What's that on his face? The great British art quiz

Charles, 9th Lord Cathcart, by Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). Photograph: Manchester Art Gallery

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 Manchester Art Gallery, which has a 45,000-strong collection spanning six centuries of art, craft and design, fashion and dress, with a particularly rich collection of 19th-century art, including a large number of pre-Raphaelite paintings.

You can see art from Manchester Art Gallery on Art UK here. Find out more on the gallery website here.

1. 

   How many long silver adamantine pins did artist Susie MacMurray use to make this sculpture?

   1. Less than 10,000

   2. Between 10,000 and 50,000

   3. Between 50,000 and 100,000

   4. More than 100,000

2. 

   In what decade was this portrait of Mary Cornwallis painted by George Gower?

   1. 1710s

   2. 1580s

   3. 1540s

   4. 1620s

3. 

   What is the black mark on Charles, 9th Lord Cathcart’s face?

   1. Beauty mark

   2. Smallpox

   3. Mole

   4. Silk patch to hide a scar

4. 

   Who lived and died in this room?

   1. Adrian Mole

   2. Vincent van Gogh

   3. William Blake

   4. Florence Nightingale

5. 

   In what year did James Northcote paint the actor Ira Aldridge?

   1. 1878

   2. 1826

   3. 1921

   4. 1789

6. 

   Which artist completed this self-portrait in 1985?

   1. Richard Deacon

   2. Derek Jarman

   3. John Byrne

   4. Robert Colquhoun

7. 

   The muse Henrietta Moraes sat for artists Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Which female artist did she also sit for?

   1. Maggi Hambling

   2. Elisabeth Frink

   3. Barbara Hepworth

   4. Georgia O'Keeffe

8. 

   Which female celebrity from the late 19th and 20th centuries is depicted in this portrait by Elizabeth Violet Polunin?

   1. Maria Callas

   2. Greta Garbo

   3. Anna Pavlova

   4. Margot Fonteyn

Solutions

1:D - Widow is the fourth in a series of figurative sculptures by the Manchester-born artist Susie MacMurray, and is a striking representation of her grief and widowhood. The sculpture is made from black nappa leather embellished with more than 100,000 long, silver adamantine pins. Image: Widow, 2009, Susie MacMurray (b1959) © the artist. Credit: Ben Blackall, 2:B - This portrait of Mary Cornwallis, wife of the Earl of Bath, was painted between 1580 and 1585. Cornwallis is dressed in sumptuous Elizabethan dress consisting of a pearl headdress, wide ruff, linen sleeves embroidered with blackwork and a plain black velvet gown hung with pearls and brooches. A pendant with a classical portrait of a bearded man hangs on a ribbon from her girdle. Image: Mary Cornwallis, c1580-85, George Gower (c.1540-96). Credit: Manchester Art Gallery, 3:D - Charles is depicted standing by a low balustrade, framed by swathes of heavy drapery decorated with fringes and tassels, with his right arm extended and resting on the rail. He wears a grey, curled wig tied with a ribbon and has on his right cheekbone a black silk lunette patch, to cover a scar received at the battle of Fontenoy in Flanders during the war of the Austrian Succession. Image: Charles, 9th Lord Cathcart, Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). Credit: Manchester Art Gallery, 4:C - This is the place where the visionary artist William Blake lived and worked between 1821 and 1827, and the room in which he died. In 1880, the pre-Raphaelite painter Frederic Shields visited, measured and drew the drab little flat at 3 Fountain Court at the Strand, London. It was a pilgrimage to a holy place for Shields, for whom Blake was a cult figure. He later produced this painting from his sketch. Image: William Blake’s Room, 1882-1911, Frederick James Shields (1833-1911). Credit: Manchester Art Gallery , 5:B - Northcote painted this half-length frontal portrait of Ira Aldridge, a celebrated 19th-century actor, in the role of Othello in c1826. He is dressed in a white wrapper-like garment of which the striped coral-and-white sash is just visible at the bottom of the picture. Aldridge was born in the US but moved to Britain and became famous as a Shakespearean actor. Image: Othello, the Moor of Venice, 1826, James Northcote (1746-1831) Credit: Manchester Art Gallery , 6:C - John Patrick Byrne is a Scottish playwright and artist. This is an exaggerated self-portrait that the artist completed in the mid-1980s. He wears baseball cap turned to the side, a thick cardigan, and is smoking a cigarette. A cloud of wispy smoke comes from his cigarette and fills the right side of the painting. In 1989, he married the actor Tilda Swinton (they divorced in 2003). Image: Self Portrait, 1986, John Byrne (b1940), © John Byrne. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2020. Credit: Manchester Art Gallery , 7:A - This painting is a portrait of Henrietta Moraes, a model, writer and companion of Bacon's who was considered a ‘Queen of Bohemia’ and Soho subculture. This work was created from a photograph of Moraes, taken by Vogue photographer John Deakin; it displays Moraes naked and distorted upon a large couch trimmed with flesh-pink, which seems to be engulfing her. Moraes was a popular model for artists during the postwar years. She later became the muse and lover of Maggi Hambling. Image: Portrait of Henrietta Moraes on a Blue Couch, 1965, Francis Bacon (1909-1992), © Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS 2020. Credit: Manchester Art Gallery, 8:C - This portrait shows the head and shoulders of the celebrated Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova. She is wearing a décolleté dress and headband, with her hair in soft ringlets about her face. She is turned to the right, with her head turned back over her shoulder to the left. Elizabeth Violet Polunin was a British artist and theatre designer who worked with Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Image: Anna Pavlova, Elizabeth Violet Polunin (1878-1950) © the artist's estate. Credit: Manchester Art Gallery

Scores

1. 6 and above.

   Top one!

2. 3 and above.

   Nowt wrong with that!

3. 0 and above.

   Couldn't be mithered!