Before we begin the Art Quiz, I want to invite you to the start of a new Art Mystery, which will be published tomorrow night. It involves the title image and Leonardo da Vinci, an Emeritus Professor of Art History at Oxford University, an English newspaper, a teenage cashier, multiple lawsuits and possibly a forger. This Art Mystery will be unlike others that I have published. It will be a “trekking journal” as we journey together towards a solution to the central question: Who drew that stunning woman?
Did that pique your interest? I hope so because this mystery has been a blast so far, and we’re just getting started. With that, let’s move on to tonight’s entertainment.
The Art Quiz
Today’s Art Quiz involves various subjects that painters like to paint. The subjects include skies, landscapes, perspective, animals, children and so on. As usual, I will give you a detail or small piece of the painting and ask you to figure out the artist and the title of the painting. Some of these are very hard, so don’t get down on yourself because others are very easy, and you will feel better.
All of them are beautiful or interesting. So, Pencils Up!
SKIES
This is a detail from a painting by an artist who may have been the best ever at painting water. His name is synonymous with it. Yet, he was also cracking good at painting skies. The clue you are looking at is a little disingenuous in that the artist painted a scene from London, but he did not hail from that country originally. This was painted by an Italian in 1752.
Like an opera by Wagner, this painter got in your face with majesty and bravura. He was best known for his large canvases depicting the American west. Thinking of this artist, I have taken pictures of large cloud formations and sent them to my Sister with the message, “You need to paint this!”
This is another painter who was lionized for his paintings of water scenes. Sometimes you could hardly tell where the water ended and the sky began! You can tell that the artist would take a cloth to the wet paint to create his trademark swirling effects. This painting is on display at the Tate in the United Kingdom. It was painted in 1842 by an Englishman.
PERSPECTIVE
This detail from a gorgeous painting displays an amazing aerial perspective and wonderful skill at foreshortening … in a self-portrait! Who would dare to do that? She was an Italian Baroque Master and follower of the great Caravaggio in the Seventeenth Century.
The Renaissance artist who painted this is also featured in the Art Mystery that we’ll publish tomorrow night. Does the background in this detail remind you of anything? We’ve probably already given the game away, but I will tell you that this piece was painted about 1503 by an Italian artist.
CHILDREN
There are some paintings I like simply for the “squee” factor. What a delight this one is! The artist is not very famous, so you don’t have to worry one bit if you get it wrong. Just enjoy the full painting below. Cheers!
This one you should know.
It was painted by one of the best painters our world has ever seen. Tell me in the comments what mood you think the painter captured in the painting. I think trepidation, which would be serendipitous in an unfortunate way. It was painted by a Spaniard in 1659.
This painting has a “double squee” effect. You’ve got a cute but somewhat disinterested kid sitting next to a cute but somewhat disinterested dog. The Impressionist Master painted this scene in 1878 in France, although she was American.
ANIMALS
This is pretty obviously a horse. Yet, this horse is dolled up like it performs at the Folies Bergère. Also, in the upper-right-hand quadrant of the small detail, you can see what looks like a small bit of arm. Well, I can tell you that that is indeed a small bit of arm. Note the color of the garment. What historical figure was associated with that color and rode magnificent horses? It was painted by a Frenchman in 1801.
Like numbers, not all animals are real. Some are imaginary. I’ve always been drawn to this picture because the large white and blue circles look like the symbols you might find on the wings of a World War I airplane. This stunning, almost alien, masterpiece was completed by an Italian in 1470.
Some animals are more imaginary than others. The Dutch painter who created this beautiful monster is believed to have worked on the whole triptych from 1495 to 1505. So, while the Renaissance was picking up a head of steam in Italy with beautiful images and the re-emergence of Science, this artist from a Low Country was busy depicting the denizens of an even lower country.
CONFLICT
This is a pretty famous letter and arm. I suspect you know this one. One word in the painting’s title is written pretty clearly on the letter. This ghastly painting was created by a Frenchman in 1793.
What do you think is happening in this scene? That young man has a gun in one hand and a sword in the other. What’s the fair maiden doing? Looks can be deceiving! This small detail contains but half of a story that the larger painting reveals. A French Romantic artist created it in 1857, the same year that the United States Supreme Court decided the Dred Scott case, holding that slaves could not sue for their freedom.
This is an avatar for conflict since it was first painted and then exhibited in 1937. The artist was lauded and criticized by a prominent critic of the time as “both charlatan and genius.” Is that right? What do you think?
ANSWER KEY
Here are the answers to the Art Quiz. Remember that some of these were fiendishly difficult, some pretty easy, but all in all a fun excuse to look at paintings that will stop your heart.
SKIES
Canaletto was not on my radar until I lost my breath standing in front of five of his paintings in a museum. With the name Canaletto, you can guess that he was more famous for his water scenes in Venice. He was a Venetian, but he travelled to England and painted there for ten years because the English who had travelled to Venice and viewed his work clamored for him.
Giovanni Antonio Canal is his full name, and Canal was actually his father’s name. The painting above is called Northumberland House and was finished in 1752. The titular building was owned by English aristocrats until its demolition in 1874. By that time, it was overlooking Trafalgar Square.
This is a painting by Albert Bierstadt called Among the Sierra Nevada. Painted in 1868, it is almost exactly six by ten feet in dimension. You can view it at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Bierstadt was a pioneering artist covering the outdoors as he has been associated with both the Hudson River and the Rocky Mountain Schools. The clues that the small detail gave away were the dramatic and imposing cloudscape, usually full of white and dark cumulonimbus clouds—as dramatic as a Beethoven symphony—as well as a mountainscape and some very green nearby trees. If you want a close-up view of the artist’s brushstrokes in the clouds, click on this link, then enlarge your view.
Snow Storm: Steam-boat off a Harbour’s Mouth is the name of the painting, and J.M.W. Turner was the painter. As a sea-locked nation, it was probably inevitable that the favourite artist of the people would be somebody like Turner, who specialized in these seascapes. Many an Englishman lost his life during bad weather at sea, and many an English family lost a loved one. Turner’s work has been described variously as “fantastic puzzles” and “blots” and everything else in between. He used watercolour technique in his oil paintings. Embarrassingly, the first time I saw a painting by this artist in person, I thought it was painted by two artists, a Joseph Mallory and a William Turner.
If you haven’t seen the historical documentary The Eccentric Mr. Turner, it would be worth your time. It also includes, at no extra charge, a cameo by the great Charles Dickens. Here’s the link for this fun and interesting youtube video.
PERSPECTIVE
Artemisia Gentileschi broke through a lot of barriers during her lifetime. She was brave enough to testify against her rapist during a public trial in Rome that lasted seven months. Her examiners applied thumbscrews to ensure she testified truthfully. Given that, becoming the greatest Baroque painter (after Caravaggio; in my opinion) in a male-dominated field during the Seventeenth Century must have seemed easy. She was also brave enough (and technical enough) to paint this self-portrait using aerial perspective while foreshortening her own face.
For a closer look at the painting, let me suggest this Wikipedia link. Once you enlarge it, you can get a better look at it and that golden skull necklace.
Leonardo da Vinci painted this masterpiece around 1503. At this Wikipedia link, you will find a larger version of this painting. The scene includes Mary, the baby Jesus, Mary’s mother St. Anne and a lamb symbolizing future sacrifice. Da Vinci used an aerial perspective of mountains in the background, and he painted the trees in the distance to look smaller. Another trick of perspective in this painting—a trick similarly used by Michelangelo in his Pieta sculpture—was to make St. Anne a giantess, so that when Mary sits on her lap, she doesn’t completely obscure her mother. The painting is called The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and is displayed at the Louvre.
CHILDREN
Eva Roos, an Englishwoman, painted An Impromptu Ball in 1899. As you can see, it is a delight! I have built up my own fiction about the painting along with complete life stories for all of the characters. A couple come to no good, but almost all of them live happy and productive (i.e. bringing happiness to others) lives. Not much is known about Eva Roos, although she was a well-regarded illustrator of children’s books, including the 1908 edition of The Water Babies. Besides the many illustrations in a number of books, Roos also created larger stand-alone paintings. You can see some here. You can also find a poster or reproduction of An Impromptu Ball sold by many outlets on Amazon because, I think, it captures a joy of being alive.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez painted this Portrait of Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress in 1659. If you click on this link from Wikimedia, you can enlarge the portrait and see why both the Realists and the Impressionists took inspiration from his work. The smaller version of the painting above appears very realistic, but when you enlarge it, you can see that Diego Velázquez splashed colors together to create the whole.
Infanta Margaret Theresa was promised to her uncle, the Holy Roman Emperor, as a very young girl. Diego Velázquez painted a number of portraits of this young girl to be sent to prospective bridegrooms. She married at the age of fifteen and died at the age of twenty-one after four childbirths and two miscarriages. There were many reasons for the apprehensive look on this young girl’s face.
For a better view of Mary Cassatt’s Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, click on this link to Wikipedia and enlarge it. The 1878 oil painting has a double squee going for it. It should be called “Little Girl and Furbutt in Blue Armchairs.”
A friend, Edgar Degas, worked with her on the composition of the painting, but it was still rejected by a committee for inclusion in the American Art show at the 1878 World’s Fair in Paris. Cassatt later wrote about that rejection: “I was furious, all the more so since [Degas] had worked on it. At that time this appeared new and the jury consisted of three people of which one was a pharmacist!" I have had the utter pleasure to stand in front of this painting for half an hour at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
SPECIAL BONUS!
Any discussion about children in paintings must include the ugly baby Jesuses. They plagued the Byzantine period, only to return during the Renaissance. About halfway through the Renaissance, however, the child appears to have received a permanent appearance upgrade. So, let us salute those early ugly baby Jesuses:
ANIMALS
Jacques-Louis David was a French Neo-Classical painter who was able to survive a turbulent time in France by siding with the French Revolution and, years later, Napoleon Bonaparte. This particular painting, called Napoleon Crossing the Alps, was finished in 1801 as a gift from the King of Spain to Napoleon. You can see a larger version at this Wikipedia link. Napoleon liked the painting so much, he commissioned David to produce multiple copies. The horse in the original painting above is piebald, black and white. In the version at this Wikipedia link, the horse is brown with a white nose. The copy at this link shows a mostly white horse with dappled gray on the legs.
Apprenticed to famous sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, Paolo Uccello would make his mark with traditional tempera (egg-based) or oil paintings, but would also create works of genius using fresco and marble mosaic techniques. He painted St. George and the Dragon in 1470. The patchwork layout of the terrain features Uccello’s use of perspective. I’ve always felt that this painting was well ahead of its time, with an alien-looking maiden, a dragon with wing emblems that look like they would fit naturally on the fuselage or wing of a British Spitfire airplane, and what appears to me to be the Eye of God in clouds above St. George, with the Eye of Satan in black clouds just below. For a much better view of this strange masterpiece, try this Wikipedia link.
How many little Dutch children had nightmares after viewing one of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings in a church? This is the far-right panel of a triptych called The Garden of Earthly Delights. You can enlarge each of the triptych panels at this Wikipedia link. (If you dare). When the two side panels are closed over the central painting, you see that Bosch has added another image: The creation of Earth. You can see that at this Wikipedia link. (If you dare).
Bosch seemed to care a great deal about not sinning and explaining to others the wages of sin. But not much is known about the artist. His oeuvre, however, suggests that retribution for earthly sins made up a great deal of his professional output. Here’s his Last Judgment, Death of the Reprobate, the Ship of Fools and the Allegory of Gluttony and Lust. Mind you, he painted gobs of Jesuses and Saints, but his scare tactics stand out to this day.
CONFLICT
Jacques-Louis David makes a second appearance in our Art Quiz, this time with his The Death of Marat. The conflict embodied in this painting was between the French aristocracy and the leaders of the French Revolution. Jean-Paul Marat was a radicalized journalist who sought revolution for the ills of France. He was murdered in his bathtub by an aristocrat.
David wanted to create a martyr for the cause with his painting. It was so successful in that regard that he was asked to create a number of duplicates. To see a larger version of this painting, please click on this Wikipedia link.
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix painted this vignette in 1857. The conflict seen in the painting is described by the current owners, the Kimbell Museum:
Like many of his contemporaries, Delacroix took inspiration from the best-selling Romantic poetry of Lord Byron. This painting is the last and most developed of the four canvases that the artist devoted to “The Bride of Abydos,” first published in 1813 and available in French translation by 1821.
Set in the Dardanelles of Turkey, Byron’s poem relates the tragic fate of Zuleika, the daughter of the Pasha Giaffir, and her lover, the pirate Selim. In order to avoid a loveless marriage arranged by her father, Zuleika escapes at night from the harem tower in which she has been held. In the scene shown in Delacroix’s painting the lovers await rescue in a grotto by the sea, pursued by Giaffir and his men, armed and bearing torches. When Selim fires his pistol to summon the aid of his comrades, who are waiting offshore, the shot signals their position to Giaffir. Sensing the approach of her pursuers, Zuleika tries to restrain Selim. In the tragic climax of the tale, Selim is shot dead by Giaffir, and his body washed out to sea. Zuleika dies of grief.
Delacroix’s use of color and movement over hard and fast-modeled shapes impressed the Impressionists. Van Gogh alluded to this influential artist in no less than one hundred letters. The other artist able to rival Delacroix’s influence was Rembrandt, who was mentioned in one hundred and twelve letters.
Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in 1937. It protests the terror and death caused by the German bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. The bombing, then the painting and the exhibition, including a world tour, occurred during the same year. The painting became the most consequential anti-war protest of all time.
It also turned international public opinion, which had to deal with the fake news of that day. Francisco Franco denied responsibility for the bombing. Hitler did the same. Their media allies claimed that the damage was caused by the Reds dynamiting the town while evacuating. Bits of bomb casings with the Imperial Eagle of the Nazis stamped on them told another tale, and Guernica helped to sway public opinion. Hermann Goering’s confession in 1946 sealed the case.
Pencils down!
DAILY KOS FINE ART EXPOSITION
For quite some time, I have seen some breathtaking Art created by Daily Kos users. It’s about time we turned a spotlight on that talent with the first annual Daily Kos Fine Art Exposition (Expo ‘19). If you would like to submit a drawing or painting or sculpture or crafted jewelry or other items, please send me a private message. What we would do is put photographs of the items in our Expo diary, along with a description penned by the artist. We already have a few artist volunteers!