This actress's daughter was the much younger mistress of which famous writer? The great British art quiz

Miss Jarman as Mary, Queen of Scots, c1830, JS Harvey. Photograph: Williamson Art Gallery & Museum

This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions. Today, our questions are set by Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead. The Williamson has a broad collection specialising in British art and decorative art, particularly local to the Merseyside and North Wales area, and with a strong maritime slant with many ship models on show.

You can see art from Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead on Art UK here. Visit the museum’s website here.

1. 

   The mythological sorceress Medea became a popular subject for artists at the end of the 19th century and had been a regular character on stage since ancient Greece. According to legend, who was her husband?

   1. Achilles

   2. Paris

   3. Jason

   4. Agamemnon

2. 

   The Battle of Waterloo was by the celebrated animal painter Thomas Sidney Cooper, painted in 1847. He painted it speculatively and hoped that as a result he would receive commissions to paint pictures for a government building in London. Which building?

   1. 10 Downing Street

   2. Houses of Parliament

   3. Foreign Office

   4. Buckingham Palace

3. 

   James Hamilton Hay was an adventurous painter at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries who died young. In this painting you can see he became heavily influenced by what artistic movement?

   1. Impressionism

   2. Pre-Raphaelitism

   3. Cubism

   4. Japanese woodblock prints

4. 

   One of the great maritime disasters of the Victorian age allegedly gave rise to the order “Women and children first” when this ship sank off the coast of South Africa. This painting shows the sinking of which ship?

   1. Princess Alice

   2. Captain

   3. Birkenhead

   4. Royal Charter

5. 

   This self-portrait by Philip Wilson Steer is a sketch for a finished portrait in one of Europe’s leading galleries that has an exceptional collection of more than 1,600 artists’ self-portraits. Which gallery?

   1. Louvre, Paris

   2. Tate, London

   3. Alte Pinakothek, Munich

   4. Uffizi, Florence

6. 

   Samuel Walters painted most of the ships built at the Laird family’s shipyard in Birkenhead in the 1860s. This controversial ship caused a great deal of damage to shipping across the oceans, raising money for the Confederate cause in the US civil war. What ship is it?

   1. Florida

   2. Virginia

   3. Alabama

   4. Shenandoah

7. 

   This is a portrait of the early-19th-century actress Frances Jarman. Her daughter Ellen rather scandalously became the mistress of a very famous writer. Who was it?

   1. Benjamin Disraeli

   2. Wilkie Collins

   3. Anthony Trollope

   4. Charles Dickens

8. 

   Will C Penn named this painting of his children The Good Companions after a popular novel and stage play by whom?

   1. Anthony Trollope

   2. John Galsworthy

   3. JB Priestley

   4. George Bernard Shaw

Solutions

1:C - Medea used her powers as a sorceress to help Jason acquire the Golden Fleece and fled to Corinth to marry him, but he subsequently abandoned her, leading her to kill their two children in revenge. Evelyn de Morgan, was a later pre-Raphaelite painter enthralled by Greek myths. She was married to the arts and crafts potter William de Morgan. Image: Medea, Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919), Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, 2:B - After the Palace of Westminster was burned down in 1834, the new Houses of Parliament were being built in the 1840s and Cooper was hopeful of a commission. He was disappointed. Thomas Sidney Cooper was celebrated as an animal painter second only to Landseer, but he had unfulfilled ambitions as a history painter. The Duke of Wellington and his entourage can be seen on the horizon at top left. Image: The Battle of Waterloo, 16-19 June 1815, the Defeat of Kellerman’s Cuirassiers, 1847, Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803-1902), Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, 3:D - James Hamilton Hay was born in Birkenhead and became a leading figure in the avant-garde art scene in the Liverpool area, exhibiting alongside French Post-Impressionists in Liverpool in 1912. Just as his career was taking flight in London, both as a painter and printmaker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in Wirral in 1916. Image: Wave, James Hamilton Hay (1874-1916), Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, 4:C - HM Troopship Birkenhead was the first iron ship built for the Royal Navy by Lairds of Birkenhead. Sailing as a troopship en route to East Africa she hit an uncharted rock in February 1852 and sank very quickly; of an estimated 638 on board, only 194 people and eight horses survived. The story goes that the order "Women and children first" was initiated here, coming to be known as the Birkenhead Drill. The painting is one of a series painted by Thomas Hemy to commemorate the event. Image: The Wreck of the Birkenhead, 1922, Thomas Marie Madawaska Hemy (1852-1937), Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, 5:D - The earliest artists’ self-portraits in the Uffizi collection date to the 15th century and Steer was nominated in 1906 as one of Britain’s leading painters (along with Holman Hunt and Singer Sargent) to be represented in the collection. Philip Wilson Steer was born in Birkenhead. The family left the town in 1864 and, as far as we know, never returned. He was as a young artist a pioneer British Impressionist, later becoming very highly celebrated in his lifetime; he was the first living artist to be given an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1929. Image: Self-Portrait (sketch), Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942), 6:C - Built in 1862 by Laird Brothers in Birkenhead, Alabama was one of several vessels built or adapted in the UK for Confederate Navy, despite Britain’s neutrality in the US civil war. Sailing as a commerce raider, CSS Alabama in a period of 18 months captured 65 Union vessels before being eventually sunk in battle in the English Channel off Cherbourg. After the war was over an international court of arbitration caused the British government to pay the US $15.5m in reparations, known as the Alabama Settlement. Image: CSS Alabama, Samuel Walters (1811-1882), Williamson Art Gallery & Architecture , 7:D - Frances (Fanny) Jarman, born in Hull to a theatrical family, was a child actor who went on to appear with the leading figures of her day in all the major Shakespearean and other roles. She is seen here as Mary, Queen of Scots. She married in 1834 to become Mrs Ternan and toured widely. One of her daughters, Ellen Ternan, became Charles Dickens’s mistress aged only 18 when he was 45. The relationship lasted until his death. Image: Miss Jarman as Mary, Queen of Scots, c1830, JS Harvey, Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, 8:C - William Charles Penn spent most of his life teaching at Liverpool School of Art. He was the leading portrait painter in the area from the 1920s into the 60s but, incapable of being idle, if a portrait sitter failed to show up he looked for another subject to paint. The two of his children shown are Arthur and Dora. The eldest, Herbert, did not like sitting for his father, so his younger siblings appear much more regularly in his father's work. Image: The Good Companions (Arthur and Dora), William Charles Penn (1877-1968) © the artist’s estate. Williamson Art Gallery & Museum

Scores

1. 6 and above.

   Realist

2. 3 and above.

   Impressionist

3. 0 and above.

   Dada-ist