a list of every artwork in the round with a link to learn more.

Four Ways to Test Your Art Knowledge

Guess the Painting

You see an artwork and choose its title from four options. On Medium and Hard, the wrong titles come from works of the same style or era, and on Hard often from the same artist. Telling Van Gogh’s The Starry Night from his Starry Night Over the Rhône is harder than it sounds.

Guess the Artist

Here you name the painter. The wrong names are artists who worked in the same movement or period, so you need to look at brushwork, color, and subject, not just the era. It is good practice for recognizing the hand of Vermeer, Monet, or Caravaggio.

Guess the Style

This art style quiz asks for the movement, such as Baroque, Rococo, Impressionism, or Fauvism. The quiz uses 30 styles and movements, from Gothic painting to De Stijl and Japanese ukiyo-e prints. The wrong answers are styles that are close in time, so you have to know what really sets them apart.

Guess the Year

The year questions change with the difficulty. Easy asks for the century (for example, the 1600s), Medium for the half-century (for example, 1850–1899), and Hard for the exact year. On Hard, the wrong years are always at least 8 years away from the real date, and works that took many years to finish are left out, so there is always one clear answer.

Mixed

Mixed combines all four question types in one round. The daily quiz uses this mode.

Difficulty Levels

• Easy: only the most famous masterpieces, such as the Mona Lisa, The Kiss, or American Gothic. The wrong answers come from famous works as well.
• Medium: famous and well-known works. Wrong answers come from the same style or era.
• Hard: lesser-known works by great artists and less famous names, such as Hilma af Klint or Carel Fabritius. Wrong answers are as close as possible: the same artist, then the same style.

Answer several questions in a row correctly and your streak grows. The quiz shows your current streak during the round and your best streak at the end.

The Daily Art Quiz

Every day there is a new daily quiz with 10 mixed questions on Medium. Everyone who plays on the same day gets the same questions, because the date is used to pick them. The date comes from your device, so the new quiz starts at midnight where you are. After you play, the quiz remembers your score for today in your browser. Come back tomorrow for a new set, or play a random quiz in the meantime.

Share Your Score and Challenge Friends

On the results screen, “Copy result” copies a short text with your score, your best streak, a row of squares for right and wrong answers, and a link. “Copy challenge link” copies only the link. Anyone who opens it gets exactly the same questions, so you can compare scores with friends, classmates, or your art club. On devices that support it, the “Share…” button opens the share menu of your phone or computer.

Your best scores are saved in your browser, and the start screen lists your top 10. Nothing is uploaded, so the list only exists on your device and is gone if you clear your browser data.

What Is in the Quiz

The quiz contains 257 artworks by 125 artists, from the Gothic altarpieces of Duccio and Giotto to the Renaissance, the Dutch Golden Age, Romanticism, Impressionism, and early modern art by Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian. Most are paintings, and a few are famous frescoes, drawings, and Japanese woodblock prints, such as Hokusai’s Great Wave.

All images are in the public domain and come from Wikimedia Commons. We checked the license of every file through the Commons database and only used works by artists who died in 1955 or earlier. This is also why you will not find Picasso, Dalí, Frida Kahlo, or Edward Hopper in the quiz: their works are still protected by copyright.

For every artwork, the quiz shows the title, the artist, the date, the style, and the museum or place where it is kept, plus one or two sentences about what makes it special. Where we have a guide on the work, the artist, or the movement, a link takes you there.

Your Results by Era

The results screen sorts your answers into seven eras: Medieval and Renaissance, Baroque, 18th century, Romanticism and Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Art Nouveau and modern art, and Japanese prints. A bar for each era shows where you are strong. If you missed questions in an era, the quiz suggests a guide to read, for example on Baroque art or the Renaissance. Below the scores you find each artwork of the round again, with a thumbnail and a link.

How It Works

The quiz is a small program that runs in your browser. When you start, it picks the artworks from the list for your difficulty, makes sure no work appears twice, and limits how often one artist can appear (twice in 10 questions, three times in 20). Then it builds the wrong answers from the most similar works, styles, or dates and shuffles all four options.

A random number seed controls these choices. The challenge link contains this seed and your settings, which is how a friend gets the same questions. The daily quiz uses the date as its seed.

While you answer one question, the quiz already loads the image for the next one, so the next picture usually appears at once. The picture area has a fixed height, so the answers do not jump around while an image loads. If an image cannot load, the quiz replaces the question with another one and tells you.

Tips for a Higher Score

• Look at the light. Strong contrasts of light and dark point to the Baroque and to Caravaggio’s tenebrism.
• Look at the brushstrokes. Visible, quick dabs of color suggest Impressionism, while tiny dots point to pointillism.
• Look at the color. Bright, unnatural colors are typical of Fauvism and Expressionism. Gold backgrounds belong to Gothic altarpieces and to Klimt.
• Look at the space. Flat figures on gold come before the Renaissance. Convincing perspective and depth start in the 1400s.
• Read the explanations. Many works come back in later rounds, and the short notes help you remember them.

Who the Art Quiz Is For

• Artists and art students who want to train their eye for styles and masters before a museum visit or an exam.
• Teachers who need a quick art history activity for class. Share one challenge link and every student gets the same questions.
• Art clubs and families who want a friendly competition. The daily quiz is a nice routine for a coffee break.
• Curious beginners who want to learn the most famous paintings in a playful way.

Privacy

The quiz runs completely in your browser. Your answers, scores, and settings are not sent to us or to anyone else. Your best scores, your settings, and your daily result are stored only in your own browser’s local storage. If your browser blocks storage, the quiz still works, but it will not remember your scores. The only things loaded from outside are the artwork images, which come from Wikimedia Commons.

More Free Art Tools

All our tools are free, run in your browser, and need no account. See them all on the free art tools page.

• Art pricing calculator: find a fair price for your paintings and prints.
• Art prompt generator: get random ideas for drawing and painting.
• Random character generator: create an original character with traits and a palette.
• Image color picker: find the exact colors in any photo or painting.
• Color name finder: get the name of any HEX, RGB, or photo color.
• Color wheel: find complementary, triadic, and analogous colors.
• Color mixer: mix paint or screen colors and find paint recipes.
• Color palette generator: create matching color schemes or a palette from an image.
• Tint and shade generator: make tints, shades, and tones of any color.
• Color blindness simulator: see images and palettes as color blind people do.
• Photo to sketch: turn a photo into a pencil sketch or line art.
• Photo to coloring page: turn any picture into a printable coloring page.
• Image to pixel art: convert an image into editable pixel art.
• Notan generator: plan light and dark shapes with a two- or three-value study.
• Art grid tool: put a drawing grid over any photo.
• Golden ratio overlay: check your composition with a golden spiral and rule of thirds.
• Perspective grid generator: print one-, two-, and three-point perspective grids.
• Paint by number generator: turn a photo into a printable paint by number template.
• Mandala maker: draw symmetrical mandalas and print them as coloring pages.
• Connect the dots maker: turn a picture into a printable dot to dot worksheet.
• Picture frame and mat size calculator: work out mat openings and frame sizes for your art.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the art quiz free?

Yes. The quiz is completely free, with no sign-up, no limits, and no app to install. You can play as many rounds as you like on a phone, tablet, or computer.

How many questions does the art quiz have?

Each round has 10 or 20 questions, and the daily quiz always has 10. The quiz draws from 257 artworks, and with four question types, three difficulty levels, and shuffled answers, you will rarely see the same round twice.

What is the most famous painting in the world?

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is usually called the most famous painting in the world. It hangs in the Louvre in Paris, and its theft in 1911 made it even more famous. Other strong candidates are The Starry Night, The Last Supper, and Girl with a Pearl Earring, which are all in the quiz.

How can I learn to recognize art styles?

Compare many works side by side and look for what they share: the kind of light, the brushwork, the colors, and the subjects. The Guess the style mode is built for this practice, and each answer explains the work. Our guide to art periods gives an overview of the main movements in order.

What is the difference between Impressionism and Post-Impressionism?

Impressionists like Monet and Renoir tried to capture light and a passing moment with quick brushstrokes. Post-Impressionists like Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin kept the bright colors but used them more freely to show emotion, structure, or symbols. In the quiz, strong outlines and expressive color are good signs of Post-Impressionism.

Why are there no works by Picasso or Dalí?

Their works are still protected by copyright, because Picasso died in 1973 and Dalí in 1989. The quiz only uses public domain images, so it includes works by artists who died in 1955 or earlier.

Can I use the art quiz in my classroom?

Yes. Start a quiz, finish it, and copy the challenge link from the results screen. When students open the link, they all get the same questions and can compare their scores. No accounts are needed, and no student data is collected.

Does the daily quiz change at the same time for everyone?

The daily quiz changes at midnight on your own device. Players in the same time zone get the same questions on the same day, while players far away may switch to the next quiz a few hours earlier or later.