• 62 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Art History Writing Prompts

Write from inside the history of art: a cave wall, a temple, a Renaissance workshop, a riverbank, a modern gallery.

Art History Writing Prompts

Show all 62
  1. Look at any painting and work out where the light comes from. Write the scene from the spot where the lamp, window or sun must be.Angle: check the shadows. Do they all agree?
  2. A young Renaissance painter is sent out to draw river eddies, rocks and leaves before he may touch a panel; write what he notices by evening.Fact: Renaissance painters developed the observation of nature and the study of anatomy, light and perspective.
  3. Choose a picture and guess what it was made for: a church, a tomb, a dining room, a town square. Write your evidence.Angle: its size, its subject, and how far away it was meant to be seen from.

Next step Write more from the RenaissanceWrite in a museum

All 62 prompts

In the cave and the temple 13

  • A cave painter draws a horse so that it seems to walk; write what she watched all summer to get the legs right. Fact: a 2012 study found cave artists showed how four-legged animals walk more accurately than modern artists.
  • A child of the Ice Age holds a hand to a cave wall while an adult covers the rock around it with color; write the moment the hand comes away. Fact: a cave hand stencil is made by placing a hand on the wall and covering the area around it in pigment.
  • A painter in an Egyptian tomb draws a figure the way the rule demands; write his explanation to a puzzled new helper. Fact: Egyptian figures show the head from the side and the torso from the front, with the legs parted.
  • A traveler asks an Egyptian sculptor why his statues look like the ones made in his great-grandfather's day; write the proud answer. Fact: Egyptian art, 6th millennium BC to 4th century AD, was a conservative tradition that changed very little.
  • An Egyptian draftsman must fit a king, an official and a servant on one temple wall; write how he decides who is drawn biggest. Fact: in Egyptian art size shows importance: gods and the pharaoh largest, servants and animals smallest.
  • An Egyptian wall painter chooses colors that must outlast the sun; write what he tells a customer who wants a brighter one. Fact: Egyptian pigments were mostly mineral, chosen to withstand strong sunlight without fading.
  • Describe a cave painter's colors as she would to the child who will paint after her: what each one is and where it comes from. Fact: the pigments of cave painting include red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide and charcoal.
  • In an Egyptian workshop a blue is made by fire, not dug from the ground; write the first day a boy is trusted to grind it. Fact: Egyptian blue was made by heating quartz, alkali, lime and copper compounds; it could be ground to pigment.
  • Long after the first painter is gone, a second one adds a new animal beside the old ones in the same cave; write what she makes of the earlier work. Fact: some caves probably went on being painted over a period of several thousand years.
  • Write a cave painter's answer when a child asks why the wall is all bison and horses and hardly any people. Fact: the commonest cave paintings are of large wild animals; drawings of humans were rare and schematic.
  • Write the day a team of Egyptian craftsmen finishes a statue that none of them will sign. Fact: ancient Egyptian artists rarely left their names; most of the time the work was collective.
  • Write the night a painter first carries a torch into the deep part of a cave and chooses a wall. Fact: dates taken from torch marks and paint in Chauvet Cave, France, point to 35,000 and 30,000 years ago.
  • Write the notes of the first modern visitor to count the animals painted at Lascaux and notice which one is missing. Fact: Lascaux, France, about 15,000 BC: its painters left mainly reindeer bones and painted no reindeer.

A workshop in the Renaissance 12

  • A family comes to a Renaissance workshop to collect a small picture for their own house, one of many made there; write the handing over. Fact: small devotional pictures were produced in very large numbers, for churches and for private individuals.
  • A merchant of the early 1400s asks for his own portrait, and the workshop has hardly ever painted one; write the discussion. Fact: portraiture was uncommon in the 14th and early 15th centuries and became common during the 15th.
  • A painter of the early 1300s stops copying the old stiff figures and starts watching people in the street; write his walk to the workshop. Fact: the Proto-Renaissance, 1300 to 1425, began with a painter who based figures on the observation of life.
  • A painter shades every figure on a cathedral wall as if the light fell from the real window beside it; write the hour he spends watching that window. Fact: an Early Renaissance painter (1425 to 1495) lit cathedral figures as if from an actual window there.
  • A Renaissance assistant watches the master blur the edge of a painted cheek until no line is left; write what he tries that night. Fact: sfumato, a mode of the High Renaissance (1495 to 1527), shades light into dark with no lines or borders.
  • A Renaissance painter packs his brushes to leave for the court of another city; write the goodbye in the workshop. Fact: Renaissance painters wandered the length and breadth of Italy, though often attached to one court or town.
  • A Renaissance workshop model is told to stand with all his weight on one leg for the whole morning; write what he learns about statues. Fact: contrapposto, a figure standing with most of its weight on one foot, was revived in the Renaissance.
  • A young Renaissance painter is sent out to draw river eddies, rocks and leaves before he may touch a panel; write what he notices by evening. Fact: Renaissance painters developed the observation of nature and the study of anatomy, light and perspective.
  • Centuries on, a museum scientist finds an earlier pose under the paint of a Renaissance portrait; write the call she makes. Fact: X-rays and infrared photographs can show changes a painter made that later paint covers.
  • The master of a Renaissance workshop changes his mind and paints a hand in a new place; write it as the assistant told to say nothing. Fact: a pentimento is the trace of a form the painter changed and painted over; the word is Italian for repentance.
  • Two Renaissance apprentices argue about why the far hill in the master's picture is paler and bluer than the near one; write the argument. Fact: in aerial perspective, distant objects lose contrast and shift toward a background color, usually bluish.
  • Write a town clerk's diary for the day Renaissance painters arrive to cover the wall of the council chamber. Fact: local government buildings in Renaissance Italy were decorated with frescoes, secular and religious.

Outdoors with the Impressionists 12

  • A critic walks through the Impressionist exhibition of 1874 planning a funny review; write the visit as the attendant who follows him. Fact: a satirical review of the 1874 exhibition gave the Impressionists their name, from a painting's title.
  • A painter of the 1870s carries a canvas to the riverbank to finish it there and not in the studio; write the walk and the first hour. Fact: the Impressionists aimed to complete their paintings out of doors, not to sketch there for studio work.
  • A visitor in 1863 goes to the Paris show of refused paintings meaning to laugh; write what stops her. Fact: the Salon of the Refused, 1863, drew more visitors than the regular Salon; many came only to laugh.
  • An Impressionist races the sunlight on the water before it changes; write the race. Fact: the Impressionists painted outdoors to capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight.
  • An Impressionist sets up her easel facing the new factory chimneys, not away from them; write her talk with a landscape painter of the old school. Fact: Impressionist landscapes included factories; earlier landscape painters had avoided smokestacks.
  • An Impressionist takes the black paint out of her box for good; write how she paints a dark doorway without it. Fact: pure Impressionism avoids black paint; grays and dark tones come from mixing complementary colors.
  • It is April 1874, and thirty artists are hanging their own show in a photographer's studio; write the last evening before the doors open. Fact: thirty artists took part in the first Impressionist exhibition, held in April 1874 in a photographer's studio.
  • On a snowy morning an Impressionist mixes blue, not gray, for the shadows; write what the farmer looking over her shoulder says. Fact: Impressionists painted outdoor shadows with the blue of the sky; blue shadows on snow inspired this.
  • The wind takes the easel, a cow inspects the paint box and it starts to rain; write an Impressionist's worst day outdoors as a comedy. Fact: outdoor painters deal with wind that can topple an easel, rain, shifting light, animals, bugs and onlookers.
  • Write a letter from a young painter of the 1860s whose picture the official Salon jury in Paris has refused again. Fact: in the 1860s the Salon jury routinely rejected about half the works the future Impressionists submitted.
  • Write the diary of a Paris paint seller in the 1860s on the day a new blue arrives in the shop. Fact: cerulean blue went on sale to artists in the 1860s; cobalt blue had been in use by the 1840s.
  • Write the morning an Impressionist first squeezes color from a tin tube in a field, while her old teacher watches. Fact: premixed paint in tin tubes arrived in the mid-1800s; before that, painters ground and mixed their own.

A modern gallery 12

  • A critic of the 1960s has one afternoon to review a show of pop art, op art and minimal art; write her notes. Fact: the 1950s and 1960s saw Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, Op art and Minimal art emerge.
  • A gallery visitor meets her first cubist painting and cannot find the violin its title promises; write her search. Fact: analytic cubism, the first clear form of cubism, was developed from about 1908 through 1912.
  • A modern art museum installs a work so large that visitors walk through it; write a child's path from one end to the other. Fact: in the late 1960s and the 1970s larger installations and performances became widespread in art.
  • A modern painter glues a scrap of printed paper onto a canvas for the first time; write what the framer says. Fact: synthetic cubism, practiced into the 1920s, brought collage and pasted paper into painting.
  • A modern painter of the 1910s wants to paint speed itself; write her morning beside the railway line. Fact: Futurism, which took off in Italy shortly before World War I, celebrated technology, speed and all things new.
  • A painter joins the brand-new Surrealist movement in 1924 and has to explain it at a family dinner; write the dinner. Fact: the word Surrealism dates from 1917; the movement was officially established in 1924, with a manifesto.
  • A painter who loves a picture that tells a story visits a modern gallery in 1925 and finds none; write his letter home. Fact: modern art covers roughly the 1860s to the 1970s, a time of experiment with new ways of seeing.
  • A visitor in the first years of the 1900s walks into a gallery of landscapes in wild colors no field ever had; write the first minute. Fact: early in the 20th century, critics named a style of wild, multi-colored painting Fauvism.
  • After the Second World War a young painter leaves Europe for the United States, where the new art is being made; write the first week. Fact: only after World War II did the United States become the focal point of new artistic movements.
  • An artist of the 1970s makes a work of art out of a hillside, far from any gallery; write the trip of the first visitors to find it. Fact: in the late 1960s and the 1970s land art, performance art and conceptual art drew the attention of curators.
  • It is 1913, and a visitor in the United States buys a ticket to see modern art for the first time; write the ride home. Fact: modern art was introduced to the United States with an exhibition held in 1913.
  • Two friends stand in a modern gallery in front of a painting that shows nothing they can name; write their argument. Fact: much modern art tends away from narrative and toward abstraction.

Look, then write 13

  • Choose a picture and guess what it was made for: a church, a tomb, a dining room, a town square. Write your evidence. Angle: its size, its subject, and how far away it was meant to be seen from.
  • Choose a picture that looks old-fashioned to you and write what was new about it on the day it was finished. Angle: every old picture was once the newest one in the room.
  • Choose any picture and decide who or what is drawn biggest. Write why the artist gave it that much room. Angle: bigger can mean nearer, or it can mean more important. Which is it here?
  • Compare two pictures of the same subject made hundreds of years apart. Write what the later artist kept and what changed. Angle: two horses, two mothers, two harbors. Begin with what stayed the same.
  • Count the colors in any picture, then write about the one the artist used least. Angle: a single red cap, one white sail. Why there, and why so little of it?
  • Find the exact center of any picture. Write about what is there, even if it looks like nothing. Angle: a gap, a doorway, a patch of sky. Why would an artist leave the middle quiet?
  • Look at any painting and work out where the light comes from. Write the scene from the spot where the lamp, window or sun must be. Angle: check the shadows. Do they all agree?
  • Look at any picture and work out where the artist was standing. Write what was behind the artist's back. Angle: high up or low down? Close or far? What could the artist hear from there?
  • Look at one picture for a full minute and follow the path your eye takes. Write the route as directions. Angle: start at the brightest spot, turn left at the red, stop at the hand.
  • Look closely at how a picture was made, and write the artist's first hour of work on it. Angle: what went on first: a drawing, a dark ground, the sky? Look for what lies under what.
  • Pick a picture with people in it and write only about their hands. Angle: holding, pointing, hiding, resting. Hands often tell what the faces will not.
  • Pick any picture and list the clues to when it was made: clothes, tools, buildings, the way it is painted. Then name a century. Angle: write your guess before you read the date. Say which clue fooled you.
  • Search a picture for something the artist changed or covered up. Write the earlier version. Angle: a ghost of a line, a patch that does not match. Guess, and say it is a guess.

How it works

These art history writing prompts put an invented person beside the work as it is made or first shown: a helper, a model, a visitor, an attendant. Most carry a fact from that history, and no artist is named.

Read the full guide

The periods and their dates

The cave prompts reach back more than 30,000 years, and the Egyptian ones belong to a tradition that ran from the 6th millennium BC to the 4th century AD. The Renaissance group covers 1300 to 1527. The Impressionist group runs from the 1860s to the eighth and last group exhibition in 1886, and the modern gallery from the first years of the 1900s to the 1970s.

Look, then write

Thirteen prompts need no dates, only a picture: a postcard, a page in a book, a wall in a museum. They ask for the kind of looking a history of art starts from: where the light comes from, who is drawn biggest, what the picture was made for.

  • Give your invented person a job in the room. Somebody has to hold the ladder.
  • Let the Fact line set a limit: your painter of the 1860s has never heard the word Impressionist.

Questions and answers

What can you write about in art history?

The work, the people around it and the day it was made or first seen. Here that means a child's hand on a cave wall, an Egyptian statue nobody signs, a painter whose picture the Salon has refused again.

Do I need to know art history to use these prompts?

No. The Fact line gives the one thing a prompt needs, such as that pure Impressionism avoided black paint, and the looking prompts ask only for a picture in front of you.

Are there writing prompts about Impressionism?

Twelve, from the refused pictures of the 1860s to the first group exhibition of April 1874: a painter racing the sunlight on the water, a paint seller on the day a new blue arrives, a visitor who came to laugh.

Where do the facts come from?

From eleven Wikipedia articles, named in the notes on this page and read on 15 October 2026. The scene and the people in a prompt are invented; only the line that begins Fact is history.

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