Ah, the Thrill of the Hunt Trivia Quiz

Answer: Paolo Uccello

Paolo Uccello was an Italian painter from the town of Pratovecchio, Tuscany. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering use of perspective, being one of the earliest Renaissance practitioners. Giorgio Vasari, author of the 1550 work 'Lives of the Artists', describes how Uccello would stay up all night attempting to perfect the position of his vanishing points.

In addition to 'The Hunt in the Forest', Uccello created many other works that have endured to the modern day. Perhaps his most famous work is his depiction of 'St. George Slaying the Dragon', housed in the National Gallery in London. He also painted a series of three works on 'The Battle of San Romano', fought between the forces of Florence and Siena in 1432. The three paintings are located in some of the most visited galleries in the world: one in the Louvre, one in the National Gallery and one in the Uffizi.

'The Hunt in the Forest' is one of the highlights of the Ashmolean Museum in the university city of Oxford in the United Kingdom. The museum has a huge diversity of exhibits, ranging from paintings by Renoir and Cezanne to statues of Egyptian gods created more than five millennia ago.

Answer: Vittore Carpaccio

Vittore Carpaccio was a Venetian painter from the Renaissance period, and was born only ten years before Paulo Uccello died in 1475. He studied under Gentile Bellini, brother of the now more highly regarded Giovanni Bellini, though at the time this was not the case. Despite being a painter from the later Renaissance, Carpaccio's style is usually regarded as relatively conservative when compared to some of his more progressive contemporaries.

The work for which Carpaccio is best remembered in the modern day is his cycle of nine paintings depicting 'The Legend of Saint Ursula'. Now housed in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, each of the nine paintings is several metres squared. The largest is over six metres wide! The story of Saint Ursula is a tragic one, which culminates in her being sacrificed by Attila the Hun after refusing to marry him.

'Hunting on the Lagoon' is a painting that has caused a lot of debate amongst art historians. Surfacing in 1944 and housed in the Getty Museum, it has been shown to fit above the painting 'Two Venetian Ladies', located in Venice. It is believed that the two extant panels form only half of the full picture, and that there should be at least one more piece out there somewhere.

Answer: Pieter Bruegel

Pieter Bruegel ('the Elder', to distinguish himself from his son 'the Younger' of the same name) was one of the standout figures from what is sometimes called the 'Northern Renaissance', the Renaissance in art that occurred in Germany and the low countries. With his distinctive style, he is also seen as a forerunner of the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th Century that included artists such as Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Despite the fact that Bruegel lived for a mere 39 years (1530-1569), he was incredibly prolific and created a number of impressive works that have retained their fame into the 21st Century. Declining to indulge in either religious or history painting, Breugel was a champion of the common person, and depicts peasants in many of his best-known paintings. One such painting is 'Netherlandish Proverbs', in which Breugel shows the folly of mankind by cramming 112 literal depictions of Dutch proverbs onto a single panel.

'The Hunters in the Snow' was originally one of six paintings, each depicting country life during different months of the year. Only five of the six now remain, three of which are located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and one in Prague Castle in the Czech Republic.

Answer: Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens is perhaps the most famous artist from the style, now referred to as 'Flemish Baroque', that flourished roughly between the Spanish capturing of Antwerp in 1585 and the end of Hapsburg rule in about 1700. Contrary to Bruegel, Rubens absolutely loved historical paintings, particular of mythological subjects, and thus painted a large number in his lifetime (he painted over 1,400 pieces in total). As well as being an artist, Rubens was also a diplomat, moving between the Spanish and English courts in an attempt to broker peace between the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces in the 1620s.

'The Calydonian Boar Hunt' was completed around 1612 and depicts the Argonaut Meleager stabbing the boar with his spear, a scene straight from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'. As is perhaps unsurprising for the time in which the painting was created, it fails to credit the female athlete Atalanta who won the hide of the boar by running incredibly fast and managing to land the first arrow in its hind.

Answer: Jan Weenix

Jan Weenix was born in the 1640s and died in 1719, living through a large portion of the Dutch Golden Age of painting. Of all the artists featured in the quiz, he is the one whose career (and lasting fame) was most dominated by the depiction of either hunting scenes or the still lifes of the resulting dead game. He learnt from his father Jan Baptist Weenix, also a painter, though he has now surpassed him in renown, and many of the paintings originally thought to have been painted by the father are now attributed to the son.

Weenix is credited as one of the best painters of animals of the Dutch Golden Age, and was credited as such by the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote a poem complimenting his technique. Weenix was accustomed to travelling in order to paint in the courts of Europe. He painted for Peter the Great of Russia in 1697 and spent ten years in the castle of Bensberg between 1702 and 1712, painting a series of vast hunting paintings for Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine.

Answer: Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin

Chardin was a painter who very much went against the grain. At the time during which he was painting (18th Century), the most popular type of art, and the art seen as the most worthy of praise, was history painting. Chardin seemingly did not care for such showiness, and while many French painters were indulging in the luxury of the Rococo period, he was happy to paint understated domestic scenes and still lifes. He drew much of his inspiration from the genre painters of the Dutch Golden Age, notably Vermeer.

While some works, such as 'Boy with a Top', drew praise at the time, many were not widely regarded and other artists such as Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard took centre stage. However, as time has passed, many modern artists have credited Chardin as an influence. Matisse openly acknowledged that Chardin was one of his favourite painters, and artists as recent as Lucian Freud have made reproductions of his works.

Answer: Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya is one of the best known Spanish artists, perhaps the most prominent between Diego Velasquez (died 1660) and Pablo Picasso (born 1881). In his early career, Goya worked his way up to become a court painter in the Spanish court. He remained in Spain throughout the Napoleonic Wars (including the Peninsular War) and this had a huge effect on his work. One of his most influential paintings, titled 'The Third of May 1808', shows a group of defenceless men about to be executed during the Napoleonic Wars.

The series of paintings for which Goya is now best remembered are known collectively as the 'Black Paintings', as they embody dark and disturbing themes. They were not commissioned as a single set of works, but represent Goya's disillusionment with mankind in the later years of his life. In 'Two Old Men Eating Soup' he shows two wretched men, one of which has the face of a skull. In 'Saturn Devouring His Son', perhaps the most disturbing of them all, Goya shows the mythological giant Saturn eating the body of his son as he is afraid of being overthrown.

'The Quail Shoot' comes from much earlier in Goya's career (when he was still under 30), showing how his style changed dramatically throughout his lifetime.

Answer: George Catlin

Citing the arrival in Philadelphia of a group of Native Americans in his youth, George Catlin held a life-long fascination with Native American culture. Inspired by the viewing of artefacts from the Lewis and Clark exhibition in the early 19th Century, Catlin decided to accompany William Clark on a diplomatic mission into Native American territory in 1830. This was the first of Catlin's many travels; he visited more than fifty tribes during his career. His work was collected in a single volume ('Life Among the Indians') published during his lifetime, and two more volumes published four years after his death.

Of the incorrect answers, John Singer Sargent was an American artist best known for his portraits, notably his provocative 'Portrait of Madame X'. Diego Rivera was a Mexican muralist who was married to Frida Kahlo, and Albert Bierstadt was a landscape painter of the American West.

Answer: Eugene Delacroix

Eugene Delacroix was the foremost painter of the French Romantic movement. He was a strong proponent of the bold use of colour and expressive strokes, placing him at odds with contemporaries like Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. While he took some inspiration from classical subjects, Delacroix also went further afield to search for subject matter that he considered more exotic. His travels took him to North Africa, a region that had a great influence on much of his art.

A symbol of French nationalism, the painting for which Delacroix is best known in the modern day is 'Liberty Leading the People'. Commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 that overthrew Charles X, it depicts a bare-chested Marianne (the embodiment of France) in the midst of battle, defiantly holding aloft a French flag. The painting provided the influence for the pose of the Statue of Liberty, and was featured on the front of Coldplay's 2008 album 'Viva la Vida'.

There all several extant versions of Delacroix's 'Lion Hunt' that can be found across the world. A rough early painting (dating to 1854) can be found in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, while a later version is found in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. The 'main' version (excuse the pun!) is located in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Answer: Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was born in Boston in 1836 and became an apprentice lithographer at the age of 17. His artistic talent soon became apparent and he began to get much of his income from freelance jobs. After spending time working in New York, Homer moved to Prouts Neck, Maine in 1882 and lived there for the rest of his life. 'The Fox Hunt' has been interpreted by some as the ultimate Darwinian painting, while others see it as a portrayal of Homer himself.

Of the incorrect answers, James Whistler was an American artist who was almost an exact contemporary of Homer. However, while Homer is largely famous in the United States, Whistler was widely travelled and spent time in Russia, England and France. He is best remembered for his 'Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1', also known as 'Whistler's Mother'.

Grant Wood was an American painter who predominantly depicted rural life in the Midwest. His most famous work, 'American Gothic', depicts a much-parodied man and woman standing in front of a house with a distinctive window. Jackson Pollock was also an American artist, one of the pioneers of abstract expressionism who is known for his 'drip' style of painting.