Greetings, DUers! Ready for your Friday Afternoon Challenge? Here it is: “Illuminations.”

[CTyankee]

Illumination has been a subject and condition of art since the Lascaux cave painters. Now at midwinter let us identify these works of the optical sublime...

Good luck, and of course...no cheating..

1.
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2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
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[jberryhill]

1. #2 is by that Dutch guy

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. lol

[CTyankee]

4. It isn't the Dutch guy...

[jberryhill]

6. Okay, maybe that Belgian or Flemish guy

[CTyankee]

9. strike out!

[pinboy3niner]

59. #5 is *TA-DA!* that Dutch guy

See #57.

[jberryhill]

60. Thank goodness

I thought I was losing my touch

Yeah. That guy who painted all that stuff.

[CTyankee]

63. No, I knew all along that you hadn't...

[annabanana]

3. #5 looks like a Caravaggio. . .

[CTyankee]

5. it does, but no...

[pinboy3niner]

7. #2: Georges de la Tour - The New Born Child nt

[CTyankee]

8. pretty much screams de la Tour, doesn't it?

Do you like this artist?

[pinboy3niner]

11. I like Caravaggio better

But what I know about art wouldn't fill a thimble.

[IcyPeas]

10. number 1 is a degas

the woman in blue with the veil gives it away for me. Also the horse. He has a few paintings with horses.

[CTyankee]

14. Very good! It IS an early Degas...altho I just don't know how you got it from the woman in blue

with the veil...I wouldn't have known this had it not been pointed out to me...

[JDPriestly]

26. I couldn't guess it, but on review, the fall of the fabric in the veil is a giveaway.

It looks like the netting on a ballet tutu. Maybe that is why Degas liked to paint dancers. He liked to paint the fall of the fabric. I'm just guessing for fun.

[Nye Bevan]

12. #3 is a Thomas Kinkade.

Well I'm pretty sure. I hope I am not displaying my ignorance of art here.

[CTyankee]

15. It isn't Kinkade altho maybe Kinkade liked this artist. I don't really know since I don't know that

much about him.

[cthulu2016]

13. #4 could be one of a few American western artists

Frank Tenney Johnson? But it has a bit more... vitality than most Johnsons. They are Johnson stars though.

But would you feature someone that relatively minor? Hmmm. I don't want to say Remington, though it could be... it's his kind of thing, even down to the scratchy vigorous excution. Maybe Couse.

But I'll guess Johnson because he made his career on those distinctive green nights, and is thus statistically the best guess. (He did more green night with stars paintings than anyone else.)

[CTyankee]

17. Interesting response and of course, you have a background in this art. not johnson, tho...but...

you are on the right track...

[cthulu2016]

20. Okay... I'll revert to my first guess

Johnson got the green night thing from Remington, so I should have just guessed Remington but I wanted to show off.

The thing is, Johnson was a heavy painter... thick paint. Remington was not. So the scratchiness and exposed under-paint, and the iconic/simple image, and the fascination with encounters at water holes, and the thinness of the wolf (Remington like thin things, not rounded things) are all Remington and I outsmarted myself.

[CTyankee]

21. Great analysis! I thought it looked a lot like what we now call photorealism. Or maybe he was

trying for something like that, even back in the late 19th century. Like most Americans I think of Remington's cowboy, bucking horses type of art but this just struck me as interesting. Evidently, he did a number of night time paintings but the ones I saw all had dudes in cowboy attire around campfires which would have been pretty simple...this caught my eye with the green effect.

[pinboy3niner]

18. #4: Remington - Moonlight Wolf nt

[CTyankee]

19. there ya go, pinboy! What gave it away to you?

[pinboy3niner]

22. He was one possibility, but I wasn't at all sure

I searched on the subject rather than trying to search by artist.

[CTyankee]

30. it's very interesting that the artist had this fascination with night painting...

[CrazyOrangeCat]

54. I really like that one; it is unique.

I have always liked night scenes, both painted and photographed.

Thanks.

[pinboy3niner]

23. #6: Francisco de Zurbarán - St. Francis nt

[CTyankee]

28. indeed. do you like zubaran?

[pinboy3niner]

34. His depictions of monks are interesting

I hadn't run across his work before today.

[ellisonz]

24. Nada

[CTyankee]

31. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't want anybody to feel down about the Challenge. Don't worry, next week

may have something you studied in art history or art appreciation and you'll recall it...a lot of folks here do that...art will simply enrich and save your life, trust me!

[ellisonz]

35. I hope so!

I unfortunately never took an art history course

[CTyankee]

37. That's ok, I'll give you some mini-courses with my Challenges! Hopefully, you'll love it so much

you'll start Googling and god knows what will happen to you then!

[Botany]

25. You forgot the greatest work ever of the illuminated genre

[psychmommy]

27. Thank u for giving me a greater appreciation of art.

These posts are great. i look forward to this.

[CTyankee]

29. thanks! Did you take art appreciation in school? I find lots of people here telling me that

they took art history or art appreciation as an elective as an undergrad and never forgot the experience! It's wonderful!

[psychmommy]

33. nope, plus I partied alot and vaguely remember my undergrad years. . lol

It wasn't my talent and I couldn't relate. Now I am old and mellow, I can appreciate it now.

[CTyankee]

36. welll, here we are! I came to this kind of art fascination pretty late, too.

I had already gotten a Master's in Liberal Studies where I had done an Independent Study on Caravaggio. When I retired a few years later, I fell in love with art entirely. Hence, my fascination and these Challenges!

Also, it keeps my brain from atrophying...

[CTyankee]

32. #s 3 and 5 are left! Let's hear it from you, folks...

[yardwork]

38. #3 reminds me of Thomas Hardy's novels. Is it a 19th century painting?

Really amazing scene.

[CTyankee]

39. It is 19th century but I am not connecting to Hardy...but I never read hardy so I don't know...

[yardwork]

43. The opening scene of The Return of the Native describes a peasant bonfire celebration.

This doesn't look like a celebration, though.

[CTyankee]

49. Oh, thanks for that info! It is good to know!

but it IS interesting to see how one artist or one artiistic school influences another art movement...perhaps this is one of those cases...

[yardwork]

53. Millet's painting was done in 1874. The Return of the Native was published in 1878.

It is possible that Hardy's novel was influenced by that painting!

This is so interesting. I love the Friday Challenge!

[pinboy3niner]

40. #3: Jean-François Millet - Hunting Birds at Night

It took me a long time to figure out what was going on here. Eventually the birds and the clubs made me think of bird hunting.

[CTyankee]

42. good for you! Interesting work, isn't it?

[pinboy3niner]

50. It's very unusual

I looked up some more information on it:

Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections

This haunting and strange picture--brutishly literal yet terrifyingly generic--is the final painting by Jean-François Millet, a remarkable last testament by one of the most profound artists of the nineteenth century. He drew on his own boyhood experiences in depicting the subject of bird's-nesters, who would hunt great flocks of pigeons at night by blinding them with torchlight and then clubbing them to death. By the 1870s Millet's paintings of rural life were among the most famous in France. His subjects are nearly all drawn from the peasantry, done just as the countryside was being depopulated by immigration to the new industrial centers. But unlike many other artists who worked in the very popular specialty of "peasant painting," Millet's great genius was his ability to bond his subjects to their native place while simultaneously elevating them to a level of universal humanity. Much of his success was based on his evocation of a communal memory of a lost rural world that was either arcadian or pathetic or a combination of both. Joseph J. Rishel, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 197.

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102872.html

[CTyankee]

51. a lovely description of this very strange work. It almost seems desperate. What drove people to

such means and ends for their very subsistence?

[democrat in Tallahassee]

41. #5 looks like Artemesia Gentileschi

She was a follower or Caravaggio. On the other hand, something reminds me of Judith Leyster in Holland--maybe the musical instruments but I don't think she was that into chiaroscuro.

[CTyankee]

44. it does look like Gentileschi but it is not hers...and I don't think of Leyster into chiaracuro

either. I saw her work on an art intensive in the Netherlands in 2011...

[democrat in Tallahassee]

46. I do like Leyster though

And I admire Gentileschi (and Leyster) too. It was not easy for a woman to become an artist.

[CTyankee]

48. Oh, I adore both of them. Brave women all. And they did good! (my mouse pad is a Leyster

flower work that I bought in the gift shop in the Frans Hals House Museum in Haarlem...)

[mwdem]

45. Where's the gd Kincaid?

He was the Painter of Light? Am I not right?

[CTyankee]

47. well, in a word, no.

paintings of effects of light, as I said in my OP, go back to the Lascaux artists who positioned their images to catch the rays of the sun at winter solstice. Then we have stained glass windows in medieval Europe light, Muslim radiance, Romantic landscape artists, and the "scientific data" of the French Impressionists...and on and on.

Historical perspective informs...

[mwdem]

52. You do know I'm kidding, right?

I do love your post.

[CTyankee]

55. well, no, I don't know how serious anyone coming here is. So I don't want to say anything that is

not nice, but I want to emphasize the positives. This is a gentle place and I don't want to put anyone down for their questions about what I have posted. I hope I didn't come across too harsh (my hubby thinks I came across too strong).

thank you for your kind words. I'm glad you like the Challenge!

[mwdem]

56. Sorry...I was being flippant

I love Caravaggio and his use of shadows and illuminations.

[pinboy3niner]

57. #5: Hendrick ter Brugghen - The Concert

That was tough! (And my final search even turned up a Kincade, lol!)

More info on this painting:

This painting has a strong claim to be ter Brugghen's finest treatment of a secular subject. He has taken a scene favoured by Caravaggio and his Roman followers - a group of flamboyantly dressed musicians seen by candlelight - and treated it in his own distinctive manner, placing the dramatically lit half-length figures against a light background.

Paintings of the same subject by Caravaggio (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Bartolommeo Manfredi (Florence, Uffizi) are among the prototypes for this composition. Their large-scale, half-length figures, their crowding together within the composition and their closeness to the edge of the canvas, as well as the bright, colourful palette can all be found in this painting. Ter Brugghen brings to this existing format an individual fluency in modelling the soft edges of his forms and a remarkable subtlety of palette.

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hendrick-ter-brugghen-the-concert

[CTyankee]

62. Utrecht Caravaggisti, a fascinating group...

after they died out Caravaggio slipped out of favor until the early 20th century. Ruskin had hated him. Then he was rediscovered and is now the most popular artist in the U.S. (according to some). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utrecht_Caravaggism

[yardwork]

69. This was a good choice - it was hard to figure out!

I was all over the google last night trying to figure out if this was Caravaggio or one of his contemporaries. I even scanned images of Rembrandt - I just couldn't figure it out.

Another beautiful and fun challenge for a Friday night!

[CTyankee]

70. glad you liked it! Another one next week...

[lapislzi]

58. oooh, pick me...

#1...Odilon Redon? I know the painting, and I know it's from they Symbolist school. Wish I could remember more, as this is one of my favorite periods of art.

#2 Georges de la Tour.

#3 Courbet?

#5 Caravaggio (studied intently by de la Tour, above)

Thanks for a fun challenge, as always, CTY

...your friend in NY

[CTyankee]

64. glad to see you! looks like de la Tour has his followers here at DU tonight...

[CTyankee]

66. #1 is entitled Mlle Fiocre in the Ballet The Source

Interesting early work by the artist and here is a link on it:

http://archive.org/details/brooklynmuseum-o4393-portrait-of-mlle-fiocre-in-the-ballet

[lapislzi]

67. Thank you! I'm ashamed...I should have known that.

I studied Degas pretty heavily. Of course that was 30 years ago. This painting, which includes some of his favorite subject matter (horses, ballet, bathers), foreshadows by 20 years his Symbolist compositions.

[CTyankee]

68. Hey, I would never have guessed Degas just by looking at this painting. Without some

background, I didn't put together the thematic approaches altogether (horse, ballet, bathers as you point out). It was pretty mysterious to me, so I have learned something....

[WinkyDink]

61. #6 = St. Francis, by Zurbaran.

I knew it was of St. Francis, and went from there.

[CTyankee]

65. The title I have is "St Francis in Ecstasy" altho I think he looks dead...

his skin pallor is the same as his robe...

[entanglement]

71. I should have guessed St Francis, having seen one before. Morbidity and decay were certainly on the

artist's mind.



Great "challenge", as usual

[CTyankee]

72. thank you for the kind words! That one is kinda scary...