Sunday, June 05, 2022

Who painted this #68?

Who painted this #68?

I saw this painting at an exhibition in London during the last decade. It's pretty big - and my photo of it in its frame has got some parallax issues. 

That's as much as you're getting in terms of clues. You can get to the name of the artist pretty fast if you have a think about the style of costume and the nature of the painting. After that, it's just a case of working your way through the artist's paintings as this is a well known one.

Below you can find
  • The details of how to participate in this art history challenge
  • the rules of the challenge 
  • the answer to last week re. Who Painted this #67
  • the names of all the people who got most or all of the answer correct
  • who provided the best answer last week - which gives you an idea of what a good answer looks like
Your answers will be published next Sunday - before the next challenge.

How to participate in "Who painted this? #68

Tell me the story of this painting as best you can!

This is how "Who painted this?" works.
This is about using brains not technology - so please do NOT "cheat"
Briefly, in your comment ON THIS POST you must tell me ALL or as many of the following as you can:
  • the title of the artwork
  • the name of the artist who created this artwork
  • the date it was created
  • the media used
  • where it lives now
  • how you know all this eg how did you do your search
  • anything else you can find out about the artwork and/or artist - tell its story!
The Winner of this week's challenge is the first identifiable person (i.e. no anonymous guesses) who, in my judgement, is 
  • the first person to get to the answer by fair means 
  • AND provides the best quality answer in terms of added details about the artwork and artist
Remember also
  • no use of "Google Image Search" or "Tineye" to find the image allowed 
  • this is a traditional web search of images using words only plus "hit the books" time
  • I don't publish the comments until next week's post.
Comments on this blog post will only be published once a week - on the following Sunday.

(You wouldn't believe how many spam comments I'm having to identify and delete each week because of this challenge!!)

Who Painted This #67?

The challenge last week was to work out the painting from only half a painting!

This is the whole painting - and many of you got the correct artist and title! It's by Bonnard.

The Table (1925) by Paul Bonnard
oil on canvas
Courtauld Collection - but photographed at the National Gallery
The woman is probably Marthe Bonnard, the artist's wife. She is looking towards a dog whose muzzle is faintly visible on the left, and seems to be preparing its food in a bowl.
Title of the artwork: The Table
Name of the artist who created this artwork: Paul Bonnard
Date it was created: 1925
Media used: oil on canvas
DimensionsSupport: 1029 × 743 mm. Frame: 1256 × 965 × 113 mm
Where it lives now: Tate (Presented by the Courtauld Fund Trustees) 
This painting was bought as a result of the Courtauld Fund. In January 1924 the wealthy textile manufacturer Samuel Courtauld gave the large sum of £50,000 to create a trust for buying Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works for the Tate Gallery. Between 1924 and 1927 the Trust bought nineteen paintings by artists such as Edouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne. This donation transformed the Tate’s Collection of modern art by non-British artists. This significant painting was acquired only a year after it was made, and was the first work by Bonnard to enter the Tate Collection.
My photo of the painting relates to when paintings from the Courtauld Collection were on display at the National Gallery in November 2018 - following the closure of the Courtauld Gallery for a major refurbishment.

The exhibition was Courtauld Impressionists: From Manet to Cézanne (17 September 2018 – 20 January 2019). I'm guessing the painting was included as its presence in London was entirely down to Samual Coutauld.

It's been shown in various other exhibitions over the years including:
  • RSA, Edinburgh, April-August 1932 (211); 
  • RSA, Edinburgh, April-August 1946 (104); 
  • Samuel Courtauld Memorial Exhibition, Tate Gallery, May-September 1948 (1); 
  • Bonnard and his Environment, Museum of Modern Art, New York, October-November 1964 (34, repr.); 
  • Art Institute of Chicago, January-February 1965 (34, repr.); 
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March-May 1965 (34, repr.); 
  • Pierre Bonnard, RA, London, January-March 1966 (179)
The Courtauld Gallery reopened again in November 2021.

Along with refreshing the gallery interiors, the Courtauld has completely reinterpreted and redisplayed its collection of fine art, which ranges from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. New spaces have also been created for temporary exhibitions.
 

Who guessed correct?



The first person to get it right was French Jane who knew it straight away as she'd seen it
This is La table painted in oils by Pierre Bonnard in 1925. It belongs to the Tate Gallery. I saw it in Paris in 1984 in a Bonnard exhibition at the Centre Pompidou and I got this information from my catalogue of the exhibition which was also shown at the Phillips Collection in Washington and also in Dallas, the same year.
Carol Edan was the first to get all the details correct - and I admire her approach to working it out.
I recognized this as an impressionist work so started my search using impressionism table seated woman. When I didn't find any results started using the artist's name in the search. Started with Cezanne,Matisse,Mary Cassatt, and Pierre Bonnard. I am currently using Esconia as my primary search engine. Find it very fast and accurate.
Title The Table
Painted 1925
Purchased by the Courtland Fund in 1926 for Tate Museum. His first painting to enter Tate's collection.
Oil on canvas 102.9 x 74.3 cm
This painting was part of an exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum in NY 2009 #15
Bonnard is well known for his domestic scenes of everyday life.
The woman is probably his wife Martha, preparing a simple meal.
Acquired from the artist by Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
Independent Gallery, London
presented by the Trustees of the Courtauld Fund to the Tate Gallery, 1926





3 comments:

  1. Artist Johan Zoffany
    Tribuna of the Uffizi
    Date 1772 1778
    Oil Painting on canvas/panel
    46.6"x61"
    Royal Collection, Windsor Castle
    How I found this painting using escosia search engine
    First search keywords painting exhibition academy
    Second painting of an exposition royal academy 1800 and1700
    Third artists that painted royal academy exhibitions 1800 is where I found the image

    Zoffany was commissioned in 1772 by the Queen to paint highlights of the Grand Duke of Tuscany's collection shown in the Tribuna of the Uffizi Palace link to full description.
    https://www.rct.uk/collection/406983/the-tribuna-of-the-uffizi

    ReplyDelete
  2. How vexing, I knew I recognised this, but other than thinking it was 18th Century had no idea of who painted it. I was convinced it was something to do with the Paris Salon or Salon de Refuses or the Royal Academy. Various searches of "painting of many paintings" or similar brought up similar concepts, but not the right one. Finally I tried "painting of Royal Academy" and it was the fourth image in the list, even though that isn't the title nor the subject!

    I can now claim to know that the painting is The Tribuna of the Uffizi, by Johan Zoffany, 1772-7
    It forms part of The Royal Collection, housed in Windsor Castle and is painted in oil.

    The room depicted is an octagonal gallery in The Florence Gallery/Galleria degli Uffizi and the things shown within it were gathered from several locations so that Zoffany could illustrate the works in the Medici collection that he thought were most important.

    The figures inspecting the pieces are apparently recognisable connoisseurs, diplomats and visitors to Florence, including Zoffany himself.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Artist Johann Zoffany
    Title The Tribuna of the Uffizi
    Date 1772 - 1778
    Medium Oil Painting
    Dimensions 123.5 X 155 cm
    Location Royal Collection Windsor Castle
    Johann Zoffany was a founder member of the Royal Academy and painter several pictures in this style in later life including one showing the members of the Royal Academy.
    He was commissioned to paint the Uffizi by the Hanoverian Queen Charlotte. He arranged for a number of other artworks to be moved into this gallery before painting. The Wikipedia entry for the painting lists the artworks shown and shows the original works for comparison.

    He is also the only Royal Academician to be a cannibal following a shipwreck in the Andaman Islands.
    Search I didn't know the artist but thought the subject might be the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. I tried googling paintings of the summer exhibition but this was a fruitless search. Google suggested searching for RA artists and this eventually led me to Johann Zoffany. Annoyingly the RA page for RA artists has Zoffany's picture of the Royal Academicians as a background but gives no information about it. Looking at that image led me to think it was by the same artist and so I was eventually able to track him down and so discovered that he also painted this one.

    ReplyDelete

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