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 2,000, 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.
or browse by subject → or browse by painter →
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.
47 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.
55 pictures →
Light, caught quickly
Impressionism
Dancers at the barre, gardens, boats and quiet rooms painted in broken, shimmering strokes. Degas, Manet, Pissarro, Renoir, Morisot, Sisley. Colour over line, a moment rather than a record.
50 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.
42 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.
29 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.
46 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.
39 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.
36 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.
23 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. Kōrin, Sōtatsu's studio, 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.
27 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. Sesson, Hakuin, Sengai and the monks around them worked almost entirely in black, and left most of the sheet alone.
20 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. Chokha, Ghasi, the Stipple Master and the generation after Nainsukh worked in flat opaque colour and gold, and framed almost every one of these in a red or blue border.
25 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.
14 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.
12 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.
16 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.
30 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 from Velázquez's workshop in a vast grey dress, and Goya's boy in red with his magpie on a string. Dark grounds, and very little between you and the sitter.
17 pictures →
Out of Paris, into the forest
Barbizon School
French painters who left Paris for the forest of Fontainebleau and the fields around it, between the 1830s and the 1870s. Rousseau's forest going dark on a winter evening, Daubigny's ducks on a still river, Millet's woman with a rake, Corot's reader in a grey green light. Oaks, ponds, animals on the road to market, and wide, low skies over all of it.
21 pictures →
Things as they were
Realism
Painting from the middle of the eighteen hundreds that looked hard at ordinary things and did not dress them up. Rosa Bonheur's horse fair churning up the dust, Courbet's young ladies of the village giving alms to a cowherd girl, weeders bent over a field at dusk, sheep brought home to the fold, a great cheese on a kitchen table. Heavy paint, earth colours and working light.
26 pictures →
Storm, moonlight and feeling
Romanticism
Painting from the first half of the eighteen hundreds that wanted weather and feeling more than calm. Delacroix's Christ asleep in the boat while the storm breaks over it, a ship by moonlight, a mother and child looking out to sea at night, Rebecca carried off on horseback, Géricault's aqueduct in the evening light. Dark water, torn skies and a single bright colour where it counts.
20 pictures →
Antwerp in the sixteen hundreds
Flemish Baroque
Painting from Antwerp and the southern Netherlands in the early sixteen hundreds, full of flesh, fur and appetite. Rubens with his young wife and their small son, a wolf and fox hunt in full cry, Van Dyck's earl at full length, Brouwer's smokers in a tavern, and game, hares and baskets of flowers by Fyt, Snyders and Clara Peeters. Warm skin, deep reds and a great deal going on.
20 pictures →
Britain, from Gainsborough to Turner
British Painting
British painting from the 1760s to the 1860s, a century of portraits, horses and weather. Gainsborough's cottage children gathering wood, Reynolds's Lady Smith with her children, Stubbs's hunter held by a groom, Landseer's deerhound, Constable's Salisbury Cathedral framed by trees, and Turner's whalers lost in the spray. Soft skies, silk and a good deal of cloud.
33 pictures →
Venice in the seventeen hundreds
Venetian Painting
Venice in its last century as a republic, painted for the travellers who came to see it and the families who lived there. Canaletto's Piazza San Marco, the Rialto and the Salute across the water from Guardi's workshop, masked gamblers at the Ridotto, Longhi's small rooms where a letter arrives or a visitor calls, and Tiepolo's sketches for ceilings full of gods and cloud. Clear light, pale stone and a sky over everything.
24 pictures →
Rome and Paris in the sixteen hundreds
Italian and French Baroque
Painting from Rome, Bologna, Naples and Paris in the sixteen hundreds, when light itself became the drama. Caravaggio's young musicians crowded round a lute, La Tour's young man having his fortune told while his pocket is picked, Reni's Virgin standing on the moon, Poussin's blind giant walking toward the sunrise, and Claude's Roman countryside turning gold in the evening. Deep shadow, strong colour and a light that always comes from somewhere.
21 pictures →
Wild valleys and golden air
Hudson River School
American painters of the middle 1800s who carried their easels up the Hudson, and then a long way further. Cole’s ruined arch above the plain at Tivoli, Church’s Andes with a waterfall in the middle distance, Bierstadt’s granite walls over the Merced in Yosemite, Lane’s Gloucester harbour at sundown, a man sitting by Heade’s black water as the storm comes in, and Heade’s hummingbird among red passionflowers.
16 pictures →
Saints on gold, Siena to Venice
Gothic Painting
Painting on wooden panels in Siena, Florence and Venice, from the late 1200s into the 1400s. Duccio’s Madonna with the child reaching for her veil, Giotto’s kings at the stable with one kneeling in red, Pietro Lorenzetti’s Crucifixion crowded with horsemen, Lorenzo Monaco’s Nativity with the child lying in gold rays, and Giovanni di Paolo’s round world beside Adam and Eve sent out of the garden. Tempera, gold leaf and a great deal of blue.
16 pictures →
Tomb walls, copied by hand
Egyptian Tomb Painting
Copies, not the ancient walls. Between about 1907 and 1937 the artists of the Met’s Egyptian Expedition, Nina and Norman de Garis Davies, Charles K. Wilkinson, Lancelot Crane and Hugh R. Hopgood, painted them in tempera on paper, copying tombs at Thebes and Beni Hasan that were decorated about 1900 to 1300 BCE. Weavers at a loom, a carpenter making a chair, geese and ducks, men gathering papyrus, and the king with Anubis, Isis and Horus.
17 pictures →
Smooth paint and the Paris Salon
Academic Painting
The painting the Paris Salon favoured in the later 1800s, finished so smoothly that the brush almost disappears. Bouguereau’s Breton girl holding her little brother, Cot’s young lovers running from the storm under a billowing cloth, Cabanel’s Venus stretched out on a wave, Bonnat’s girl drinking at a Roman fountain, Gérôme’s tiger lying among dark rocks, and Meissonier’s cuirassiers charging past Napoleon at Friedland.
16 pictures →
Dreams, myths and moonlight
Symbolism
Late nineteenth-century painters in France, Britain, Switzerland, Belgium and America who painted dreams and myths more than the world outside. Puvis de Chavannes’s sleepers under a low moon, Moreau’s sphinx clinging to Oedipus, Burne-Jones’s knight listening at the organ, Ryder’s boat under a yellow moon, Vedder’s sea serpent in the dunes, and Redon’s flowers on a rust-red ground.
16 pictures →
From Copenhagen to the North Cape
Nordic Painting
Painters from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, from the Danish Golden Age to the early 1900s, at home and on their travels south. Hansen’s columns at Paestum framing a blue sky, Dahl’s Vesuvius in eruption, Fearnley’s waterfalls at Gudvangen, Balke’s North Cape by moonlight, Rørbye’s sentries on the Copenhagen ramparts at night, Hammershøi’s empty room with moonlight on the floor, and Zorn’s sitters in pink silk and black.
18 pictures →
White muslin, firm outlines and Roman hills
Neoclassicism
Rome and Paris, from about 1760 to 1830, when painters looked back to ancient sculpture and drew a clear, firm line. Batoni’s young man in a red coat beside a gilded table, Mengs’s portrait of the scholar Winckelmann with an open book, Villers’s young woman drawing against a bright window, Talleyrand at his desk and his wife in white, and Simon Denis’s small oil sketches of the hills at Tivoli, painted out of doors.
16 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.