Our taste for fine art can develop from a very early age, researchers say, after discovering that even four-month-old babies can demonstrate artistic preferences.
When shown landscapes by the Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, psychologists at the University of Surrey found that both infants and adults mostly preferred the same paintings, and the Green Cornstalk (1888) turned out to be the most popular.
The team at the University of Sussex Baby Lab also found that babies liked pictures that had more corners – such as those with leaves or branches – and curved lines.
In their findings, published in the Journal of Vision, the researchers said that aspects of artistic preferences can be linked from an early age.
Philip McAdams, a PhD researcher at the University of Sussex and lead author of the study, said: "It was fascinating to find that babies respond to the basic building blocks of pictures, such as edges and colours, and that these properties can explain a number of of the reasons why babies watch and adults like particular works of art".
"Our study also appears to have identified features of adult aesthetics that can be traced to sensory biases from infancy. Our findings show that infants' visual systems and visual preferences are more sophisticated than commonly thought," he emphasized.

Van Gogh's most favorite painting was "Green Corn Stalks" while his least favorite was "Olive Grove".
The researchers also found small differences in artistic tastes between adults and infants.