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Frequently asked questions
What is Everyday A Painting?
Everyday A Painting is a daily art app for iPhone. Reveal one painting, follow a guided Story that brings individual details into view, and add the work to your personal museum when you finish. Each day gives you something specific to notice and understand, with your collection growing as you complete more Stories.
How does the daily reveal work?
Each painting unlocks at midnight in your device's current time zone. Press and hold, and the painting surfaces under your fingertip. There is one painting a day — never a feed — and changing time zones never removes paintings that have already become available. After the reveal, the story begins.
What is Story mode?
After the reveal, the painting opens full screen and a short guided story walks you through it one thought at a time. The text lights up word by word while a cinematic camera moves across the canvas to the exact detail being described — for example Stańczyk's clenched hands, the card on the table, or the ball behind him. You move at your own pace: tap to continue, hold to see the artwork alone.
How do I build a personal museum in the app?
Complete a painting's Story to collect it. Your collected works contribute to sets grouped by artist, era, museum, movement and theme, including monthly Expositions. The monthly calendar lets you revisit your progress. Revealing a painting is the first step; finishing its Story is what adds it to your museum.
Where do the paintings and stories come from?
The catalog is built from public-domain and open-access artworks from major museum collections, such as the National Museum in Warsaw, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Every painting carries its source, rights label, and attribution, and each story is written and reviewed editorially with the museum's collection record as the anchor.
Is Everyday A Painting free, or does it need a subscription?
The app requires an active subscription. It gives you the guided daily experience: uncover a painting, follow its Story, and build your personal museum through Story completion. Eligible new subscribers may receive a 7-day free trial. The available plans, full price, billing period and any trial are shown before purchase. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled in your Apple Account settings. The painting explanations on this website are free to read.
Which devices does it support, and when does it launch?
The app is built for iPhone and is coming to the App Store — the release is in progress.
What languages does it support?
The complete app and every Story are available in 43 languages.
Does the app or website show ads or track me?
No advertising. The website uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, a privacy-first measurement tool that collects aggregate page views and performance data without cookies, fingerprinting, or personal data. Details are in the privacy policy.
Is there an app that shows you a painting every day?
Yes. Everyday A Painting reveals one public-domain painting each day on iPhone, held behind a mist until you uncover it with a touch. Unlike an art feed, there is exactly one work per day and no infinite scroll, so the choice of what to look at is already made for you.
Can a beginner learn art history with this app?
You can start without knowing artists' names or art movements. Each Story begins with a painting and guides your attention to details, relationships and context. For example, The Swing becomes easier to understand when you follow the flying slipper and notice the two men below it. This is a daily way to practise looking and meet individual works; it does not replace a chronological art-history course.
How should I choose an art history app?
Start with what you want to do: search a collection, follow a structured course, or make time for one painting each day. Check whether an app explains details clearly, names its sources, supports your language and makes its subscription terms clear. Everyday A Painting is designed for the daily habit, with guided Stories and a personal museum built through completion. You can read the public painting examples to see whether that approach suits you.
What is different about the guided Stories?
The camera moves to the detail being discussed while the text unfolds, helping you connect an explanation to the painting itself. Finishing the Story makes that work part of your collection. The value builds across days: you return to paintings you have spent time understanding and see them connect through artists, museums, movements and themes.
How can I start looking closely at a painting?
Notice: choose one detail and describe what you can actually see. Connect: follow its relationship to another figure, object or patch of light. Check: read the museum's account, separating documented context from your own interpretation. Try this with the contrast of light and darkness in The Nightmare, or start with our one-detail painting challenge.
Which famous paintings does the app explain?
The catalog spans hundreds of works across eras and movements — from Jan Matejko's Stańczyk and Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper to Fragonard's The Swing, Goya's late paintings, and Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Five full story examples are published on this site.