About three years ago I became interested in the productivity of famous and well known artists. I was vaguely aware that some artists were very prolific, and that others did not produce a lot. I wanted to find out how many paintings and drawings were produced by some of the famous and well known artists.

After doing a little research I realized that the information I was looking for is scattered all over the internet, and is often of questionable validity. So I decided that this is going to be a long term project and I will work on it when I have the time. Although I did my best to only use data from reliable sources, the numbers presented in the table below should not be considered completely accurate. Mainly because new works of art may be discovered at any time, and because some of the known artworks may cease being attributed to a particular artist in the future. Thus the numbers can shift either way. Furthermore, some artists destroyed some of their work and some art got lost over time. Therefore, we'll probably never know the entire creative output of any artist. The numbers in the table should be treated as an approximation based on the current knowledge.

It should be noted that these numbers tell us nothing about the amount of work that went into the paintings and drawings of a particular artist. Some artists painted large and realistic paintings that were very time consuming to produce. Others, painted in a style that required much less effort. For example, the 19th century Polish painter Jan Matejko, painted a number of large and detailed paintings that were very time consuming. His largest Painting is 426 cm x 987 cm (13.9 ft x 10.7 yd) and depicts a historical battle scene that took him about 6 years to paint.

I researched over 50 artists but could only find reliable information on 31 of them. I'm sure the data I'm looking for is out there somewhere, but I could not find it. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find information on the number of drawings many of these artist produced. In some cases I could only find a total of works created with no distinction between drawings and paintings.

Finally, I would like to stress that being prolific does not guarantee success. There is a myriad of other factors that influence the degree of success an artist can achieve.

NOTE: There are different conventions regarding readability of long numbers. In the UK and US the comma "," is used to separate groups of thousands (eg. 5000 is often written 5,000). In other countries either a period "." or a space " " is used. To avoid confusion, the numbers in the table are written without any separators (except when quoting a source). Nearly all numbers are short.

Artist name (born-died) Age	Nationality	Art movement	Paintings painted	Drawings drawn	Additional information
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) 78	French	Impressionism	4019	382	plus 148 pastels and 105 watercolors. Source: 1.
William Turner (1775-1851) 76	English	Romanticism	2550	32000	300 sketchbooks, 32000 sketches, 550 oil paintings, 2000 highly detailed and finely finished watercolours. Source: 1, 2.
John Sargent (1856-1925) 69	American	Realism	2300	?	2300 painted works, and many drawings; nearly 600 portraits, approximately 1700 landscapes and subject illustrations of oils and watercolors. Source: 1, 2.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) 91	Spanish	Cubism	1885	12000	"The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000 (by John Selfridge), comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs." Source: 1.
Edvard Munch (1863–1944) 80	Norwegian	Expressionism, Symbolism	1850	7655	28000 works of art, including 378 litographs, 188 etchings, 148 woodcuts, 143 litographic stones, 155 copper plates. Source: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) 73	French	Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism	1719	?	1529 oils, 190 gouaches, 102 pastels, 55 fans, watercolors, drawings, 200 prints. Source: 1, 2.
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) 58	French	Realism	1500	?	A small amount of his paintings was executed in collaboration with his pupils. Source: 1.
Rene Magritte (1898–1967) 68	Belgian	Surrealism	1000	?	Source: 1.
Jan van Goyen (1596–1656) 60	Dutch	Baroque Era	1200	1000	Was active for about 36 years. Source: 1.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917) 83	French	Impressionism	1200	?	plus pastels and charcoal drawings, and 150 sculptures. "Produced approximately 1500 studies on the subject of ballet dancers". Source: 1, 2, 3.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) 86	French	Impressionism	1189	?	About 2500 artworks in all: paintings, drawings and pastels. Source: 1.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) 36	French	Post-Impressionism	1012	5084	737 canvases, 275 watercolors, 363 prints and posters, 300 pornographic works. Source: 1.
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) 67	French	Post-Impressionism	940	?	"Cezanne worked in oil, watercolor, and drawing media, often making several versions of his works." Source: 1, 2.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) 37	Dutch	Post-Impressionism	864	1030	2181 works in total. Source: 1.
Francisco Goya (1746-1828) 82	Spanish	Romanticism, Rococo Art	700	1000	plus 300 prints. Source: 1.
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) 44	American	Abstract Expressionism	363	?	Source: 1.
Jan Matejko (1838-1893) 55	Polish	History painting	300	?	plus "few hundred drawings and sketches". Source: 1.
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) 63	Dutch	Baroque Era	250	2000	plus 300 prints (etchings). Source: 1, 2.
El Greco (1541-1614) 72	Greek	Mannerism	137	?	Source: 1.
Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) 61	Spanish	Baroque Era	120	?	Source: 1.
Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) 56	German	Northern Renaissance	60	1000	plus "some 350 woodcuts and about 130 engravings and etchings". Source: 1, 2.
Georges Seurat (1859-1891) 32	French	Post-Impressionism	47	500	plus "several sketchbooks" Source: 1.
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) 43	Dutch	Baroque Era	34	0	"He left no drawings or preliminary paintings behind." Source: 1, 2.
Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516) 66	Dutch	Northern Renaissance	25	14	Source: 1.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) 67	Italian	High Renaissance	20	4000	"Almost 4000 sheets survive of Leonardo's drawings and notes." Source: 1, 2, 3.
Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) 73	Dutch	undefined	0	2000	plus 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings. Source: 1.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) 62	Flemish	Baroque Era	?	?	"Around 10,000 works of art." "Approximately 1,500 of his works still survive". Source: 1, 2.
Salvador Dali (1904-1989) 84	Spanish	Surrealism	?	?	1000 pictorial works. Source: 1.
Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) 66	German	Romanticism	?	?	Over 500 works. Source: 1.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) 98	American	American modernism	?	?	2029 known works in different mediums. Source: 1, 2.
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) 65	French	Romanticism	?	6000	Over 9000 works of art, including several hundred paintings. Source: 1.