Art in the Garden

10/05/2026

10/02/2026

The Scream
We learned about Edvard Munch today and his painting The Scream. The kids did their own versions.

09/27/2026

Every copy painted at the Louvre has to pass inspection before it leaves the building. The canvas must be at least one fifth larger or smaller than the original, and the old master's signature can never appear on it. Only after the museum stamps the back can the painting go out the door.

The rules exist for one reason: to stop forgeries.

The tradition is as old as the museum itself. The Louvre opened to the public in 1793, in the middle of the French Revolution, and artists were welcome to copy the masterpieces from the very start. In the early days, anyone could simply show up and set up an easel.

Today, it takes a permit. Artists apply with the work they want to copy, and demand is so high that the wait has stretched to a year or more. Once accepted, they get up to three months to finish.

Picasso, Chagall and Cézanne all learned this way.

So did Edgar Degas. In the early 1860s, he was in the galleries copying a portrait of the young Spanish princess Margarita, then attributed to Velázquez, etching straight onto a copper plate. According to Degas, a stranger stopped to tell him how daring it was to work without a preliminary drawing. It was Édouard Manet, and it was the start of their long friendship.

A print from that copper plate now belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.