History of painting game: styles, painters and works
An art history game for recognising the styles of painting, from the Gothic to Pop art. By default real paintings appear —by Van Eyck, Velázquez, Monet, Van Gogh, Munch, Juan Gris or Mondrian, all in the public domain— and you can also choose paintings drawn “in the style of” each movement, which exaggerate its feature. Either way, with no options, you take each painting to the room for its style: the flat gold background of the Gothic, the vanishing-point perspective of the Renaissance, the chiaroscuro of the Baroque, the dramatic nature of Romanticism, the loose brushstrokes of Impressionism, the violent colours of Expressionism, the planes of Cubism, the impossible objects of Surrealism, the pure shapes of abstract art or the dot patterns of Pop art. Other rounds are famous works, like a museum label: match them with their painter or tap their style on the line of styles. On hard, put four works in order from oldest to newest.
Art History · Secondary, Sixth form
Each painting exaggerates the feature that separates a style from its neighbour, which is what you need to spot when analysing a work: where the light is, whether there is perspective, whether the brushwork shows, whether the figure is distorted. As the drawings change every game, you learn the style, not “this picture”.
Las Meninas, the Mona Lisa, The Starry Night, The Scream, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, The Persistence of Memory… The works found in every syllabus, with their painter, date and style, and with painters of the same period as wrong options.
Below each question is the sequence of styles, which lights up when you answer. You can see what came before and after, and why Impressionism opened the door to the avant-garde.
"A painting appears with a black background and a figure lit by a strong light coming in diagonally. What style is it? Baroque: chiaroscuro, with strong contrasts of light and shadow, is its most recognisable feature, as in Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew. If the background were flat gold, it would be Gothic; if the light broke into dabs of colour, Impressionism."
Prefer to learn without screens? Try this analogue version:
Choose four styles from the game and write one key feature of each on a card.
Draw the same subject, such as a tree, four times, once in each style.
Ask someone to guess the style of each drawing.
Find a real work of each style in the game and compare it with your drawing.
If you like The Gallery, these activities work similar skills:
The other art game: recognise the style of a drawn building.
Put historical events in chronological order.
History of philosophy: whose idea is it?
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Everything you need to study, from primary to sixth form
90 games and 226 explained quizzes across 14 subjects. Free, no sign-up.
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