Winter, Spring, Summer or Autumn Quiz

Answer: Winter Scene in Brooklyn

Frances Guy (1760-1820) was born in London, where he started life working in the family silk dying business before moving to the US in 1795, settling in Baltimore in 1798. The fire that destroyed his business in 1799 led to a totally new lifestyle as a painter. He had no formal training, but spent time copying the artworks held by the art collector Robert Gilmour to develop his techniques. He then established a clientele among the landed gentry who wanted their estates recorded, and became known for his landscapes. In 1817 he moved to Brooklyn NY, where he worked until his death a few years later, while his last projected exhibition was still incomplete.

'Winter Scene in Brooklyn' was one of the last paintings he completed. It is currently held by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, as part of their Winter-themed collection.

Answer: Summer

'Vétheuil en été' ('Vétheuil in Summer') was painted in 1880 by the French impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926). His 1874 'Impression, soleil levant' ('Impression, Sunrise') led to the name applied to the group of artists who took their inspiration from nature rather than from classical subject material. He is well known for producing several series of paintings that show the same scene at different times of day and/or in different seasons, showing the changing light affected the subject's appearance.

While Monet is most familiar for the hundreds of paintings he produced of the water lilies on his property in Giverny over the last thirty years of his life, he has a number of other series, as that was his preferred approach to his painting. Between 1878 and 1881 he lived in Vétheuil, and produced over 200 paintings, many of which involved studies of the scenery. The painting chosen for the quiz was selected purely to get a balance of seasons represented from the various artists - Monet's work could have been used for all ten questions.

Answer: Autumn

Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) is considered a realist painter, who started portraying working people, and finished his life concentrating on landscapes. 'Haystacks: Autumn' was one of a series of four paintings completed around 1873-4, showing the same scene in four different seasons. It is interesting to compare his series with Monet's haystacks. Millet's are almost photographic, while Monet's display a range of colours that emphasize the ambient light, not just the haystack itself.

Millet grew up working on a farm in Normandy before being sent to study art in Cherbourg at the age of 19; farming activities became a recurring theme in his painting. 'The Gleaners' (1857), which is one of his most reproduced works, shows peasant women engaged in the traditional act of going through the post-harvest fields, and gathering what grain they could find. It was very poorly received, and sold at a loss because Millet was short on funds, but it became widely appreciated (and very valuable) after his death.

Answer: Winter Scene on Toronto Bay

William Armstrong (1822-1914) was a Canadian artist (as you might have guessed from the title of the painting), although he was born and trained in Ireland before emigrating in 1851, where he settled in Toronto, working as a railway engineer. As a sideline, he provided watercolour illustrations to be turned into etchings for use in the various weekly news publications. The painting used in this question is listed online as being completed in 1835, but that is clearly wrong; perhaps it dates from 1853.

Armstrong's job on the railways allowed him to travel extensively, recording what he saw both in painting and sketching and in photographs, a medium in which he worked extensively. He also took up positions teaching art at the Toronto Normal School (from 1864) and the University of Toronto (between 1872 and 1877).

Answer: Spring

As indicated in an earlier question, Claude Monet's practice of painting any given scene as many times as he could, exploring the impact of changing light conditions on the way the the subject is perceived, means he has a lot pf paintings with a season in the title. This painting, however, precedes that phase, so remains the only version of these trees.

The original title of this 1873 painting was 'Printemps' ('Spring'), but since he used that title several times for different scenes near Argenteuil, where he was living at the time, this one is usually given the more specific title of 'Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom)'. Monet was quite casual about naming his works - dozens of the 250 or so paintings in his waterlilies series are just called 'Nymphéas'.

Answer: Autumn Foliage

Tom Thomson (1877-1917) was a Canadian artist who specialised in landscapes, both full-sized works on canvas, and small studies on wood, of which he produced over 400 during his short time. His modus operandi was to produce the studies on wood 'en plein air' from spring through fall, then use them as the inspiration for the canvas works he completed in his studio during the inhospitable Ontario winters. His death by drowning in Canoe Lake was such a surprise (especially since he was an expert outdoorsman), that rumor of foul play circulated for years, although there was no factual basis for them.

'Autumn Foliage', an oil-on-wood painting which measures roughly 8 x 5 inches, was produced in either 1915 or 1916 - authorities differ. It is clearly not a realistic landscape - the trees that produce the various colours seen would be highly unlikely to produce the height of their autumnal colours at the same time. But it does evoke memories (in someone who grew up where fall colors were an important seasonal milestone, and now lives where the eucalypts stay grey-green all year) of the vibrancy of autumn.

Answer: Golden Summer, Eaglemont

Arthur Streeton (1867-1943) was a leading member of the Heidelberg School, an Australian impressionist group active near Melbourne in the late 19th century. They placed special emphasis on the difference between Australian light and European light. Their landscapes are flattened under the harsh light, especially in scenes such as this, when the heat of summer has turned the grass brown. Eaglemont is a suburb of Melbourne which was then a rural outskirt area of Melbourne; now it is an urban region 13 km (8 miles) from the CBD, a train trip of about 25 minutes.

'Golden Summer, Eaglemont' was painted during January of 1889, after Streeton had located the spot in 1888, and made arrangements with the owner of the property (the brother-in-law of a fellow painter) to allow the group of artists to set up camp there, where they stayed for about 18 months, not a short visit. The Dandenong Ranges, seen in the background, have a blue tinge for the same reason as the Blue Mountains near Sydney - the eucalypts growing there emit volatile chemicals that produce Mie scattering (ask your physics teacher) leading to the impression of a blue haze.

Answer: Autumn Oaks

George Inness (1825-1894) was an American landscape painter, born in New York but growing up in New Jersey. He studied with a number of artists, and opened his own studio in 1848. But when he was sponsored to study in Europe, and came into contact with the Barbizon school, he became entranced with their approach, and used it for much of his subsequent work.

'Autumn Oaks', painted in 1878 following a four-year stay in Europe, includes the lowering clouds that were typical of his landscapes during that period. It shows his move from focusing on detail to showing the overall impression of light on surfaces, and the visual impact of colours.

Answer: Spring Blossoms, Montclair New Jersey

George Inness (1825-1894), an American landscape painter, moved to settle in New Jersey in 1885, and this later stage of his work shows another change from Barbizon-school impressionism to an attempt to convey the spiritual components of the landscapes. This was a result of his interest in the theology of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, and the writings of the American philosopher William James.

'Spring Blossoms, Montclair New Jersey', painted in 1891, shows some of the salient features of Inness's later works, including a blurring of the edges of shapes, and a sense of intimacy, rather than grandeur, in the scope of the scene.

Answer: Summer

Emile Claus (1849-1924) was a Belgian painter whose love of drawing was not supported by his father, who apprenticed him to a baker. He managed to have a friend of the family persuade his family to allow him to go study art in Antwerp, and he never looked back, experiencing international success from an early age. His earliest work was mostly portraiture and genre pieces; in the 1890s he moved to impressionism, influenced by Claude Monet, before finally developing his own version of impressionism, which he called luminism in reference to the shades of colour which he employed.

Online copies of the 1893 painting 'Zomer' ('Summer') show a number of colour adjustments made by the person digitising the image - some have the grass as a bright green, suggesting that it is still early summer, and some are very yellow, suggesting that it is later in the season. As I have not had the fortune to see the original (it is in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp), I just chose the one that looked most pleasing to my eye in the context of the images for this quiz.