Your Art Gallery: Genre Painting Quiz

Answer: Rembrandt

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in 1606 in the city of Leiden in the Dutch province of South Holland. Generally considered one of the greatest of all painters, and perhaps the greatest of the Dutch Golden Age, he is particularly known for the portraits of his contemporaries, his many self-portraits, and his pictures of Bible scenes.

Our featured work comes from the middle, and probably most productive, period of Rembrandt's painting life, shortly after he had completed his best-known work, "The Night Watch". "Winter Landscape" is part of the collection at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister ("Gallery of the Old Masters") housed in the Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel, Germany.

Answer: Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough was born in 1727 in the market town of Sudbury in Suffolk, near the Essex border. He began as a portrait painter, and he is still renowned today for works such as "The Blue Boy". Over time, though, he announced himself "bored with portraits" and decided that he much preferred landscapes. Many of his later works, although ostensibly still portraits, such as his well-known "The Morning Walk" or "The Painter's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly", merge the figures of the portraits with the scenes behind them.

Our featured work just about falls into the genre category, although it would also not be out of place in a collection of landscapes either.

Answer: Raphael

Born Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino in 1483 in the walled city of Urbino in the Marche region on Italy's Adriatic coast, he is known today simply as Raphael. He died in tragic circumstances at the age of just 37, and yet he left behind a huge body of work, most notably perhaps the huge frescoes that can be seen on the walls of the Vatican Palace.

Our featured work is one of seven large drawings, the so-called "Raphael Cartoons". These were originally part of ten scenes commissioned by Pope Leo X to produce tapestries for the Sistine Chapel. They are now part of the "Royal Collection" and have been on loan to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London since 1865.

Answer: Pieter de Hooch

Pieter de Hooch was born in 1629 in Rotterdam. One of the great pleasures of writing these particular quizzes (and, hopefully, of doing them too), is discovering artists with whom one was previously unfamiliar. Pieter de Hooch is just such a discovery -- his style is as distinctive as the likes of Bruegel, Cannaletto, Modigliani, Rousseau, Picasso, Friedrich or Seurat.

Our featured work is typical of de Hooch's middle period, with the building and courtyard taking precedence over the somewhat detached figures. Note the apparent disparity between the well-kept building on the left and the rather unkempt structure to the right, which seems to be invading the courtyard itself. "The Courtyard of a House in Delft" can be seen at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square in central London.

Answer: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in 1841 in the city of Limoges, administrative capital of the Limousin region in west-central France. A leading artist in the early days of Impressionism, Renoir produced paintings that are notable for concentrating on people in intimate or candid situations, and the female nude was one of his principal subjects.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir is the father of filmmaker Jean Renoir (1894-1979) and actor Pierre Renoir (1885-1952).

Our featured work comes from a period in Renoir's painting life when he produced numerous genre paintings, notably "Children at the Beach at Guernsey" and one of his best-known works, "Luncheon of the Boating Party". "Jewish Wedding" is part of the collection at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1898, it is now the second-largest art museum in New England.

Answer: William Hogarth

William Hogarth was born in London in 1697. Often credited with pioneering western sequential art, he was not only a painter but also a pictorial satirist, social critic and cartoonist. He is perhaps best-remembered for two series of moral works, "A Harlot's Progress" and "A Rake's Progress", but he also produced many genuine portraits of his contemporaries such as the architect Inigo Jones, the actor David Garrick and the philanthropist Captain Thomas Coram. A bust of William Hogarth stands in Leicester Square in central London.

Our featured work is part of the collection at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The museum, which is located in Buffalo, New York, is part of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, founded in 1862 and one of the oldest public arts institutions in the U.S.

Answer: Pieter Bruegel the Elder

A quiz on genre paintings would not be complete without a work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who was born in 1525 in the city of Breda in the southern part of The Netherlands. So associated with genre painting is he that he is sometimes referred to as "The Peasant Bruegel". Making peasants the centre of major art works was a new concept in Bruegel's time, less than a century after the likes of da Vinci and Michelangelo were producing great religious-based works, so he can be seen as the pioneer of genre painting.

Our featured work is an oil on panel that is part of one of the world's most significant collections of Bruegel's work, housed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum ("Museum of Art History") in Vienna, Austria. The bride is clearly sitting in front of the green wall hanging, a paper crown above her head. There is much conjecture, though, as to which of the many possibilities in the painting is the groom. The scene not only fairly accurately reflects a 16th-Century peasant wedding but is also a reminder of the hard life peasants had in those time. For a start, the wedding feast seems to consist of bread, porridge and soup!

Answer: Diego Velazquez

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was born in 1599 in the city of Seville in southern Spain. The leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain, in addition to numerous paintings of the Spanish royal family he also produced many scenes of historical and cultural significance. Perhaps his most famous work is 'Las Meninas' ('The Maids of Honour'), part of the vast collection at the Museo del Prado in Madrid and one of the most widely-analyzed works in Western painting.

Our featured work can be seen at the Szépművészeti Múzeum (Museum of Fine Arts) in Budapest, Hungary. Established in 1906, Szépművészeti Múzeum contains more than 100,000 works covering all art periods by non-Hungarian artists. It stands in the iconic Heroes' Square directly across from the Palace of Art, the home of the city's major contemporary art collection.

Answer: Edgar Degas

Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar de Gas in Paris in 1834, Edgar Degas is particularly identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works showing dancers practising, performing or relaxing. One of the founders of Impressionism, he was particularly masterly in depicting movement. His earliest works were often taken directly from his real-life experiences.

Our featured work came about after Degas had traveled to New Orleans in 1872. Accompanying his brother, who was going to work in his uncle's cotton brokerage business, Degas painted the office shortly before the economic crash in which it went bankrupt. He sold the painting in 1878 to the newly founded Musee des Beaux-Arts in Pau in southern France, where it still hangs today. This was not only his first sale to a museum, but the first work by any Impressionist to be purchased.

Answer: Johannes Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer was born in 1632 in the city of Delft in central-west Netherlands. Particularly acknowledged as a master of the use of light, Vermeer painted almost exclusively interior scenes, most of them clearly set in one of two small rooms in his Delft house. His most famous work is "Girl with a Pearl Earing", a simple tronie of a girl wearing a headscarf and, of course, a pearl earring.

Our featured work is one of only three that Vermeer actually signed and dated. The subject, wearing a Japanese-style robe, is clearly entranced by his studies and the painting is brought to life not only by his pose, but also by the masterful use of shadows on the far wall. The painting is very similar to another of Vermeer's best-known works, "The Astronomer", which has a different man adopting a not dissimilar stance in what is clearly the same room. "The Geographer" can be seen at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie (aka the Städel for short) in Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany. Founded in 1815, the museum is home to one of Germany's most important art collections.