Pictures to build
Jigsaw puzzles by art style.
Every picture here is a real work from The Met's open collection, free to build as a jigsaw puzzle by art style, from Ukiyo-e woodblock prints to Impressionist paintings. Pieces run from 25 up to 600, so you can start light or take your time. Pick one to solve alone, or share the same cut with a friend far away, each showing your own picture over it.
Japanese woodblock prints
Ukiyo-e
Floating-world prints from Edo Japan. Hokusai's waves, Hiroshige's rain, travellers on mountain roads. Flat blocks of colour, confident outlines, and weather you can almost feel.
25 pictures →
17th-century Netherlands
Dutch Golden Age
Lamplit interiors, wind-bitten landscapes and unflinching portraits from the Dutch 1600s. Rembrandt, Hals, Ruisdael. Deep shadow, warm skin, and a single fall of light.
28 pictures →
Light, caught quickly
Impressionism
Gardens, riverbanks and quiet rooms painted in broken, shimmering strokes. Monet, Cassatt, Pissarro, Morisot, Degas. Colour over line, a moment rather than a record.
28 pictures →
After the light
Post-Impressionism
Where colour turns structural and personal. The coiling brushwork of Van Gogh, Gauguin's flat heat, Seurat's dots, Rousseau's dreamed jungles. Feeling built deliberately, mark by mark.
30 pictures →
Quiet arrangements
Still Life
Flowers past their best, fruit and silver and the slow drama of a tabletop, from Dutch pronkstilleven to the hush of a single flower piece. Small worlds, lovingly lit.
14 pictures →
Field, river, weather
European Landscape
Quiet country and changing skies from 19th-century Europe. Corot's silvery groves, Daubigny's riverbanks, the Barbizon hush, a Constable cloud. Land as a mood.
25 pictures →
The Italian 1400s and 1500s
Italian Renaissance
Tempera and oil from Renaissance Italy. Botticelli's clean line, Crivelli's jewelled saints, Bellini's hushed light, Mantegna's hard clarity. Gold grounds, clear colour and faces that have outlasted five centuries.
25 pictures →
The American 1800s
American Painting
Paint from the young United States. Sargent's quick society faces, Eakins' steady gaze, Whistler's grey harmonies, Chase's sunlit rooms, Kensett's still water. Plain light, real people, an easy unhurried air.
26 pictures →
The German and Flemish 1400s and 1500s
Northern Renaissance
Oil and engraving from Germany and the Low Countries. Cranach's slender Venuses and Edens, Dürer's needle-fine prints, Memling's quiet devotion, Holbein's level gaze. Jewelled colour, hard clear line, and a love of the smallest detail.
25 pictures →
Petals, caught in oil
Flowers
Sunflowers, roses, irises and wild bouquets, painted by artists who loved them almost too much. Van Gogh's thick, urgent petals, Renoir's soft roses, Fantin-Latour's quiet arrangements, Redouté's exact botanical studies. Colour for its own sake.
16 pictures →
Ink and colour on silk
Chinese Painting
Mountains and mist, bamboo, a plum branch in snow, a single boat on still water. Ink and soft colour on silk and paper, from the hands of Shen Zhou, Zhao Mengfu, Ni Zan and Wang Hui. Much of the picture is left as open space, so the eye can rest.
23 pictures →
Posters and lithographs of the 1890s
Art Nouveau
Montmartre in the 1890s, when the printed poster became an art form. Toulouse-Lautrec's cabaret nights and the faces that filled them: Aristide Bruant in his red scarf, La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge, Sarah Bernhardt on stage. Steinlen, Eugène Grasset and Ethel Reed print alongside him. Flat colour, whiplash line, and hand-drawn lettering that curls around the picture.
19 pictures →
Creatures, painted with affection
Animals
Horses waiting in harness, a deerhound looking straight past you, sheep coming home at dusk, ducks resting in the sun. Painters have always been fonder of animals than they let on, and Bonheur, Landseer, Oudry and Troyon spent whole careers proving it.
18 pictures →
Water, weather and the way home
The Sea
Boats at anchor, a harbour going quiet at dusk, fishing fleets working a grey morning, open water under a sky that is about to change its mind. Painters have followed the sea for four centuries and it has never once held still for them.
14 pictures →
Snow, ice and short days
Winter
Snow the way painters have actually met it: a plum branch under fresh snow, bamboo bent with the weight of it, a Dutch river crowded with skaters, puppies in a drift. Mostly ink and colour on silk, with a few European winters among them. Cold weather painted from somewhere warm, which is the kindest way to meet it.
18 pictures →
Screens, scrolls and gold leaf
Japanese Painting
Painted Japan rather than printed Japan: white hollyhocks on paper, Kōrin's rough waves, a plum tree carried across four sliding doors. Sōtatsu and Kōrin, the Kano workshops, Ōkyo and Rosetsu. A kingfisher, a deer, small birds in the autumn millet, court women in a garden, mountains under a moon, in ink, colour and gold on paper and silk.
18 pictures →
Brush, ink and bare paper
Zen Ink
Ink painting from Japan's Zen temples, and from the workshops that carried it on. Mountains left half in mist, gibbons in the trees, a cat asleep on bare paper, Bodhidharma looking straight back at you. Sesshū, Sesson, Hakuin and the monks around them worked almost entirely in black, and left most of the sheet alone.
18 pictures →
Miniatures from the Indian courts
Indian Painting
Small paintings from the courts of Rajasthan and the Punjab hills, made between about 1520 and 1870. Rama and Sita in the forest, Krishna among the wrestlers, a maharana on a grey stallion, a lady at her mirror, a game of pachisi on a terrace. Nainsukh, Chokha, Ghasi and the Stipple Master worked in flat opaque colour and gold, and framed almost every one of these in a red or blue border.
21 pictures →
Tibet and Nepal, painted on cloth
Himalayan Painting
Thangkas and mandalas from Tibet and the Kathmandu Valley, the oldest of them close to eight hundred years old. A green Buddha under an arch of small seated figures, Mahakala in a ring of fire, the sun god’s mandala circled by its planets. Mineral colour ground into distemper and painted on cotton, in deep reds and greens that have kept their heat.
12 pictures →
Joseon, ink and colour on silk
Korean Painting
A small, quiet room of Korean painting. A scholar in a black robe and horsehair hat, bamboo bending in wind, a hawk on a rock under a red morning sun, ten panels of birds and flowers on gold. Ink and colour on silk from the Joseon centuries, most of it gone warm brown with age, which is how silk keeps time.
10 pictures →
Book painting from Iran and Herat
Persian Painting
Pages lifted out of Persian books, painted between about 1340 and 1740. Isfandiyar meets his dragon, dervishes turn in a garden, birds gather along a stream, two lovers lean into one another on a ground of gold. Firdausi's Shahnama gave most of the stories. Riza-yi 'Abbasi and the painters around him worked small, in bright mineral colour and gold, and left a border of script running around the picture.
14 pictures →
Paris in the seventeen hundreds
French Rococo
French painting from the middle of the seventeen hundreds, when a portrait was mostly a study of cloth. Boucher's shepherds asleep under a tree, washerwomen at a stream, Nattier's sitters in blue and grey silk, a girl by Fragonard holding her small sister. Soft light, powdered hair, and a great deal of satin catching it.
15 pictures →
Four centuries out of Spain
Spanish Painting
Spanish painting across four hundred years, from small gold-ground panels of about 1496 to a masked ball in 1909. El Greco's Christ under the cross, a queen by Velázquez in a vast grey dress, and five by Goya, among them the boy in red with his magpie on a string. Dark grounds, and very little between you and the sitter.
13 pictures →Questions
A few honest answers.
Can I play these paintings as a jigsaw online for free?
Yes. Every picture here, painting or print, is free to build as an online jigsaw, right in your browser. No sign-up, no app, nothing to download. Pick one, choose your piece count, and start.
Where do the paintings come from?
They are all from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access collection, which means they are in the public domain and free for anyone to use. You are building real works from the Met, not stock pictures.
How many pieces should an art jigsaw be?
It depends on the picture. A busy, detailed painting carries a lot of small clues, so it stays easy even at a high count. A calm, flat one is harder, so drop the count. Each style page suggests a good range to start from.
Can I build one with a friend?
Yes. Any painting can be built solo or shared with one person far away on the same cut, with voice and chat. You can even each lay your own picture over the same pieces.