Friday, February 08, 2013

Who painted this? #15

Who painted #15
You're all getting far too good at this.  I give you a painting by an artist I'd never heard of and a culture which few of us have studied much - and you get it straight away (see Who Painted This #14 - The Answer below) .

Maybe the answer is to reduce the detail........?

So who painted this?

How to participate in "Who painted this? #15"

PLEASE make sure you read the rules before posting a comment - and ONLY POST ON THIS BLOG what you think is the answer.

Click this link to read THE RULES for participating in this challenge (this saves having to copy them out for each post!).

In short:
  • use your brains not software to find the answer
  • search using words only on a database of images
  • leave your answer as a comment on this blog
  • if correct it will not be published until the next post - which provides the answer
  • if wrong it will be published
  • do not leave the answer on Facebook!
  • the winner - who gets a mention and a link on/from this blog - is the first person to give me a completely correct answer for ALL the things I want to know

Painting by Ustud Mansur
Who Painted This #14 - The Answer
  • Title of the artwork: not applicable this week
  • Name of the artist who created this artwork: attributed to Ustad Mansur - the leading nature painter at the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir.
  • Date it was created: no later than middle 17th century - probably c.1625
  • Media used: I was only expecting a few answers... however guesses ranged between opaque watercolour, gouache and egg tempera
  • Where it lives now: Institute of Oriental Studies, St. Petersburg (but since the records are confusing I'm also accepting the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg)
At the very end of 1955 it occurred to me to visit an exhibition of old Indian and Persian miniatures organised in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. These miniatures, belonging to the Hermitage and the Institute of Orientalistics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. were very diverse. There were miniatures on historical, zoological, botanical subjects and so on. It was natural that first of all my attention was attracted by wonderful pictures of birds, exhibited among other miniatures. There were falcon, a guinea-fowl, a bustard, stone chats, finches, tragopans and so on. And amongst others an excellent picture of the dodo
An Indian picture of the Dodo by A. Iwanow - Leningrad 1958
  • Which ruler the painter worked for: Jahangir.  The point of asking this question is that this particular Moghul emperor was a passionate supporter of making records of the natural world.
  • The significance of this painting: It's the earliest known accurate painting of a dodo from life.  It's considered to be the most reliable painting of a dodo as it also fits the skeletons best.
Apparently two live specimens of the Dodo were brought to India in the 1600s according to Peter Mundy, and the specimen depicted might have been one of these.
This dodo's portrait is a part of an excellent set of Indian and Persian old miniatures very different by their origin and subjects. In the middle of the 18 th century all these pictures were provided with a broad ornamented border and united in one volume. This volume belongs now to the fine collection of Oriental manuscripts of the Institute of Orientalistics in Leningrad....... It was rediscovered in the collection of the Institute of Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and created a sensation at the XII International Ornithological Congress at Helsinki in 1958.An Indian picture of the Dodo by A. Iwanow - Leningrad 1958
For the wildlife artist, the other birds depicted are:
Articles and websites referencing this painting

The correct answers

The first person to provide the correct answer was Jane Gardiner (Glasgow Painter)

Others who got it right were:
Most people got it quickly after they included the word Dodo in their search query!



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11 comments:

  1. I could see a little glimpse of a date at the bottom of the painting so I googled sunset paintings 1824. I recognised the style and when Caspar David Friedrich's name came up I thought it must be one of his but not one I actually recognised. I went to his Wikipedia list of works page and there it was.

    Artist Caspar David Friedrich
    Title Evening with Clouds
    Date 1824
    Media Oil on cardboard
    Gallery Kunsthalle Mannheim

    ReplyDelete
  2. Evening With Clouds
    Caspar David Friedrich
    1824
    oil on cardboard
    Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany

    Found by Googling "sunset, landscape painting 1824"
    the date was just barely visible on the right hand corner of the painting
    Found on Wikipedia

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gorgeous light and I want to lay under those clouds and look up at them. A beautiful selection, Katherine. I meant to tell you that I really liked your piece you showed a couple of posts ago too.

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  4. I am not going to enter the competition, but have to say it looks like a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, a fantastic german romantic painter!
    Good luck to all who try to find out and thank you for giving us these paintings we would never know about otherwise:-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, I ended up cheating :(

    here are some of my search terms -
    tuner 1775-1851
    constable 1776- 1837
    Discounted both of these as I read the date on the painting as 1724, 1794 or 1924

    yellow sunset
    yellow sunset over city
    yellow sunset wispy sky over london
    yellow sunset 1724
    yellow sunet october 1724
    yellow sunset october 1924
    yellow sunset October 1794
    English painters 18/19th century
    english painters 1924
    Sir James Lawton Wingate seem like a a good candiate from the image
    painting yellow sunset
    painting of yellow sunset 18 century wispy clouds

    Looked kind of modern but reminded me of some sketches done by Constable and similar to some images by Turner in his later years which is why I chose to search 18/19th painters.
    Graham Sutherland came to mine as well
    Kept coming across this painting which had similarities - Dwight William Tryon, Sunset before Storm, 1913.
    But never did come across any images that remotely looked like this painting.

    So I know who the painter is, what the painting is called, the media, where it is and the history of his type of work but in light of the competition I will not disclose what I know. Loving these weekly challenges.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Katherine, thanks for this one.

    It was tricky and a wonderful subject. I made it more difficult by reading 1824 as 1924.

    Title of the artwork: Evening with clouds
    Name of the artist: Caspar David Friedrich
    Date it was created: 1824
    Media: Oil on cardboard
    Where it lives now: Kunsthalle Mannheim
    How do I know this:

    I messed around searching for sunsets from 1924. Eventually I searched for sunset 1824 in Google images. Quite a way down there was a painting (Evening) obviously by the same artist on caspardavidfriedrich.org. From there I found Evening with clouds. The rest of the information comes from Wikipedia. I tried to cross-reference with Kunsthalle Mannheim’s website, but couldn’t find anything.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Boy this was the hardest to find so far.
    The name of the painting is "Evening With Clouds". It was painted by Casper David Friedrich in 1824. It is oil on cardboard and lives at Kunsthalle Mannheim. After putting every search phrase I could think of for this painting the last one I put in was "landscape painting golden sky and clouds 1824" and that is what brought up the image. Was kind of thrown off by the image posted in reverse on many sites.

    ReplyDelete
  8. 'Evening' by Caspar David Friedrich C 1824
    oil on cardboard
    Kunsthalle Mannheim

    I searched high and low. I googled golden sky, landscape painting, various artists names including Freidrich, I did n't spot it as I didn't scroll far enough down wiki images. The clue came from Jacqui's comment. I hadn't noticed the date, I read it as 1824 though it looks as if it has been altered. I added that date to the search and came to a paler mirror image of it. I then ended back on the wiki images and found it by scrolling down much further.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This was hard, I discovered it almost by accident -- Turner, Constable, golden sunset 1724/1824/1924 , nothing came up --then I thought, the Sublime... and Friedrich came to mind. Bingo! So, Caspar Friedrich, 1824, Mannheim...thanks, Wikipedia.

    ReplyDelete
  10. For some reason my comment never appeared :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wondered where you were! I went back to see if I'd missed it but there's nothing awaiting moderation.

      I find sometimes there's a blip on the system and something you think has been posted didn't go through. It's always worth checking to see if the comment actually appears.

      Delete

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