A Brush With Nature: Artists In The Rose Garden Quiz

Answer: Claude Monet

Rosa "Claude Monet", also called the "Artists' Rose", is a vigorous repeat-blooming hybrid tea rose characterised by scented flowers randomly splashed and striped with pink and apricot. It was introduced in 1992 by the French rose growers, Delbard.

The first hybrid tea roses were created in the mid-nineteenth century and produced single blooms on long stems suitable for cutting; they were generally either unscented or only slightly scented. Modern hybrid teas tend to be bred with stronger fragrance.

There is also another rose named "Monet": a modern large-flowered hybrid tea, with mauve-pink strongly scented flowers.

Two of Monet's earlier works, "Flowering Garden at Sainte-Adresse" (1866), and "Woman in a Garden" (1867), feature rose bushes prominently, but he is more popularly known for his later paintings (1899 onwards) of water lilies in his garden at Giverny; his picture "Impression, Sunrise" (1872) gave its name to the Impressionist movement.

Answer: Picasso

Rosa "Picasso" is a floribunda with hand painted colouring: the petals have a silvery base colour overlaid with deep pink to red feathery blotches, and a silvery reverse; the base of each of the 25 petals is white, creating what is called an "eye" in the centre. It flowers over a long period, but has no fragrance.

Floribunda roses started to appear in the early 20th century when growers crossed hybrid tea roses with polyantha roses: the resulting plants had the wider colour range of the hybrid tea and the clusters of flowers of the polyantha. Floribundas are ideal for bedding and hedging.

Pablo Picasso was one of the founders of the Cubist movement, and his works evolved through several styles. His Blue Period paintings (1901-1904), influenced by his reaction to the suicide of a friend, are characterised by their monochromatic appearance and sad facial expressions. This was immediately followed by the Rose Period (1904-1906), when warmer colours and more cheerful subjects appeared; the painting "Boy with a Pipe" (1905) features a boy wearing a chaplet of roses, with more roses in the canal-painting style on the wall behind him.

Answer: Henri Matisse

Rosa "Henri Matisse" is a slightly scented modern large-flowered hybrid tea rose with random stripes and splashes of red, pink and white. The blooms are double and full, having thirty petals. "Henri Matisse" was launched by the French rose growers, Delbard, in 1995, and has good disease resistance.

Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse (1865-1954) painted "Odalisque in Red Trousers" in 1924-5; the flowers on the blue background screen look like roses, but it is by no means certain that they are. Many of Matisse's paintings of women include flowers such as anemones, marguerites, dahlias, and tulips, but no recognisable roses. In the 1940s he started experimenting with decoupage, creating cut paper collages which he called "gouaches découpés" - they were remarkable for their strong yet elegant shapes and became instantly recognisable as icons of Modern Art.

Answer: Meindeert Hobbema

A modern American shrub rose introduced in 1997, "Meindeert Hobbema" has ivory, red, burgundy & pink striped double blooms with 17 to 25 petals and is a good landscape rose.

Historically, many of the old-fashioned highly scented many-petalled roses were classified as shrub roses. They tended to be large plants producing lax growth. Modern shrub roses, or landscape roses, were developed in the late 20th century to meet the demand for low maintenance plants with more compact growth habits, good flower shape, and fragrance.

Very little detail is known about the life of Meindeert (or Meindert) Hobbema (1638-1709); he was a contemporary of Frans Hals and Rembrandt and spent most of his life in Amsterdam. His landscapes are incredibly detailed and well worth close examination if you have the chance.

Answer: Rembrandt

Rosa 'Rembrandt' is an Old Portland rose which produces large, full, vermilion to orange-shaded carmine flowers that are occasionally striped.

Portland roses came to Britain from Italy in about 1775, and are named for the Duchess of Portland who was the first recipient of them. For a long time they were thought to be the result of crosses between China roses and European roses, but modern DNA analysis has shown that they are descended from damask or gallica roses.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) was a prolific artist, producing many paintings and etchings; he has been credited with over 600 works, but expert scrutiny has now attributed about 300 of these to his pupils. The painting "The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch" is more usually known as "The Night Watch" and is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. A portrait of Rembrandt's wife, Saskia, in 1635, as the goddess Flora includes roses in her bouquet.

Answer: Raphael

Rosa "Raphael" is a light pink Old Moss rose, introduced in 1856. Moss roses came about from a mutation of the old Centifolia (or Cabbage) roses around 1720; the sepals, calyx and stem have a mossy appearance and release a scent described as balsam-like when touched. They were very popular in Victorian gardens.

Rafaello Sanzio (1483-1520), or Raphael as he is more usually known, was a popular, renowned, and very productive artist of the Italian High Renaissance. The majority of his works have a religious or mythological theme, in keeping with the fashion of the time. Around 1508 (the same time that Michelangelo was working on the Sistine Chapel), he was commissioned by Pope Julius II to paint the four public reception rooms of the Pope's apartments in the Vatican. One of his later attributed works, "Madonna della rosa" ("Madonna of the Rose"), executed sometime between 1518 and 1520, shows a very full-petalled rose in the foreground.

Answer: Toulouse-Lautrec

Rosa "Toulouse-Lautrec" is a large-flowered hybrid tea of the Romantica type, introduced in 1993 by French rose growers Meilland. The very full blooms are golden yellow with a strong fragrance and usually have around 40 petals; the flower shape is similar to many of the old-fashioned roses with the inner petals forming an irregularly-shaped central area. It blooms in flushes throughout the season. Meilland's Romantica roses are modelled on old fashioned varieties, but with the vigour and disease resistance of modern plants.

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (1864-1901) was the son of an aristocratic French family; during the course of his artistic career he created hundreds of works (thousands if you include his drawings), the most well-known of which are probably the series of posters for the Moulin Rouge theatre, and other advertising posters. There are very few flowers in his paintings except on the hats of well-dressed ladies.

Answer: Albrecht Dürer

Rosa "Albrecht Dürer" is a modern hybrid tea with fragrant, very double flowers in shades of peach, orange and pink. The flower form is of the old fashioned type, revealing an almost quartered centre when the blooms are fully open. This rose has good disease resistance and flowers in flushes throughout the season. It was introduced in 1999 by the German rose growers Tantau.

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was a German artist who travelled extensively around Europe. He painted, and made incredibly detailed woodcut prints, producing such classic pieces as "Young Hare" (1502), "Rhinoceros" (1515), and "The Praying Hands". While in Italy in 1506, he was commissioned by the German community in Venice to paint an altarpiece for the church of San Bartolomeo - the "Adoration of the Virgin" or "The Feast of the Rose Garlands" - which included a self-portrait in the background of the picture.

Answer: Titian

Rosa "Titian" is a modern cluster-flowered lightly-scented floribunda with large deep pink semi-double to moderately full flowers, introduced in the 1950s by Frank Riethmuller of Sydney, Australia. It is best grown as a largish shrub or a pillar climber. Training up a pillar or obelisk can be a good way of growing taller shrubby roses whose natural growth inclination is lax.

Tiziano Vecellio (c1490-1576), known as Titian, was apprenticed at an early age to two of the leading artists of the time, Gentile Bellini and his son Giovanni. Throughout his career he was a versatile painter, producing landscapes, classical and religious pictures, and portraits in a variety of media. "Girl with a Basket of Fruits" (1555-58) is one of his paintings in which a rose appears; among others are "Sacred and Profane Love" (1514) and the iconic "Venus of Urbino" (1538).

Answer: Botticelli

Rosa "Botticelli" is a clear pink large-flowered floribunda introduced in 2004 by the French growers, Meilland. It has excellent disease resistance, but is not scented.

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (1445-1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (little barrels), was an early Renaissance artist of the Florentine school whose works were largely ignored after his death until the late 19th century, when they were "rediscovered" as prime examples of the best in Early Renaissance art. His well-known painting, the "Birth of Venus" (c1485) depicts the goddess being showered with roses, and in "Primavera", the goddess of Springtime is scattering flowers of Rosa gallica.