Animals in Famous Works of Art Quiz

Answer: Anthony van Dyck

Anthony van Dyck's 1620 portrait follows from an equally famous equestrian portrait of the same emperor by the Italian great, Titian, "Charles V at Mühlberg".
Other famous equestrian portraits include Anthony van Dyck's 1637 "Equestrian Portrait of Charles I" on display at the National Gallery in London and Francisco Goya's early 19th-Century "Equestrian Portrait of the 1st Duke of Wellington".

Answer: George Stubbs

Better known for his paintings of horses, this painting entitled "A Portrait of a Large Dog from New Holland (Dingo)" is by the English artist George Stubbs. Along with his painting of a kangaroo, these are the only two works by Stubbs that he did not draw from live subjects.

This painting is part of the collection at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. Other famous canine paintings include "Trial by Jury" by Sir Edwin Landseer and the unusual Goya masterpiece from the early 1820s entitled "Head of a Dog", "The Buried Dog", "The Half-Drowned Dog", "The Half-Submerged Dog" or, sometimes, simply "Goya's Dog".

Answer: Korea

This is an example of Korean art from the late Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) era. Byeon Sang-byeok is known particularly for his depiction of animals, mostly cats, birds and puppies. The exact dates of the artist's birth and death are unknown, but he is known to have been active during the early-to-mid 18th Century.
The pictured work forms part of the collection at Korea's first modern private art museum, the Gansong Museum in Seoul. The museum was founded to prevent Japanese removal of Korean cultural properties during the Japanese occupation during the early 20th Century.
Amongst other famous painting featuring a cat is Picasso's 1941 "Dora Maar au Chat" (Dora Maar with Cat), featuring the artist's lover sitting in a chair with a cat perched on her shoulder. It became the world's second-most expensive painting when it sold for more than $95 million to an anonymous Russian bidder at a 2006 auction. Another worth mentioning is David Hockney's "Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy", which is on display at the Tate Britain.

Answer: Winslow Homer

Perhaps best known for his marine subjects, Winslow Homer is one of the most important American painters of the 19th Century. This paintings of a girl on horseback at the top of Mount Washington is part of the collection at the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute (usually known simply as "The Clark") in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Amongst Homer's other animal paintings is the massive "The Fox Hunt", the artist's largest single composition, which can be seen at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia PA.

Answer: Sir Edwin Landseer

I could have chosen any one of a dozen paintings of animals by Sir Edwin Landseer for this quiz: famous works include "Falcon" (birds), "The Arab Tent" (horses), "A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society", "Doubtful Crumbs" and "Attachment" (all featuring dogs) and, of course, "The Monarch of the Glen" (stag).

He is probably best-known today, though, not for his paintings but for his sculpted bronze lions that lie at the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square in the heart of London. When he died in 1873, Landseer left two animal paintings, "Finding the Otter" and "The Dead Buck", unfinished in his studio and his friend John Everett Millais kept Landseer's wish that he should complete them. The painting pictured here is part of the collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Answer: Henri Rousseau

Born Henri Julien Félix Rousseau in 1844 in the town of Laval in northwestern France, Henri Rousseau is known for his 'jungle scenes', although in reality he never left France.
Other famous animal paintings by Rousseau include "The Hungry Lion Attacking an Antelope" which can be seen at the Beyeler Foundation in Switzerland, "The Sleeping Gypsy" which is on display at the "Museum of Modern Art" in New York City, and "In a Tropical Forest Combat of a Tiger and a Buffalo" which is part of the collection at the "Hermitage Museum" in Saint Petersburg.

Answer: C. M. Coolidge

Born Cassius Marcellus Coolidge in Antwerp NY in 1844, the artist known as C.M. Coolidge or "Cash" Coolidge is primarily known for his "Dogs Playing Poker" series (although only nine of the 16 actually feature the dogs seated around a card table). Advertising company Brown & Bigelow commissioned the series in 1903 and Coolidge completed them over the following decade. "Waterloo" dates to 1906. The two best-known paintings in the series, "Waterloo" and "A Bold Bluff" (which was originally called "Judge St. Bernard Stands Pat on Nothing") both featured a Saint Bernard named Captain, who belonged to the artist's friend Theodore Lang, a noted 5th Avenue florist. Auctioned as a pair in 2005, the two "St Bernard" paintings from the series sold for over $590,000. (The previous high for a Coolidge work had been $74,000.)

Answer: Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Born in 1525 in Bree, Duchy of Brabant in Habsburg Netherlands (modern-day Belgium), Pieter Bruegel the Elder is renowned both for his landscapes and for his peasant scenes. Often notable for the large number of people he manages to pack into a canvas, many of his paintings also feature numerous animals as part of the scene.
The Polish poetess and the 1996 Nobel Literature Laureate, Wis³awa Szymborska, wrote a 1957 poem entitled "Brueghel's Two Monkeys" specifically about this painting.

Answer: Gustave Courbet

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet, born into a prosperous farming family in 1819 in the commune of Ornans, near the Swiss border in eastern France, was the leading member of the French Realist school. Painted during the winter of 1866-67, Coubert was in a phase of painting huge canvases -- this one measures an impressive 140x199 inches, so nearly twelve feet high and more than sixteen feet wide. Although it sometimes appears elswhere on loan, this painting belongs to France's oldest public museum, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie (Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology) located in the city of Besançon near to Courbert's home village.

Answer: Edgar Degas

Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas in Paris in 1834, Edgar Degas is best known for his paintings of the ballet and ballet dancers. This work, entitled "Before the Race" was painted between 1882 and 1884 and, early in the 21st century, was part of the collection at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore MD.
Other horse-racing painting by Degas include "At the Races", painted between 1887 and 1890 and on display at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Both Degas and Edouard Manet painted scenes of horse-racing at Longchamps, the famous Paris racecourse.