Art appreciation app for iPhone and iPad
Every day we pick a true masterpiece and pair it with a story of a thousand words or more: first where to look, then why each stroke was painted the way it was.
Sunflowers · Van Gogh
Stacks of Wheat · Monet
Girl with a Pearl Earring · Vermeer
Red Fuji · Hokusai
The Night Watch · Rembrandt
The Scream · Munch
View of Delft · Vermeer
Almond Blossom · Van Gogh
Mona Lisa · Leonardo
Impression, Sunrise · Monet
The Great Wave · Hokusai
Flowers in a Vase · Ruysch
La Grande Jatte · Seurat
Lozenge Composition · Mondrian
Primavera · Botticelli
Snow Storm · Turner
Nocturne: Blue and Gold · Whistler
Open it every day and you get
The daily painting changes with the date. Each work appears once per full cycle, and the same artist never shows up two days in a row. The Home Screen widget switches to the day’s painting too.
10/28The Starry Night · Van Gogh
10/29Mona Lisa · Leonardo
Today · Oct 30Primavera · Botticelli
10/31The Last Supper · Leonardo
11/01Girl with a Pearl Earring · VermeerThe Art Map pins 114 public collections at their real locations. Tap one to see which paintings it holds, how to get there and when it’s open.
Each story starts with where to look, in short sections you can finish.
The Starry Night · Vincent van Gogh
Before sunrise, Van Gogh saw a single morning star from his window at the asylum in Saint-Rémy. The sky fills three quarters of the canvas, above a village, a church and a cypress.
Largely self taught, he made over 2,000 works in about ten years. Paris in 1886 brightened his palette and loosened his brushwork.
The moonlight sits in visible rings, and up close the paint stands in ridges. The dark cypress covers the village and sets near against far.
In a letter to Theo around June 18, this was still a new study of a starry sky, mentioned beside an olive tree landscape.
Why we made it
Museums are crowded, and most online notes run two or three lines. Every Great Artist story starts from details you can find in the picture.
INSIDE THE PAINTING
Up close, the strokes carry raised ridges of paint, called impasto. From afar a current of light; close up, paint with width and direction.
Van Gogh wrote that before sunrise he saw only the morning star, “which looked very large.” Its glow owes as much to the deep blue around it as to the yellow.
The nearest tree covers part of the village and hills. That overlap builds depth: we seem to stand beside it, looking past it into the distance.
An orange crescent sits on a pale yellow disk, ringed by strokes of greenish white and light blue. The edges stay unblended, so the light spills past the moon.
The steeple rises too, but thin and straight against the cypress’s broad, wavering outline. One near, one far, the two verticals brace the spreading night.
A few yellow windows echo the great halos overhead, much more quietly. Sky and earth share the same colors.
Long reads1,000+ words each
SourcedNumbered at the end
OfflineWorks with no signal
iPhone · iPad · iPhone Duo
The bigger the screen, the better the painting looks. On iPad and an unfolded iPhone Duo, the whole painting stays on the left while the story scrolls on the right, so you can glance back at the brushwork as you read. What takes switching back and forth on a phone fits in a single view here.
iPad, landscape
iPhone Duo, unfolded sideways
On a wide landscape window the painting shows in full at its true proportions, and the story scrolls on its own. The painting stays put while you read.
Turn the screen, or fold the Duo and open it again. The painting you’re on, your favorites and your puzzle progress all stay as they were.
The Gallery, the Art Map and Profile adjust their columns and margins to the actual window size, so Split View on iPad reads just as well.
iPhone and iPad run the same app. Restore Purchases on your iPad with the same Apple Account and membership is ready to use.
Puzzle check-in
Today’s painting doubles as a sliding puzzle. There are no numbers on the tiles, so you have to follow the brushstrokes and patches of color. Finish it to check in, and the Art Calendar keeps a thumbnail of every painting you’ve looked at.
Try the one on this page. Tap a tile next to the empty space to slide it over.
Shuffled and ready
Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889
You don’t have to wait for a museum trip to see a masterpiece.
Understand one a day,
and a year holds 365 stories.
No payment needed
Every other work comes with its high-resolution image, title and complete opening.
The first time you open it
Go with your gut on colors, brushwork and everyday interests, and the app matches you with an artist, complete with a color theme and check-in wording. It’s a game of taste, not a personality test, and you can switch anytime in Settings.
Pricing
Free
Membership
Looking, the puzzle and the map are free, and so are ten full stories. Membership just lets you finish the other 1,215.
The membership price is whatever the App Store in-app purchase page shows. It’s set in your local currency, so we don’t list an amount here.
FAQ
It will be free to download. The daily painting, puzzle check-ins, the Art Map, high-resolution images of every painting, and the artist and museum profiles are all free. Ten masterpieces come with their full stories; for every other work you can read the title and the complete opening, and membership unlocks the remaining sections.
No. Membership is a one-time purchase with no auto-renewal. It’s priced in your local currency; the App Store in-app purchase page shows the current price.
Yes. iPhone and iPad run the same app. Sign in with the same Apple Account and tap Restore Purchases in Profile. Favorites and check-in history are stored on each device.
iPhone and iPad, with iOS 17 or iPadOS 17 or later. iPad has its own layouts for portrait, landscape and Split View, and on an unfolded iPhone Duo the painting and the story sit side by side.
The stories are written with AI assistance, then revised paragraph by paragraph against both the English and Chinese versions, with dates, names, materials and collection details checked again. References are numbered and listed at the end. This is not the same as a publisher’s human editing, so if you spot a mistake, tap Feedback on the artwork page and let us know.
Yes. Every painting and story is built into the app, so you can look, read and play the puzzle offline. The Art Map’s base map needs a connection.
Yes. Every story, all 347 artists and every museum have a complete English version. Switch between English and 中文 in the app with one tap, and it remembers your choice.
The map shows the verified holding institution or long-term loan location. That doesn’t guarantee the painting is in the galleries today, so check the museum’s website before making a special trip.
There is no ad tracking. Favorites and check-ins stay on your device; Feedback and the Art Map only handle the data each one needs for its own purpose. See the Privacy Policy for details.
Coming soon to the App Store. Free to download, starting with ten full stories.
Coming soonFor iPhone and iPad, requires iOS 17 or iPadOS 17 or later
