Who painted this botanical painting? #1

1/8/2017

Test your knowledge of botanical art and artists and see if you can work out who painted this.

This is about using brains not technology - so please do NOT "cheat" i.e. do NOT use any image matching technology (eg Google image search or Tineye) to find the image!

You have to work from the pure style of painting, the plants and any useful information you can find in the painting.

Answers as a comment on this blog post please. Briefly, in your comment you must tell me ALL of the following:

the title of the artwork
the plants in the painting
the name of the artist who created this artwork
the date it was created
the media used
where it lives now
how you know all this eg how did you do your search
anything else you can find out about the artwork and/or artist

The Winner is the first identifiable person (i.e. no anonymous guesses) who, in my judgement, is the first person to get to the answer by fair means AND provides the best quality answer in terms of added details about the artwork and artist

I'll tell you at the weekend who got it right - if any of you do!

Meanwhile I'll be publishing the incorrect answers.........

14 Comments

Katherine Pickles

1/8/2017 08:05:23 pm

Sorry didn't answer all the questions. Aquilegia vulgaris and grass (not sure of species). Watercolour on paper. Private collection. I googled Durer aquilegia to check if I was correct.

Mary Marshall

1/8/2017 08:05:53 pm

Small clump of turf??
Aquilegia and some sort of grass - oat grass?
Albrecht Dürer - at least attributed to him, possibly not correctly.
1526 - I can see it on the image!
Probably water colour and body colour (gouache)
It's probably in the Albertina in Vienna along with everything else by Dürer
Dürer is like the premier painter of the northern Renaissance. He was the son of a goldsmith. He went to Venice to study art, he loved classical art, he three wrote books on how to do art and proportion. He was controversial in depicting himself all Christ-like. It is claimed he dies after being bitten by a mosquito while looking at a dead whale, but he probably had syphillis. He was groundbreaking in printing, and may have made some of the plated for the Nuremburg Chronicle. He made the biggest printed single thing ever (the Triumphal Arch - it's mad) He was in a way the bridge between art as portraiture and worship, and the new scientific attitude to art. Ian way he invented botanical illustration as it is today.
I did an essay on him recently for my Dip BI from RBGE.
I'm his number one fan.

1/8/2017 09:29:20 pm

Forgot to say - I didn't google because at first I misread the instructions and by the time I noticed you could google I'd typed a whole load of stuff :-)

Sade link

1/8/2017 09:33:58 pm

the title of the artwork: price of turf with the columbine

the plants in the painting: grass? Columbine? Aquilegia vulgaris

the nameof the artist who created this artwork: Albrecht Durer

the date it was created: 1526

the media used: watercolor

where it lives now:

how you know all this eg how did you do your search: I knew it was Durer as soon as I saw it and it reminded me of the great price of turf, so I searched along those lines and found the title pretty quickly

anything else you can find out about the artwork and/or artist: I mean, it's Durer! He made the great piece of turf! Apparently only 10 of his plant studies still exist.

Irena Gintilas

1/8/2017 10:38:38 pm

Albrecht Dürer

Justine Ulmann link

2/8/2017 01:53:56 am

1. Akelei (Aquilegia or Columbine)
2. Aquilegia and grass
3. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)
4. 1526
5. Aquarell, Deckfarben und Pinsel auf Pergament, mit Deckweiß gehöht (Watercolour, opaque watercolour (gouache) and brush on vellum, heightened with opaque white)
6. Albertina - Vienna
7. A long time ago (1993?) I did my honours thesis on the works of Albrecht Dürer, and his grass is one of my favourite pictures. So I went and searched through all my Dürer reference books and then went to the Albertina web page.
8. The work (35.5 x 28.7 cm) was painted in the final years of Dürer's life, and was one of a number of nature studies he did of turf and plants - such as primulas and violets and iris. Dürer was a printmaker and painter, born in Nurenberg, and most well known for his engravings and woodcuts, including the Apocalypse series, Knight, Death and the Devil, Saint Jerome in his Study and Melencolia I. Some of his greatest works were produced under the patronage of Maximillian I, such as the Triumphal Arch and the Triumphal Procession. He also produced a number of books on proportion and measurement.

Margaret Best link

2/8/2017 03:15:44 am

1. 'The piece of turf with Columbine' or 'Columbine: Blue Flower'
2. Aquilegia vulgaris (columbine), wild anemone, grasses
3. Albrecht Durer
4. 1526
5. Watercolour (possibly included pen and ink)
6.Albertina Museum, Austria
7. Have known this for a long time - researched so long ago cannot remember source. Used in my teaching for a number years to show a great example of a natural in situ botanical study.
8. This piece is perhaps not as well known as a similar - natural study called 'A Great Piece of Turf' showing dandelions and grasses.Albrecht Durer could be arguably to be the first true botanical watercolourist with his attention to detail and natural way of expressing a plant subject.

Mervi Hjelmroos-Koski link

2/8/2017 05:35:27 am

2/8/2017 05:49:13 am

The message went before I entered all the information:
Alkelei-Blume (Aquilegia), columbine, from 1526 by Albrecht Dürer The species of the grass is not given), held now in Albertina, Vienna, Austria.
Watercolor, gouache (Deckfarben) or tempera on pergament.
I have seen it in Albertina collections. Information about A. Dürer is readily available basically everywhere.

Jennifer Duval-Smith

2/8/2017 12:44:46 pm

Durer?

Jenny Campos

2/8/2017 05:09:49 pm

1. The piece of turf with columbine
2. Aqualiegia, clover parsley and grasses
3. Albrecht Durer
4. 1526
5. watercolour
6. Albertina Graphic Arts, Vienna Austria
7. Started with the date 1526, used my IPad to find Artist 1526, found Durer. There are many 'piece of turf' paintings. It is in the public domain. Guessed at the plants in it by leaf shapes, probably not correct but happy to enter.

Kate link

2/8/2017 07:03:39 pm

Ah! Fun! Ok, well, my first guess is Albrecht Durer. The date 1520 I can read on this was the year he also painted his marvellous hare, which, like this, still looks so bright and fresh as if it was done only yesterday.
So we have granny's bonnet (aquilegia), a double and a single variety, and perhaps a couple of creeping buttercup leaves at the bottom, and the open pannicle seed head of a grass... possibly one of the Eragostis species.
Based on these guesses, I searched for 'Durer aquilegia' and found this image.
Name: 'The piece of Turf with The Colombine'
Where: in a private collection (lucky person!) like many of his other art works.
Media: probably watercolour (he was also known for his etchings on metal, and woodcuts)
This I found out is one of only ten surviving botanical paintings he did. I love his 'The Great Piece of Turf'. To briefly describe his art and life is tricky, but here is a German-born Northern Rennaisance artist who would have been able to follow the careers of Raphael, Da Vinci and Bernini, and had a profound influence on following artists, especially those who made prints. He was also interested in the theory of human proportion (as many Rennaisance artists were) and geometry, writing a number of works on these subjects.
Of course, many of his art works were on religious themes, and his pen and ink drawing of folded hands in prayer drawing, ('Study of the Hands of an Apostle') is still often reproduced today.
- Kate Steeds (New Zealand)

Esmée

2/8/2017 09:53:58 pm

Dear Katherine, This is a wonderful painting and it immediately reminded me of Albrecht Dürer. It resembles Dürer’s work "Great Piece of Turf" and other pieces he made after his Wanderjahre, so I think the answer should be:

1. the title of the artwork: Aquiligia on a piece of Turf? (an educated guess. The plant species was probably called differently since he lived before Linnaeus’s “Systema Naturae” (1758), the system that officially introduced Linnaean taxonomy).

2. the plants in the painting: Aquilegia vulgaris and a species of grass.

3. the name of the artist who created this artwork: Albrecht Dürer.

4. the date it was created: between 1495 and 1505 when he returned to Nuremberg, perhaps around 1503 when he painted his "Great Piece of Turf".

5. the media used: watercolour

6. where it lives now: -

7. How you know all this eg how did you do your search: Fascinated by Dürer I already read a lot about his work. This piece is a study of plants that resembles his "Great Piece of Turf" with species of plants on a piece of turf on a white background and painted very realistically, detailed, with subtle tones, colours and shadowing, so I think it’s Dürer’s.

8. Anything else you can find out about the artwork and/or artist: Dürer made two journeys to Italy from 1494 to 1495 and from 1505 to 1507, to study Italian Renaissance art and particularly Venetian art. Between these two visits he stayed in his hometown of Nuremberg where he painted many pieces such as his "Great Piece of Turf". In Italy he studied works from among others Bellini, who also lived at that time. Although they perhaps never met, it is thought that Raphael, the most famous Venetian artist, and Dürer used to send each other many notes and drawings. Raphael even is thought to have used Dürer’s prints for inspiration in his frescoes at the Vatican. Dürer’s work is seen as a fusion between the arts from the north and south of the Alps and it inspired many artists to come.

Kind regards,

Diane Lingjærde link

4/8/2017 05:08:58 pm

Albrecht Dürer, Akelei (Aquilegia, Columbine) between 1471 and 1528, possibly 1526 but actually no date available on the museum's online catalog page, Albertina, Vienna
Drawing and watercolour & bodycolour on vellum, 35,5 x 28,7 cm
Recently exhibited at the Grand Palais Jardins exhibition in Paris.

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