A Great Location for Great Art Quiz

Answer: Arles

This striking painting was innovative in presenting a nighttime scene using vivid colors. Particularly notable is the stark contrast of the warm colors of the cafe with the darker shades of the night sky. Van Gogh made the then-unusual decision to paint this scene from real life in the evening because he felt that, "the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." The cafe depicted still exists and has been renamed the Café Van Gogh, and was refurbished in the 1990s to replicate van Gogh's painting.

The artist moved to Arles in the hope of starting an artists' colony there with his close friend Paul Gauguin. However, this did not work out as he had a quarrel with Gauguin that culminated in him cutting off his ear and then checking into a mental hospital in Saint-Rémy.

Answer: Pointillism

Pointillism is a technique that Seurat developed which applies miniature dots or small brushstrokes of colors rather than standard brushstrokes. Seurat was inspired by developments in optics and the study of color perception, and the technique relies on the ability of the human eye to unify myriads of dots into a perception of a single hue.

The painting is striking for the immobility of the figures depicted, who seem frozen in place. Seurat created the painting over many sittings between 1884 and 1886, in which he sat in the park making many preliminary drawings and oil sketches attempting to capture the park's landscape and colors in detail. Located at the very gates of Paris, the island today contains a public garden and a housing development.

Answer: Moulin Rouge

This painting, "At the Moulin Rouge", is one of several by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec that depicts this celebrated venue, one of the artist's favorite haunts. The artist himself is shown seated at the table with his much taller cousin, Dr. Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran, and the entertainer Jane Avril with her flaming red-orange hair.

In the background, the dancer La Goulue preens before a greenish mirror, while the foreground is dominated by the green-lit face of the English dancer May Milton. The Moulin Rouge still operates in Paris today and was the subject of an award-winning 2001 film by Baz Luhrmann that featured Toulouse-Lautrec as one of the characters.

Answer: El Greco

El Greco ("the Greek") produced his mature works in the city of Toledo, which at the time was the religious capital of Spain. El Greco was noted for his unique style of painting that emphasized dramatization of the subject matter in an effort to convey strong spiritual emotion.

This is evident in the composition of "View of Toledo" with the bold contrast between dark and somber skies and the glowing green hills, along with the striking distortions of the landscape in which the building locations are re-arranged for visual effect. Today, because of its rich cultural and architectural heritage, Toledo receives thousands of visitors yearly, and is home to the El Greco Museum, which celebrates this painter's work.

Answer: John Constable

Constable was particularly noted for his landscapes, and "The Hay Wain" is regarded as his "most famous image" and is one of the most popular British paintings. It was exhibited at the 1824 Paris Salon and was awarded a gold medal by Charles X of France.

The house depicted, which is located in Suffolk, England, was originally built in the 16th century, with additions made in subsequent decades. Willy Lott was a tenant farmer on land owned by Constable's father, although he owned the house itself. Restorations were made in the 1920s to restore its appearance to that shown in the painting. Today, it is maintained by the United Kingdom's National Trust.

Answer: Paul Cezanne

Cezanne's work had a major influence on later modern art movements, particularly fauvism, cubism, and expressionism. Where the impressionists emphasized natural light and color, the post-impressionists emphasized geometric forms and abstract qualities. Cezanne's work is notable for the use of planes of color and small brushstrokes to create complex fields.

This style is evident in his paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire, which he praised as a "beau motif" (beautiful motif). Today, the mountain is a popular destination for hiking, climbing, paragliding and caving.

Answer: Germany

Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter who is particularly known for depicting scenes in which tiny figures contemplate vast expanses, as in "Chalk Cliffs on Rügen". The scene depicted is located in Jasmund National Park on Rügen, Germany's largest island. Friedrich visited the island, with its spectacular chalk cliffs on his honeymoon in 1818, and it is believed that the figure in the middle of the painting is the artist himself while his wife is to the left. Like many of his paintings, the scene is full of metaphysical symbolism, e.g., the figures look out on an abyss that represents the abyss of death, while Friedrich seeks a foothold in the grass, representing the transience of life. Jasmund National Park is today a nature reserve that is home to many rare plants and animals and is a popular tourist attraction.

Answer: Japanese

Monet's paintings were strongly influenced by Japanese art and culture. He collected many Japanese art prints and appreciated their linearity and stylizations, which is reflected in the monochrome color schemes of his paintings. When he moved to Giverny, he designed the gardens and lily ponds himself, and the green bridge is in a typically Japanese style.

He painted many scenes from these gardens under light and weather conditions in his characteristic impressionistic style. Today, Monet's home and gardens are open to the public, under the care of the Fondation Claude Monet, and are one of the most popular tourist sites in Normandy.

Answer: Johannes Vermeer

Nearly all of Vermeer's surviving paintings appear to be set in either of two rooms in his house. He is known to have painted only three views of Delft, only two of which survive, one of them being "The Little Street". Vermeer's painting style was noted for the use of a limited number of pigments, often expensive ones such as lapis lazuli for ultramarine hues, which he used lavishly.

In "The Little Street", the walls of the building are painted in a thicker layer to give the structure a more solid impression, while the sky is painted with lead white and ultramarine.

The exact location of the scene in the painting remains a matter of debate. A professor at the University of Amsterdam used archival records that provide detailed measurements of all houses and passageways along the canals of Delft at the time and concluded that the house was located at 40-42 Vlamingstraat, a street with a narrow canal.

The research indicated that the house on the right belonged to Vermeer's widowed aunt, his father's half-sister, and that Vermeer's mother and sister lived on the same canal, diagonally opposite. An exhibition about the findings called "Vermeer's The Little Street discovered" was held in 2015-2016, first in the Rijksmuseum, a Dutch national museum in Amsterdam and afterwards in Museum Prinsenhof Delft.

Despite this, other Dutch art historians have remained sceptical about these findings.

Answer: Venice

Manet visited the Grand canal in 1875 with his friend and fellow painter James Tissot. According to artist Mary Cassatt, Manet found it hard to settle in Venice, and "he was thoroughly discouraged and depressed at his inability to paint anything to satisfaction." Despite this, he managed to produce this dashing work to convey the beauty of the Venetian canals in a painting that is different in mood from his other seascapes, with its brighter colors and broken brushstrokes. Visitors to Venice can still take Gondola rides today of course, although the water is not quite as vividly blue as Manet depicted it.