Who did this man make enemies with? The great British art quiz

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 University College London. UCL Art Museum’s collection of about 12,000 artworks has its origins as a teaching and research resource tied to the history of the university’s Slade School of Art. Work by prize-winning artists emerging from the Slade over 150 years sits alongside art spanning five centuries that informed their studies. Forty five per cent of the Slade Collections is work by women artists.

You can see art from UCL Art Museum on Art UK here. Find out more on the UCL Art Museum website here.

1. 

   When Winifred Knights became the first woman artist to win the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1920, she had already secured the Slade’s annual competition with this painting. How many female students were winners before her?

   1. 0

   2. 3

   3. 13

   4. 30

2. 

   The year after women gained the right to vote in 1928, Elizabeth Leslie Arnold shared first prize for her disturbing interpretation of a woman overcoming an adversary. Who is the central character?

   1. Jessica Jones

   2. Joan of Arc

   3. Judith of Judea

   4. Queen Boudicca

3. 

   Euan Uglow won first prize for figure painting in his first year as a student. He would go on to teach at the Slade for many years. What essential studio feature has he included next to the model?

   1. Back rest

   2. Clothes rack

   3. Heater

   4. Refrigerator

4. 

   Clare Winsten (née Birnberg), featured in this portrait, would become the only female member of what famous "male-only" artist group?

   1. Les Brown and His Band of Renown

   2. New Kids on the Block

   3. Take That

   4. Whitechapel Boys

5. 

   Craigie Aitchison painted this luminous still life during his second year at the Slade in 1952. What object did he supposedly hide beneath the surface paint?

   1. £1 note

   2. Bus pass

   3. Horseshoe

   4. Postage stamp

6. 

   Little is known about Ivy MacKusick, the student who painted Portrait of a Man in His Shirtsleeves. Even less is known about the sitter! In what year did this prize-winning painting triumph?

   1. 1909

   2. 1919

   3. 1949

   4. 1999

7. 

   Art students traditionally began their training by drawing plaster casts of classical sculptures. The work of which famous sculptor do students continue to encounter every day at UCL?

   1. Gian Lorenzo Bernini

   2. John Flaxman

   3. Henry Moore

   4. Praxiteles

8. 

   Slade professor Henry Tonks painted a fictitious meeting between the four founders of UCL for its centenary celebrations in 1926. Which figure was not actually one of the founders?

   1. Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher

   2. Henry Brougham, the lawyer

   3. Thomas Campbell, the poet

   4. Henry Crabbe Robinson, the diarist

Solutions

1:C - Women were winning the composition prize as early as 1894. The Slade was the first art school to admit women. A large number of works by female artists entered the collection through the annual prize system, making it a valuable resource for exploring gender imbalance in the arts and for restoring lost reputation. Image: A Scene in a Village Street with Mill-Hands Conversing, 1919, Winifred Knights (1899–1947) © the artist’s estate. Credit: UCL Art Museum , 2:C - The themes set by the Slade encouraged ambition among the students while allowing them to show off their skills and signature styles. The biblical story of Judith slaying the Assyrian General Holofernes featured in works by many celebrated Renaissance and early baroque artists. Arnold and her co-winner Ithell Colquhoun used this historic narrative to comment on the milestone victory in the fight for women’s rights. Image: Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1929, Elizabeth Leslie Arnold (1909-2005) © the copyright holder. Credit: UCL Art Museum , 3:C - Uglow adopted a Slade tradition that combined rigorous observation with meticulous measurement, so it’s no coincidence that he gave heater and model equal attention in his composition. The heater was an important fixture in the studio, and features in paintings separated by decades. It is possible to trace developments in artistic practice through artists’ treatment of the heater alone. Image: Female Figure Standing by a Heater, 1952, Euan Uglow (1932–2000) © the estate of Euan Uglow/ Bridgeman. Credit: UCL Art Museum , 4:D - The Jewish émigré artist and suffragette Clare Winsten enrolled at the Slade on a scholarship in 1910. A lifelong pacifist, she became a prolific artist and campaigner for social change. She exhibited prominently alongside her Slade male contemporaries and East End Jewish artists who became known as the Whitechapel Boys, one of whom, Isaac Rosenberg, painted her portrait, demonstrating a longstanding tradition of students painting one another. Image: Clare Winsten, 1916, Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918). Credit: UCL Art Museum , 5:D - Students from UCL’s history of art and material studies course failed to locate the rumoured postage stamp when examining the painting’s surface under infrared illumination. An interview with the artist shortly before his death confirmed that such a deliberate ploy would have been contrary to his practice. Their research informed the UCL exhibition From Idea to Object – Painting Practices Revealed (2007). Image: White Jug with Horseshoe, 1952, Craigie Ronald John Aitchison (1926–2009) © the artist's estate / Bridgeman Images. Credit: Bridgeman Images , 6:B - The last year of the 1910s launched a period in London reminiscent of New York’s Harlem Renaissance. In 2013, while mapping the lives and experiences of people from diverse ethnic backgrounds in London’s art world between the wars, UCL’s Equiano Centre re-discovered this prize-winning painting. It featured in their exhibition Spaces of Black Modernism: London 1919-39 at Tate Britain in 2014-15. Nonetheless, details of both artist and sitter remain unknown. Image: Portrait of a Man in His Shirtsleeves,1919, Ivy MacKusick (active 1919–1929) © the copyright holder. Credit: UCL Art Museum , 7:B - Celebrated as Britain’s leading sculptor during his lifetime, John Flaxman preferred clean, simple lines and sparse composition, hallmarks of neoclassicism. UCL’s founders embraced this style for their vision of the new university. They acquired his studio holdings after his death in 1826 to form a unique plaster model gallery under UCL’s iconic dome, between what was then a museum and a library at the university’s entrance. Image: John Flaxman, St Michael Overcoming Satan, 1818-24, plaster (UCL Flaxman Gallery). Credit: © UCL Digital Media , 8:A - Bentham, while an inspiration to the other three as a social reformer and advocate for education to be open to all regardless of religion, was not directly involved in the university’s founding. In choosing to place Bentham at the centre of his mural, visibly holding the architectural plans of the new main building, Tonks perpetuated the myth that Bentham was a key player. Image: The Four Founders of University College, Lord Brougham, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Campbell & Henry Crabb Robinson, 1922, Henry Clarence Whaite (1895–1978) and Henry Tonks (1862–1937) © UCL Art Museum. Credit: UCL Art Museum

Scores

1. 8 and above.

   A brush with greatness!

2. 7 and above.

   Great impression!

3. 6 and above.

   Good impression

4. 5 and above.

   Good impression

5. 4 and above.

   Decent impression

6. 3 and above.

   Could be worse…

7. 2 and above.

   Start brushing up!

8. 0 and above.

   No prizes for guessing!

9. 1 and above.

   Start brushing up!