A Silly But Accurate Guide On How To Recognize Famous Painters By Their Art (19 Pics)

The person behind most of the art tips is Redditor DontTacoBoutIt. Unfortunately, their account now appears to be dead, but Bored Panda tried reaching out to them for an interview nonetheless. The tips have seen widespread success online, with over 8,800 upvotes and more than 1.17 million views on Imgur.

The Redditor’s explanations about how well-known artists can be recognized at a single glance are as informative as they are blunt and funny. For example, you can know almost for sure that a painting was done by Peter Paul Rubens if everyone’s naked and they all have very large derrières (‘butts’, the word means ‘butts’). And if everyone in a painting looks a bit like Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin, then you can bet your hat that it’s probably Jan van Eyck’s work.

So you can show off to your pals even more at your next soirée, here are some more facts to drop about Rubens and van Eyck (besides talking about butts and Putin of course).

A Flemish painter born sometime around 1380-1390, van Eyck is known as one of the early innovators of Early Netherlandish painting and one of the most important representatives of what’s known as Early Northern Renaissance art. As a master painter, he was employed by John III the Pitiless, the ruler of Holland and Hainaut, as well as Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy. Van Eyck wasn’t just a painter, he also acted as a diplomat for Philip. 

Meanwhile, Rubens (who was also a Flemish painter) was born in 1577 and is thought to be the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens was a specialist in making portraits, landscapes, altarpieces, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. Rubens was also a scholar and a diplomat who was knighted by Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England.