Selfies Through History Trivia Quiz

Henri Rousseau was born in 1844 in the French town of Laval and died in Paris in 1910 at the age of 66. He had little or no formal artistic training and worked for much of his life as a collector of import taxes, which gave rise to his nickname of "Le Douanier", meaning "the customs officer". Nevertheless, he achieved sufficient fame during his lifetime to enable him to retire from his government job and paint full-time.

This self-portrait was painted in 1890 and was given the title "Myself, Portrait-Landscape". In the background, half-hidden behind the ship, can be seen the Eiffel Tower, which at the time was barely a year old. The picture can now be seen in the National Gallery Prague.

The famous Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69) created around 80 self-portraits, including drawings, painting and etchings. Spanning most of his creative life, they include some of his greatest masterpieces.

The painting shown here is one of the last ones he completed, only a few months before his death. It can be seen in the National Gallery of London, which purchased it in 1851.

The Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh was born in Zundert in 1853 and died in Auvers-Sur-Oise, France, in 1890. During his relatively short life he produced a number of self-portraits, mostly between the years 1886 and 1889. The one seen here dates from 1887 and was painted while he was living and working in Paris, shortly before moving to Arles in the south of France.

It was sold after his death by his sister-in-law and since 1954 has been in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The American artist Mary Cassatt was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and moved to Paris with her mother in 1866 to study art, at a time when most women regarded painting as a useful social skill rather than a way to earn a living. She became good friends with Edgar Degas, who encouraged her to exhibit with the newly-formed "Impressionist" movement. She died and is buried in France in 1926.

The little self-portrait seen here was sketched in around 1880 and can now be seen in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.

William Hogarth (1697-1764) was born in London and lived for most of his life in the city, dying there at his house in Chiswick at the age of 66. He is best known today for his satirical and moralistic paintings, especially the collections known as "A Harlot's Progress" (1731), "A Rake's Progress" (1733-35) and "Marriage A-La-Mode" (1745-45). These were all reproduced widely as sets of engravings, which sold in huge numbers and made him both famous and wealthy.

The self-portrait seen here dates from 1745 and shows him with his pug dog, Trump. It can be seen in the collection of Tate Britain, London.

The Swiss-born artist Angelica Kauffmann was born in the town of Chur in 1741 and died in Rome in 1807. She was taught to paint by her artist father and spent much of her childhood travelling through Europe with him. She initially became famous as an artist in Italy, but moved to England in 1765, where she became a popular society painter. In 1781 she returned to Italy and lived there until her death at the age of 66.

This self-portrait was painted during her time in England and is now in the collection of London's National Portrait Gallery.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) is now considered one of England's best-known and most influential painters. He was born in the Covent Garden district of London and lived for much of his life in the city. He worked mainly as a landscape painter, starting as a watercolourist but moving to large-scale oil paintings which anticipate the impressionists in their use of shade and colour.

This self-portrait is an early work, painted in around 1799 when he was in his early 20s. It can be seen in the Tate Britain Gallery in London and was used as the basis for the depiction of Turner on the UK £20 note first issued in 2020.

Judith Leyster (1609-60) was born in the Dutch city of Haarlem and became a respected and successful artist at a time when it was rare for women to make a living as painters. After her death she was largely forgotten, and many of her works were misattributed to other artists such as her contemporary Franz Hals. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, she began to be recognised in her own right again.

This portrait was painted in around 1630 and can be seen in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, which acquired it in 1949. It is one of the works that was once thought to be by Franz Hals, and it was only in the twentieth century that it was finally attributed to Leyster herself.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) is now recognized as one of the most significant French artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was working as a successful stockbroker in Paris when he began painting as a hobby but eventually gave up his career to paint full-time. In 1891 he visited the French colony of Tahiti for the first time, and this had a profound effect on his art. Starting in 1895, he lived there for several years, painting the local landscapes and native Tahitian people.

The full title of this 1888 painting is "Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les Misérables)", and depicts himself in the character of Jean Valjean, the protagonist of Victor Hugo's novel "Les Misérables". It is now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The French painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was born in 1755 in Paris, and died in the same city in 1842, aged 86. She originally took lessons in art from her father, the painter Louis Vigée, and by her early teens was already painting professionally. She achieved considerable success as a portrait painter, and by the 1780s had become an official portrait painter to the French Queen, Marie Antoinette. Escaping from France in 1789 following the French Revolution, she worked in Italy, Austria, Russia and Germany before returning to France in 1802.

This charming picture, entitled "Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat", was painted in 1782 and is now in the collection of London's National Gallery.