Friday, August 30, 2013

Who Painted This? #42

Who painted this? #42
I've had to adjust the wikimedia commons version of this painting as it glares at you - it's terribly over-saturated! I've been using a couple of other images of it in a recent exhibition as a reference point - and that's as much as a clue as you're getting for now!

For those who've not risen to the challenge before please take a minute to read the rules - see below.

How to participate in "Who painted this? #41"


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  • if correct it will not be published until the next post - which provides the answer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

Who Painted This #41 - The Answer

Preparations for D-day Art.IWMARTLD4587
By Richard Ernst Eurich (RA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
This painting relates to Richard Ernst Eurich's work as a war artist. He worked for the War Artists Advisory Committee - for a number of years during the Second World War.  This has been set up on the instigation of Sir Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery (Later known as "Lord Clark of Civilisation" following the BBC programme of the same name')

The aims were:
  • to raise morale by having art exhibitions
  • to produce artwork for propaganda
  • to keep artists gainfully employed in the hope this might reduce the numbers killed (the First World War saw the death of a lot of writers and artists)
At the end of the war, the collection consisted of 5,570 works, over half of which are held by IWM.

David Teter found the image on the Google Art Project  which gives the best view of it (ie you can zoom in).  This is what the site says about the painting.
Eurich’s enigmatic composite painting of land and naval forces massing off the South Coast before D-Day gives an impression of brooding calm before the storm.The dark belt of trees across the centre of the painting obscures the transition from land to sea. The roads end in barriers of smoke or barbed wire and the only way forward is into the unknown, through the huge jaw-like hold-doors of the central ship. Camouflage netting, smoke screening and the camouflaged shipping all contribute to the sense of secrecy and hidden strength conveyed by the painting.Eurich was a marine painter living near Southampton and was very familiar with this part of the coast, overlooking the Isle of Wight. He was a salaried war artist with an honorary commission of Captain in the Royal Marines and would have been able to paint from his own observations. His wartime style has been compared to the sixteenth century Flemish painter Pieter Breughel whose work shows a similar attention to distant detail and purposeful activities. Indeed, the gaping ship’s doors seem to echo Breughel’s Mouth of Hell, making a visual equation between war and hell which agrees with Eurich’s Quaker background and beliefs.
Here are some more of his paintings in the Imperial War Museum
Interestingly - and this is what I was referencing when I said some websites might be lisleading - he isn't on any of the lists of war artists and yet has clearly been one.  See
The story behind how this painting was chosen is that I've had an art postcard of  one a still life painting by him for a very long time.  I wanted to feature that - but couldn't find it located anywhere online!  So then I started looking at what else he had painted - and got a big surprise!

Who guessed correct?

Who painted this #41? Congratulations to Roger Brown (Art Of The Wild by Roger Brown)
who was first with the name of the artist and all the other available details.

Others who got all the correct answers were:

If you'd like to study how people get the correct answer try studying past challenges which are listed in the Page Who painted this? - at the the top of the Page. Since of the requirements is to say how you found it, you can see the various ways people get to the answer.

Just for the record - anybody who leaves a comment on the page which lists all the "who painted this?" rather than the specific blog post is not counted.  You have been warned!

13 comments:

  1. Who Painted This? #42
    Joaquin Bastida y Sorolla
    :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Katherine,
    Who painted this #42 is called Tower of Seven, Pont Alhambra, Granada by Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida. This oil on canvas painting resides in Museo Sorolla (Spain) and dates from 1910.
    Its dimensions are : height: 81.5 cm (32.09 in.), Width: 106 cm (41.73 in.)

    I found the painting fairly quickly on google images by entering alhambra paintings but it took a bit longer to find out where it is kept!
    Best wishes,
    John

    ReplyDelete
  3. I know this one! It's Joaquin Sorolla! I think the title is Seven Towers. It was painted in the early 1900's in oil. He is from Spain, so I will guess that's where the painting is? Although, the reason I guessed, is I was in San Diego a few weeks ago, bored with Comic Con, and I went to the art museum in Balboa Park, where they have another Sorolla painting - a portrait. I was intrigued with all the colors in his whites, and got a fair scolding from the guard, who didn't like me looking so close. So, for a few days after I was googling Sorolla images and this one reminded me of something from The Hobbit - almost medieval looking.

    I don't post much anymore on blogs, so I'm not sure what account this comment will be linked to, but my email is DebraKeirceArt@yahoo.com and my website is DebKArt.com and I do have a blog at DebraKeirceArt.Blogspot.com

    Have a great day!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida
    Tower of Seven, pont Alhambra, Granada
    1910
    Oil
    Sorolla Museum, Madrid, Spain
    Knew it was the coast of either
    Spain or Portugal and was impressionistic. Have studied his use of light and done lesson plans based on his work.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Better late than never. My husband helped me track this one down.

    "Tower of Seven, Pont Alhambra, Granada"

    Joaquin Sorolla
    1910
    oil/canvas

    32 X 41.7 inches
    Museo Sorolla

    ReplyDelete
  6. Having spent an awful lot of time typing words in to Wikimedia to solve this ,I thought I`d better be sensible and give up , otherwise I`ll have no work to show for the last few days. I seem to have googled every word but the right one. It was a great challenge and I really enjoyed it....most of the time ! I went down the usual slip roads and found a lot of good work by artists I knew nothing , or very little about.
    I look forward to next week.....
    Bernadette Madden, in Dublin, who is now going back in to her studio to do some work!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Had to give up with this one :(. Had no idea at all who the artist was, where the location was or which country it was. Could have any number countries or places. Putting search terms in like castle, gargoyle, small town yielded nothing. Wish google wouldn't throw photographs when you search for "painting"
    Look forward to next challenge

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'll just remind readers that I only publish comments before next Friday which do NOT have the correct answer.

    I also don't publish those which only supply part of the correct answer.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I didn't get the Bomberg answer until I looked at images of work he'd done and I think I get it now. That one had me pretty gobsmacked for a few seconds!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I also looked up David Bomberg , because of your clue about recent exhibitions , rather than his work. . I agree with Jacqui about photographs, even if you click on paintings as a heading it seems to me that you still have to type painting in again in the search box otherwise you do get a lot of photos.... and not lens based art which might qualify as paintings at a stretch for search purposes.I also feel I still haven`t entirely got to grips with how wiki shows you results and the help lines mostly refer to text searching rather than image searching.

    ReplyDelete
  11. This oil painting is called Torre de Los Picos, painted by Joaquin Sorolla in 1910, and is stored at the Biblioteca Provincial de Granada.

    I finally decided to check under the word citadel after hundreds of castles, towers, etc. Pictures of the Alhambra popped up that looked very much like the painting, I checked for Alhambra paintings and found it.

    I love Sorolla's paintings! A bridge between impressionism and realism with beautiful light.

    Thanks for the fun!

    ReplyDelete
  12. It's nice to see some new names getting the answer correct! :)

    ReplyDelete

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