Great Artists Steal: How Artists Really Get Their Ideas

by Debra N. Mancoff

To paraphrase the good borrow, but the truly great artists steal. The great masters of art earned their reputation for supposedly taking art in entirely new directions – for pioneering new techniques, breaking with tradition and busting norms – but behind almost every famous artwork you can find influence and inspiration artfully ‘stolen’ from elsewhere.

Great Artists Steal takes over 30 groundbreaking artworks throughout history and shows how in truth they have their roots firmly in the past or in other works. Andy Warhol was famously obsessed with repurposing and repeating famous images from across history, while visual motifs that originated thousands of years ago are still repeated in contemporary art today. Where does ‘stealing’ begin and copying end, and how do ideas, influence and creativity travel across different generations of artists and artworks?

From the accidental to the purposeful, the innocent to the malicious, Great Artists Steal looks at all the ways famous artists have begged and borrowed their way to greatness. Whether you’re an art student, enthusiast or novice, this book will provide you with a new perspective on the history of art, and tell some fascinating stories along the way.

324 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 25, 2026

Reviews

[LM]

The notion that artists "steal" is not new. Humans get inspiration from the world around us. But what Debra Mancoff accomplishes is to show you side-by-side where the artists stole from. Some of the comparative artworks are very well known. I love that the author places them and details the comparison and inspiration behind some of these famous paintings. From DaVinci to Monet, these artists served as either the inspiration or the nod to the former. I found myself imagining how they came across the inspiration and how it developed into their own masterpiece. The pieces that we speak of are before the internet, before photographs were common. They sketched these amazing works of art and morphed them into their own. I could read about artists all day. This book was such an amazing gift into the thought process of the genius minds and how their creative inspiration took spark. Thank you to Debra Mancoff and Edelweiss for the DRC. It was such a pleasure to preview this beautiful book!