The film begins showing the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) autographing illustrations in a copy of Life magazine for a woman at an art exhibit in 1950.
Eccentric painter Gulley Jimson (Alec Guinness) is released from a one-month jail sentence for telephone harassment of his sponsor, Mr Hickson (Ernest Thesiger). Nosey Barbon (Mike Morgan), who wants to be Jimson's protégé, greets Jimson at Wormwood Scrubs, but Jimson tries to discourage Nosey from pursuing painting for a living. Jimson steals Nosey's bike to make his way back to his houseboat, which his older lady friend Coker (Kay Walsh) has been maintaining in Jimson's absence.
In 1890 Paris, as crowds pour into the Moulin Rouge nightclub, young artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec finishes a bottle of cognac and sketches the dancers as they perform. The nightclub's regulars each stop by: singer Jane Avril teases Henri charmingly, dancers La Goulue and Aicha fight, and owner Maurice Joyant offers Henri free drinks for a month in exchange for painting a promotional poster. At closing time, Henri waits for the crowds to disperse before standing to reveal his four-foot six-inch body. As he walks to his Montmartre apartment, he recalls the events that led to his disfigurement. It is learned Lautrec falls down a flight of stairs, where his legs fail to heal due to a genetic weakness resulting from his parents being first cousins. His legs stunted and pained, Henri loses himself in his art, while his father leaves his mother, the countess, to ensure they have no more children. Henri is a bright, happy child, revered by his father, the Count de Toulouse-Lautrec. As a young adult he proposes to the woman he loves, but when she tells him no woman will ever love him, he leaves his childhood home in despair to begin a new life as a painter in Paris.
The story is set in Edo (now Tōkyō) in Japan.
The film starts with a parade of samurai and their concubines (oiran, distinguished by their high shoes) along an avenue of cherry trees. Koide, called Seinosuke by his woman (Kotaro Bando), an artist/samurai apprenticed to a Kanō master, leaves the parade and visits a print shop where he sees a woodcut print by Utamaro that boasts of ukiyo-e 's superiority to the official style. Enraged, he goes to a tea-house to find Tsutaya Jūzaburō, the owner of the print shop, to express his displeasure. Word is leaked to Utamaro to avoid the tea-shop, but instead he goes there directly to investigate. Koide then challenges him to a duel. Utamaro counter-challenges him with a different kind of duel––a painting contest.
Wladyslaw Strzeminski est un peintre et théoricien de l'art polonais. Artiste d'avant-garde, il est peu soucieux de réalisme socialiste et se trouve en butte au harcèlement du régime stalinien.
Marie (Émilie Dequenne), une jeune fille sans argent et sans famille, quitte le Nord pour la région de Perpignan. Elle ne possède qu'un don, celui du dessin.
À la fin des années 1880, Vincent Van Gogh s'installe à Arles. Il séjournera ensuite à Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, avant de finir ses jours à Auvers-sur-Oise.
When newlywed Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz), an art dealer, travels from Chicago to North Carolina to pursue a local, self-taught painter (Frank Hoyt Taylor) for her outsider art gallery, she takes the opportunity to meet the family of her husband George (Alessandro Nivola) who live close by.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, né à Brooklyn (États-Unis), va devenir le pionnier de la figuration libre et premier artiste de type africain à connaitre une réussite exceptionnelle dans le monde de l'Art Contemporain occidental.
In 1792, Spain reels amid the turmoil and upheaval of the French Revolution. Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgård) is a renowned painter, who, among others, does portraits for the royal family as the Official Court Painter to the King and Queen.
Simon (McAvoy), an art auctioneer, becomes an accessory to the theft of a painting–Goya's Witches in the Air–from his own auction house. When a gang attacks during an auction, Simon follows the house emergency protocol by packaging the painting. The gang's leader Franck (Cassel) then takes the package from him at gunpoint. Simon attacks Franck, who delivers him a blow to the head that leaves him with amnesia. When Franck gets home, he discovers that the package contains only an empty frame. After ransacking Simon's apartment and trashing his car, the gang kidnaps and unsuccessfully tortures him. But he has no memory of where he has hidden the painting. Franck decides to hire a hypnotherapist to try to help him remember.
Griet (Scarlett Johansson) is a shy girl living in the Dutch Republic in 1665. Her father, a Delftware painter, has recently gone blind, rendering him unable to work and putting his family in a precarious financial situation. To help matters, Griet is sent to work as a maid in the household of famed painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth). Griet works hard, almost wordlessly, in the lowest position in a harsh hierarchy, doing her best despite spiteful treatment by one of Vermeer's children. While she is on a routine shopping trip outside the house, a butcher's son, Pieter (Cillian Murphy), notices Griet and falls in love with her, even though she is slow to return his affections.
Scotland Yard Detective Frank Webber (John Longden) escorts his girlfriend Alice White (Anny Ondra) to a tea house. They have an argument and Frank storms out. While reconsidering his action, he sees Alice leave with Mr. Crewe (Cyril Ritchard), an artist she had earlier agreed to meet.