Great Galleries: Tate Britain, London Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. This 1852 painting of "Ophelia", a character from Shakespeare's "Hamlet", depicts the subject singing while floating in a Danish river just before she drowns. The Southampton-born artist was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Who painted "Ophelia"?

Answer: Sir John Everett Millais

Born in the southern city of Southampton in 1829, John Everett Millais was created 1st Baronet of Palace Gate and St Ouen by Queen Victoria in 1885. The youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools (aged 11), he completed the controversial "Christ in the House of His Parents" (also part of the Tate Britain collection) when he was just 21. Another of his notable early works (finished in 1846), "Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru", hangs in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

2. "Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils" is a work from 1826 by the English poet, painter and printmaker who in the same year published his 22 engravings now known as "Illustrations of the Book of Job". Although little known in his lifetime, he is now recognized as one of the most important artists of the Romantic Age. Who is this artist?

Answer: William Blake

Born in Soho in central London in 1757, William Blake was voted into 38th-place in the BBC's 2002 poll of "100 Greatest Britons". Blake was a student at the Royal Academy in London during the time when the school's first President, Sir Joshua Reynolds, was still in charge there. Although the pair were often at loggerheads, Blake still exhibited regularly at the Academy.

Blake is perhaps best-known today for his illustrations. Works that he illustrated in addition to the "Book of Job" include Mary Wollstonecraft's "Original Stories from Real Life" and John Milton's "Paradise Lost". At the time of his death in 1827, he was working on illustrations for John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" and Dante's "The Divine Comedy".

3. Painted in 1845 and one of his last works, "Norham Castle, Sunrise" exemplifies the style of arguably Britain's greatest Romanticist landscape painter. This is one of numerous example of his work at the Tate Britain, as the artist bequeathed his own collection to the nation. Dubbed "the painter of light", who is this artist?

Answer: J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in Covent Garden in central London in 1775. He travelled widely thought Europe, studying at The Louvre and making numerous visits to Venice. Amongst his best-known early works, both of which can also be seem at the Tate Britain, are "Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps", completed in 1812, and "The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory" (1806). His most famous works include "Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway" and "The Fighting Temeraire" (both housed at the National Gallery in London).

Although most of Turner's best-known works are oils, he is also Britain's most renowned watercolour landscapist. "Eruption of Vesuvius" (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut), "Cologne: The Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening" (Frick Collection, New York City) and "The Blue Rigi, Sunrise" (Tate Britain) are wonderful examples of his work in that medium.

4. Completed in 1745, the artist worked on "The Painter and his Pug (Self-portrait)" for more than ten years. A celebrated satirist and cartoonist as well as a artist, note how he painted the dog sitting in front of an apparent painting of himself. He is best known for a number of series of paintings that told a story. Who is this artist?

Answer: William Hogarth

William Hogarth was born in London in 1697. Hogarth is credited with developing western sequential art, the forerunner of the comic books and newspaper strips of the 20th century. He painted a number of series of paintings to tell a story, the most famous of which is his "A Rake's Progress", a series of eight paintings. These were subsequently engraved and printed, but the originals are on display as part of the collection at St. John Soane's Museum in Holborn, London.

5. Painted between 1872 and 1875, "Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge" depicts the old wooden Battersea Bridge across the River Thames. The American-born, British-based artist signed his works with a stylized butterfly with a long stinger for a tail. Active during the American Gilded Age, who is this artist?

Answer: James Whistler

James Abbot McNeill Whistler was born in 1834 in the city of Lowell in northeastern Massachusetts. He named many of his creations "arrangements", "harmonies" or "nocturnes". His most famous work is the 1871 "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1", commonly known as "Whistler's Mother", which is displayed at the Mus�e d'Orsay in Paris.

"Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge" is Whistler's vision of the last surviving wooden bridge across the Thames. It was replaced in 1885, but not before Whistler (twice) and Turner had captured it in oil.

6. Painted in 1849, "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin" is one of a small collection of works on display at Tate Britain by this English poet, illustrator and painter. A precursor of the Aesthetic movement, this artist was one of the co-founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His sister was also a celebrated poet. Who is this artist?

Answer: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in London in 1828. His younger sister was Christina Rossetti, children's poet and the authoress of the words to the Christmas carol "In the Bleak Midwinter". Christina also modelled as the Virgin for the pictured "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin", one of his earliest works (completed when he was just 21), whilst his mother modelled as Saint Anne.

Along with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, Rossetti founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood or poets, painters and critics in 1848. Perhaps Rossetti's most famous painting is "The Day Dream", completed in 1980 and now on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

A colourful character, Rossetti has been played on TV by Oliver Reed, Ben Kingsley and Aiden Turner.

7. The massive (144"x99") "The Death of Major Peirson, 6 January 1781" depicts a scene from the Battle of Jersey, the invasion of the Channel Islands by French Royalists. It was painted in 1783 by an Anglo-Irish, American-born artist best known for his portraits of important figures from colonial New England. Who is this artist?

Answer: John Singleton Copley

John Singleton Copley was born in 1738 in the capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Boston. Having established his reputation as a portrait painter in New England, Copley came to London in 1774. In partnership with Benjamin West, he established a new brand of history painting, depicting modern events.

"The Death of Major Peirson, 6 January 1781", part of the permanent Tate Britain collection but currently on loan to the Jersey Museum and Art Gallery, and "The Death of the Earl of Chatham", painted in 1781 (currently on loan from the Tate to the National Portrait Gallery), are both classic examples of this 'new' genre.

8. No collection of great British art would be complete without something by the painter of the pictured "The Valley Farm". Completed in 1835, it is one of numerous examples of his work that can be seen at Tate Britain. It now seems remarkable that during his lifetime he sold more paintings in France than he did in England. Who is this artist?

Answer: John Constable

We have seen examples of John Constable's work regularly on our tour of the world's greatest galleries, so it should be no surprise to find that he is well-represented at the Tate Britain.

The Tate collection includes one of his unusual 'sky paintings', "Cloud Study" from 1822, as well as a number of his more traditional landscapes. Perhaps the most famous Constable at the Tate is "Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River".

9. "Portrait of the Fourth of Duke of Marlborough and His Family", a work from 1776 by one of the most influential English painters of the 18th century, is one of a dozen of his works that can be seen at Tate Britain. Best-known for his portraits of the leading figures of the era, he was knighted by King George III in 1769. Who is this artist?

Answer: Joshua Reynolds

Born in 1723 in the Plymouth suburb of Plympton in southwestern Devon, Joshua Reynolds is perhaps remembered as much as a founder and the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts as for his actual paintings.

Although a portrait of sorts, "Portrait of the Fourth of Duke of Marlborough and His Family" is not in the traditional style of either the time or of this artist. Amongst Reynolds' most famous portraits are "George Clive and His Family with an Indian Maid" (on display at the Staatliche Museen in Munich), and two of his more traditional portraits, "Lord Heathfield of Gibraltar", which hangs in the National Gallery, and his 1780 "Self-Portrait", which is part of the Royal Academy of Arts collection.

10. We conclude this regrettably brief tour of great British art displayed at Tate Britain with "Mares and Foals in a River Landscape", a painting from 1763-68 by another of the country's most important artists. Do you really need another clue to the identity of this artist?

Answer: George Stubbs

Born in 1724 in Liverpool, George Stubbs is always a reasonable answer if the paintings depicts an equine subject, although John Frederick Herring Jr. is also a viable alternative.

Stubbs painted famous individual horses, such as "Whitejacket", his portrait of the Marquess of Rockingham's racehorse that can be seen at the National Gallery. He also painted numerous landscapes featuring horses such as the pictured "Mares and Foals in a River Landscape" (one of 18 Stubbs paintings in the Tate Britain collection). His paintings of animals was not limited to horses, though: in 1772 he completed "A Portrait of the Kongouro (Kangaroo) from New Holland", even though he had never actually seen such a creature.

Source: Author EnglishJedi

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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Founded as the National Gallery of British Art in 1897, it was renamed the Tate Gallery in 1932 and Tate Britain in 2000. Here are some of the most famous works of art you can see there. (A reminder that you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.)

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