What year was this parcel sent to the front? The great British art quiz

The Contents of a Red Cross Parcel by John Worsley. Photograph: IWM

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 Imperial War Museums. IWM’s exceptional collection is one of the most important representations of 20th-century British art in the world. It includes many great artworks from the British government war art schemes of the first and second world wars. IWM continues to commission artists and the collection reflects recent and contemporary conflicts included in paintings, posters, sculpture and much more.

You can see art from Imperial War Museums on Art UK here. Find out more on the Imperial War Museums website here.

1. 

   Which well-established etcher and draughtsman became the first official war artist in 1916?

   1. John Nash

   2. Stanley Spencer

   3. Muirhead Bone

   4. Wyndham Lewis

2. 

   Which building was converted into a state-of-the-art hospital for convalescing Indian soldiers in the first world war, as depicted here by CHH Burleigh? It took less than two weeks to convert and treated more than 2,000 patients.

   1. Brighton Royal Pavilion, Brighton

   2. Victoria and Albert Museum, London

   3. Manchester Town Hall, Manchester

   4. St David’s Hall, Cardiff

3. 

   Which persuasive artist painted this fashionable young woman at an industrial lathe in 1943? It was commissioned by the government in response to rising levels of dissatisfaction and absenteeism among the female factory workforce.

   1. Eileen Agar

   2. Dame Laura Knight

   3. Augustus John

   4. Evelyn Dunbar

4. 

   In which city did Israeli artist Ori Gersht take this photograph, titled Vital Signs, revealing the community getting back to normal after conflict?

   1. Berlin

   2. Sarajevo

   3. Donetsk

   4. Tripoli

5. 

   Ration, charity and gift parcels have always played a vital role in sustaining the morale of troops on the frontline. What year does this Red Cross parcel containing Bovril corned beef, Klim powdered milk and Players cigarettes date from?

   1. 1918

   2. 1944

   3. 1980

   4. 2003

6. 

   John Piper painted an abstract series of war artworks in 1940. He was taken in great secrecy to this cold and mysterious location, but what kind of place is it?

   1. Parliamentary offices

   2. Backstage at a theatre

   3. Air Raid Precaution control room

   4. Hospital wing

7. 

   During the first world war, women were recruited to fill the gap in farm labour left by men away at the front. This "land girl" was painted by Cecil Aldin in 1918. How many women were at work milking cows, ploughing fields, herding sheep and thatching roofs by that date?

   1. 800

   2. 4,000

   3. 8,000

   4. 16,000

8. 

   How is this figure, Lt Col TE Lawrence, more commonly known?

   1. Lawrence of Damascus

   2. Lawrence of Arabia

   3. Lawrence of Syria

   4. Colonel Lawrence

Solutions

1:C - Muirhead Bone (1876–1953) became the first official war artist in July 1916. Bone arrived in France on 16 August 1916 at the height of the Somme offensive. He toured the Somme battlefields in the south and worked quickly in pencil, pen, charcoal and chalk and by 6 October had sent home approximately 150 finished drawings. Bone helped to establish the Imperial War Museum in 1917 and became a trustee in 1920. Image: Watching Our Artillery Fire on Trônes Wood From Montauban, 1918, Muirhead Bone, 2:A - During the first world war, Brighton’s Royal Pavilion was converted into a hospital for wounded soldiers. It was used as a hospital for wounded Indian soldiers from 1914 to 1916. Fighting on the western front, the Indian army would urgently need medical facilities, however it was felt that the appropriate facilities were not available in France. The pavilion was one of three buildings in Brighton used for this purpose. Image: Interior of the Pavilion, Brighton: Indian Army Wounded, c.1917, CHH Burleigh (1869-1956) © the artist’s estate., 3:B - Ruby Loftus was an outstanding factory worker who had mastered complex engineering skills in a short space of time and was brought to the attention of the War Artist's Advisory Committee. Dame Laura Knight was commissioned to paint her at work. Industrial machinery was a new element in Knight's work, but her technical accuracy was praised in contemporary reports: Knight, like Loftus, was proving herself in a traditionally male environment. Image: Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring, 1943, Laura Knight (1877-1970), 4:B - Vital Signs is a photograph by Israeli artist Ori Gersht (b.1967) of Sarajevo taken after the end of the war in Bosnia. The image combines a feeling of optimism with the scars of war. There is mortar damage on the concrete wall above the pool, alluding to the far-reaching repercussions of conflict, but in contrast, the overall feeling is one of rejuvenation, of signs of normal life returning to the city. Image: Vital Signs, 1999, Ori Gersht © IWM, 5:B - John Worsley was an official war artist and the only war artist to be captured during the second world war. He was detained at the German POW camp Marlag O. Red Cross parcels served a vital role in sustaining the morale of POWs. Marlag O was unusual in that parcels were pooled by officers and shared out centrally. The result was a more equitable distribution and an almost constant supply of extra food. Image: The Contents of a Red Cross Parcel, 1944, John Worsley (1919-2000), photo credit: IWM Art, 6:C - John Piper was commissioned in April 1940 to undertake a series of pictures of Air Raid Precaution control rooms. He was taken in great secrecy to see the ARP headquarters in Bristol. The strange lighting, graphics and colours created a modernist space which bore some affinity to the theatrical sets Piper had been designing before the war. This was one of his first war art commissions, but he did not find the subject particularly engaging. Image: The Passage to the Control Room at South-West Regional Headquarters, Bristol, 1940, John Piper (1903-1992), 7:D - During the first world war, there was a shortage of farm labour as men were conscripted into the forces. There was also a need to grow more food due to the threat to supplies caused by German submarines. This led to the establishment of the Women’s Land Army in February 1917. In 1919, artist Cecil Aldin was commissioned to produce this painting by Imperial War Museum’s Women’s Work Committee. Image: A Land Girl Ploughing, c.1918, Cecil Aldin (1870-1935), photo credit: IWM Art, 8:B - James McBey was a self-taught, successful and respectable outsider in the art world. It seems entirely in keeping with this impression we have of the artist that, while recording everything he saw as he went through Palestine and Syria with the British Expeditionary Force between 1917 and 1918, he also chose to paint the portrait of another outsider, Lawrence of Arabia, albeit one who was rapidly becoming a celebrity. Image: Lieutenant Colonel TE Lawrence (1888-1935), CB, DSO, 1918, James McBey (1883-1959), photo credit: IWM Art.

Scores

1. 6 and above.

   Victory! Plant a flag in your front room and take the rest of the day off.

2. 0 and above.

   You battled through this quiz ... and lost.

3. 3 and above.

   You gave a fair account of yourself in this hard-fought quiz.