Who painted this? #5

This is the fifth in my series of challenges about Who Painted This?

I've been writing about a new portraiture prize this week and this week's post is a portrait - but NOT a self-portrait. It is however half of a pair of drawings by two artists and I'll show you the other one when I give you the answer next week.

I have all my clues worked out for if nobody gets this.......

Who painted this? #5

Who Painted This? #5 - How to participate

I take an extremely dim view of people who do not read the rules and in doing so spoil the challenge for others.  As always the sub-theme of this challenge is about finding out more about artists and artworks ie it's about the process just as much as it's about the answer.

The rules for participating in this challenge are as follows:

1. This is about using brains not technology - so please do not "cheat".  This is what you can and cannot do to search for the answer online
• PLEASE do NOT use any of the "image matching" technology which exists (eg Chrome or Tineye) - that's just plain lazy and not the point of the challenge! My suspicions will be raised by those who appear to know the answer a bit too quickly and/or fail to identify themselves!
• You can use search enquiries - using WORDS ONLY to search on Google or any other search engine or to interrogate databases of images
• You can look at as many books as you like!
2. Do NOT leave the answer as a comment on Facebook.  If you do I will delete the comment and you will NOT be declared the winner.
3. Leave your answer as a comment on this blog. (IF CORRECT IT WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED until just before the next challenge) 
• You can leave a guess - and if I don't publish the name you know you're on the right lines even if you don't yet have all the details
• Howls of frustration can also be left while you try and work it out....... 
4. In your comment, for #5, you must tell me ALL of the following:
• the title of the artwork / the name of the artist who is the subject of the portrait
• the name of the artist who drew the portrait
• the date it was created
• the media used
• where it lives now
• how you know all this eg how did you do your search 
5. The Winner! The first identifiable person (ie no anonymous guesses) who, in my judgement, is the first person to get to the answer by fair means will get a mention and a link to their website or blog (or both) in:
• my very popular weekly blog post "Who's made a mark this week?"
• the post with next week's challenge.

Clues 

I will leave a clue - as a comment on the post - if you're not not getting anywhere in the first 24 hours.

Publication - and non-publication - of answers / comments 

Here's how the comments work:

• All comments are moderated and I read ALL the comments prior to publication 
• I do NOT publish the correct answers (in full or part) until a week later - assuming somebody actually gets the answer!  Which means if your comment is not published you know you could be on the right lines.  Plus it also means others can have the enjoyment of the challenge even if they are probably too late to win.
• The comments are also published in the order they were left not the order that I open them - which means you can all see who got the right answer first and provided all the details.
• Hence AFTER publication of this post and BEFORE the day of the publication of the next post (i.e. next Friday) I ONLY publish all the incorrect answers and all the howls of frustration! 

Who painted this? #4 - The Answer

The answer is:

1. Title of the artwork: 'The purple noon's transparent might' (click the link to see a larger version).  The title is a line from a poem - Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples - by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the major English romantic poets.
2. Name of the artist: Arthur Streeton - for more about this very impressive artist see my new website About Arthur Streeton - Australian Landscape Painter
3. Date it was painted: 1896
4. Media used: painting, oil on canvas, 123.0 x 123.0cm (48.4 inches x 48.4 inches)
5. Where it lives now: National Gallery of Victoria, Australia

The winner

So many of you got this one right - I was absolutely amazed!  Would you believe 13 people got ALL of the required details correct.  You gave me a really hard time this week remembering NOT to publish your answers!  (All correct responses are now published on the blog).

It somehow seems very right that the winner of last week's challenge is Adebanji Alade (Adenbanji Alade - My Art, My Passion for Sketching) who's both a member of the Plein Air Brotherhood and the 2010 winner of my Making A Mark Award - The Painting Plein Air Plus Prize 2010.

Congratulations also to all those who got the right answer: Ivan Kelley, Fred Marsh - who provided some more details about the painting in his comment); Jason Daniel Jackson, Mark, Roger Brown, Robyn Sinclair, last week's winner Sue Smith. Plus I had six correct but anonymous or semi-anonymous entries from "Gary", "Sophiehound", "bosveldr" "Garry Harwood"  "Debbie" and "Unknown". The latter would have won if I'd had more ID via a website or blog!  Please note I'm only awarding "winner" status to identifiable people.

I hope you all enjoy finding out more about this painter and looking at more of his paintings via my new website About Arthur Streeton.

Some more facts about this painting

• This is a painting of the Hawkesbury River in Australia - it forms part of a series of paintings of the Hawkesbury River painted by Streeton.  The series is world renowned because of his capacity to convey the light, the colour and the heat of this place - which is north west of Sydney.
• From the accounts I've read, Streeton stayed in North Richmond (which he began visiting in the mid 1890s) and then found a spot which gave him a really good view of the river from above.  Here's where North Richmond is in Australia and the view seems to take in the sandbanks marked on Google Maps i.e. looking south west (make sure terrain is switched on to see where I mean)
• Streeton painted this painting directly in front of his subject.  My mind boggles at various facts connected with this painting - such as 
• he's carrying a four foot canvas into the bush!
• he painted it in a temperature of 108 degrees Fahrenheit 
• he didn't use an easel - instead he rested the canvas rested on a dead sapling.....
• .....at the top of a cliff over the Hawkesbury River. This is Streeton recalling the making of the painting

'The glory of the river and plain spread before me… Far below were the tops of river-oaks, and water like the blue of a black opal. The brightness of noon, the power of deep blue, the flies, and the temperature now 108 degrees, wrought me to a pitch of excitement… the atmosphere 10 degrees higher than my own temperature crept round my face like a flame; and it seemed like working in a fiery trance. I paused and found that in two hours two thirds of my canvas was covered with paint, I had stamped my big impression upon it, I had made my picture.'
Australian Government: The Heidelberg School: Sydney, its beaches, the harbour and the Hawkesbury

The artist was knighted in 1937.  I think he deserved it - how about you?