The Weird Wing · 30 worksNot the usual
Not the usual
museum gift shop.
Demons, skeleton armies, a rhinoceros nobody had seen, and a bulldog cheating at cards. Every one is public domain, free to download, and ready to frame like anything else on the board.
Cursed
Demons, skeletons, apocalypses. Hang one and the room gets a personality.
The NightmareHenry Fuseli · 1781A sleeping woman, a demon sitting on her chest and a horse's head poking through the curtains. This was a bestseller in 1782.
Dulle Griet (Mad Meg)Pieter Bruegel the Elder · 1563A woman in armour with a frying pan and a basket of loot marches straight into the mouth of Hell. She looks unbothered.
The Fall of the Rebel AngelsPieter Bruegel the Elder · 1562Saint Michael, in shiny armour, throws bug-eyed fish-monsters out of Heaven. The monsters look like they've been to a very strange party.
The CyclopsOdilon Redon · ca. 1914A giant one-eyed creature peeks over a hill at a sleeping woman. It looks less terrifying than curious.
Isle of the DeadArnold Böcklin · 1883A boat carries a white-robed figure and a coffin toward a rock covered with cypress trees. This was the most popular print in Europe for decades.
Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton SpectreUtagawa Kuniyoshi · ca. 1844A giant skeleton rears up in a ruined palace, and a witch on a scroll calmly summons it. The best three-panel print in the world.
The Ghost of Kohada KoheijiKatsushika Hokusai · ca. 1831–32A rotted skeleton peeks around a mosquito net at his killers. Hokusai's best ghost, and one of the scariest images in Japan.
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air PumpJoseph Wright of Derby · 1768A showman is about to suffocate a cockatoo for science. Everyone around the table reacts differently.
The Destruction of LeviathanGustave Doré · 1865A sea serpent arches out of a storm with a rainbow behind it. Doré engraved the Bible as a monster manual.
The Great Day of His WrathJohn Martin · 1851–53The Apocalypse, in IMAX. Cities fall, mountains split, and the people on the ledge are the size of ants.Funny
Dogs playing poker, a man made of vegetables, cats as a road trip.
The ConjurerHieronymus Bosch · ca. 1502A street magician does the cups-and-balls while a man in the crowd gets his pocket picked.
The Ship of FoolsHieronymus Bosch · ca. 1500A nun, a monk and a crowd of idiots play lute and eat pancakes on a boat with a tree for a mast.
A Friend in Need (Dogs Playing Poker)Cassius Marcellus Coolidge · 1903A bulldog slips an ace under the table to a mate. The most famous painting ever sold for cigar-store walls.
VertumnusGiuseppe Arcimboldo · 1590–91The Holy Roman Emperor, made entirely of fruit and vegetables. He loved it.
The LibrarianGiuseppe Arcimboldo · ca. 1566A man built of books, with a bookmark for a nose. Possibly an insult. Possibly the best thing ever painted for a library.
The Netherlandish ProverbsPieter Bruegel the Elder · 1559A whole village acting out more than a hundred proverbs at once. Banging your head against a wall is the least of them.
The RhinocerosAlbrecht Dürer · 1515Dürer never saw the animal. He drew it from a sketch and a description, and got the armour plating gloriously wrong.
Surprised! (Tiger in a Tropical Storm)Henri Rousseau · 1891A tiger creeps through a rainstorm, ready to pounce. Rousseau's first jungle painting, and a very friendly one.
Cats Suggested as the Fifty-three Stations of the TokaidoUtagawa Kuniyoshi · ca. 1848Cats arranged to look like the 53 stops on Japan's famous road. Kuniyoshi had a lot of cats.
The Plum-Pudding in DangerJames Gillray · 1805Pitt and Napoleon carve up the globe like a Christmas pudding. Still the most useful cartoon of the last two centuries.
Beer StreetWilliam Hogarth · 1751Gin Lane's cheerful twin. Everyone is fat, jolly and employed, and the only man starving is the pawnbroker.
The BookwormCarl Spitzweg · ca. 1850A librarian on a ladder has gone for one book and is still there, with another under each arm and a third under his chin.Scandalous
Satire and provocations that annoyed the powerful, and the odd picture that got its painter in trouble.
VampireEdvard Munch · 1895A woman embraces a man's neck, her red hair pouring over him. Munch called it Love and Pain; a critic renamed it.
The Earth Spider Conjures Up DemonsUtagawa Kuniyoshi · 1843Looks like a monster party. It was read as a hit on the shogun's reforms, and the censors noticed.
A Voluptuary Under the Horrors of DigestionJames Gillray · 1792The future king George IV, vast and miserable after dinner, picking his teeth. He did not like it.
Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889James Ensor · 1888Jesus rides into a city of masked, grinning creeps. Ensor's own group refused to show it.Eccentric
Jellyfish chandeliers, a customs officer’s jungle, a skull you have to squint at.
Melencolia IAlbrecht Dürer · 1514A winged figure slumps among her tools, surrounded by a magic square, a bat and a sleeping dog. The most famous bad mood in art.
Discomedusae (Kunstformen der Natur)Ernst Haeckel · 1904Jellyfish drawn so precisely they look like Art Nouveau lamps. A biology textbook that accidentally started a design movement.
The AmbassadorsHans Holbein the Younger · 1533Two rich men pose with all their gadgets, and a stretched-out skull lies on the floor between them. You have to step to the side to see it.
Hydrangeas and FowlItō Jakuchū · ca. 1757–66An Edo-period eccentric who painted chickens as obsessively as a naturalist. He kept a flock in his garden just for this.Build a set from any of these →
Every work here is a famous museum piece in the public domain, chosen for being odd, not for being shocking. We keep the Weird Wing clear of nudity and graphic violence, in line with Amazon's print service and affiliate program rules, so those pieces stay in the museums. Amazon sets all prices and availability and may pay us a commission. How we get paid