A Responsible Artist? Trivia Quiz

Works by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh can generally be identified by their post-impressionist style and his highly characteristic thick brushstrokes, such as the single lines used in the pictured 'Wheatfield with a Lark' to represent the stalks and ears of wheat and the short dry grass in the foreground. Van Gogh is also noted for his use of the impasto technique of applying thick layers of paint to make certain areas stand out from the background and give the appearance of movement - such as in the swirling background of one of his most famous paintings, 'The Starry Night'.

The subject matter of Van Gogh paintings can also be another clue to the identity of their artist - he famously created many images of vases of sunflowers, produced a range of self-portraits and painted lots of scenes of the French countryside where he spent the majority of the later part of his life.

Claude Monet was a founding member of the Impressionist art movement and the artist responsible for the work that gave the movement its name - 'Impression, Sunrise', an 1872 painting of dawn over the River Seine at Le Havre. However, the easiest paintings to identify as works by Monet are the 250 (or thereabouts) images of the water lilies in the garden of his home at Giverny in Normandy. Monet spent the majority of the last 30 years of his life producing images of these aquatic flowers, with the earliest dating back to around 1897 while the latest were produced in the last years before his death in 1926.

Given Monet's repeated use of the same subject matter, the titles of these works don't generally help identify a specific painting. However, the one is pictured is entitled 'Water-Lilies' and believed to date to the period 1916-1920.

Giovanni Antonio Canal - aka Canaletto - was an 18th century Venetian artist notable for producing highly detailed and realistic images of his home city. Many of his works are images of famous landmarks such as the Grand Canal, Rialto Bridge and St. Mark's Square, but he also featured the hidden world behind them such as the ordinary workshops depicted in his masterpiece 'The Stonemason's Yard'. However, some of the most famous of his Venetian scenes show the pomp and grandeur that was on display at regattas and various celebratory events. These include 'The Bucintoro Returning to the Molo on Ascension Day' (1732), which is the painting shown in the photo match clue.

Canaletto also spent a number of years living and working in England, so a painting does not have to depict Venice to be identified as one of his works. He also used the same style of painting to produce views of scenes of both daily life and celebrations on the River Thames in London and other landmarks such as Westminster Abbey.

English artist Joseph Mallord William ('JMW') Turner is largely remembered for his landscape and seascape paintings. He worked in both oils and watercolours and managed to use both mediums to great effect, particularly in his ability to use light to evoke the atmosphere of a scene. The pictured painting, 'Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed', is a noted 1818 oil painting that provides an excellent example of Turner's skill in this area, with the gentle light reflected in the calm water of the River Meuse at Dordrecht in the Netherlands. Other works that show the more turbulent side of life at sea include 'Fishermen upon a Lee-Shore, in Squally Weather' (1803) and 'Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth' (1842).

Turner travelled extensively across Europe in the early 19th century so his paintings depict a wide range of locations and views. However, arguably his most famous paintings depict scenes from his home country, such as 'The Fighting Temeraire' (the final journey along the River Thames of a famous warship being taken to the breaker's yard) and 'Rain, Steam and Speed' (a Great Western Railway steam engine crossing Maidenhead Bridge).

Pointillism is an art style that was developed in the late 19th century by the artists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac and involves building an overall image by using lots of tiny dots of individual colours. While his earliest works used more traditional painting techniques, Seurat's works during the 1880s quickly moved towards the pointillist style, culminating with his famous 'A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte' (1884-86) showing the upper classes of Paris society enjoying a sunny day by the river. 'The Seine at La Grande Jatte' (pictured) dates from 1888, and shows a scene from the same location as his earlier masterpiece, but focused on the landscape rather than the local population.

The Ile de la Jatte is a 2 km long island of the River Seine to the north-west of the centre of Paris.

The Dutch Master Rembrandt van Rijn is one of the most famous painters from history and his body of work includes a wide range of art genres and styles. However, some of the paintings that should theoretically be easiest to identify as Rembrandts are the ones that make up the series of approximately 40 self-portraits that he produced throughout his career. The "theoretically" caveat stems from the fact that Rembrandt was known to have tasked his students with making copies of his self-portraits as a way of training them in his styles and techniques and many works previously believed to have been Rembrandt self-portraits have since been discredited as a result.

The earliest paintings in this collection date to around 1628-30 when the artist was in his early 20s, while the latest were painted in the year before his death in 1669 at the age of 63. The example pictured in this quiz is titled 'Self-Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar' and is dated to 1659.

Edgar Degas was a French impressionist painter known for his interest in painting dancers and scenes associated with ballet and the theatre. While his earliest works depicted more classical themes and scenes from history and mythology, the majority of his paintings from the later part of the 19th century are associated with modern life - namely dancers - which account for up to around 50% of his catalogued works - and other images such as scenes from French cafes (for example 'L'Absinthe', 1876), horse racing ('At the Races', 1880) and women at work ('At the Milliners', 1882).

The picture shown is titled 'Dance Rehearsal in the Foyer' and dates from around 1872, but some of his most famous paintings of dancers include 'Ballet Rehearsal on Stage' (1874), 'The Ballet Class' (1874) and 'Two Dancers on Stage' (1877).

Sir Joshua Reynolds was both a prolific and renowned English portrait artist of the 18th century. He was the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts and a highly sought after (and expensive) painter of members of English high society. In addition he also held the prestigious (although not financially rewarding) role of Principal Painter in Ordinary to King George III from 1784 until his death in 1792. If the subject of a painting was a rich or important person in 18th century London society then there is a reasonable chance that the artist responsible was Sir Joshua Reynolds as he produced many hundreds of them during his career.

The portrait pictured is Reynolds' 1787 portrait of Lord Heathfield of Gibraltar, who became an English national hero for his role in successfully defending the Great Siege of Gibraltar against the French and Spanish during the American Revolutionary Wars.

While the aristocracy of 18th century England spent hundreds of pounds commissioning portraits of their family by famous portraitists such as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, some also spent their fortunes on paintings of their animals. If they did, then George Stubbs was often the artist responsible for producing them as he was a noted painter of animals and of horses in particular. His horse paintings ranged from detailed portraits (such as 'Whistlejacket', 1762) to fantasy scenes of horses battling lions ('Horse Devoured by a Lion', 1763) to countryside scenes and riders with their animals ('Racehorses Exercising at Goodwood', 1760). The pictured painting 'Five Brood Mares at the Duke of Cumberland's Stud Farm in Windsor Great Park' probably falls into the latter category.

Other animals painted by Stubbs include some that would never have previously been seen by the English public - his 1772 work 'The Kongouro from New Holland' (of a kangaroo) is one example.

Leonardo da Vinci might be the artist responsible for the 'Mona Lisa', arguably the most famous painting in the world, but he is also acknowledged as a polymath and most of his surviving works are sketches (think 'The Vitruvian Man') or technical drawings for architectural features and buildings or inventions (think helicopter-like contraptions). Since he lived and worked in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, there are considerable question marks over the provenance of art works attributed to Da Vinci, but art historians and experts have generally concluded that his paintings are characterised by the accuracy of his depiction of the human form and facial expression in addition to his use of light and specific painting techniques.

The pictured painting is believed to be of a 15th century Florentine noblewoman named Ginevra de' Benci and is one of three other surviving portraits of women attributed to Da Vinci that aren't the 'Mona Lisa' (and that do appear to include eyebrows).