This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home of the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues, by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK sets the questions.
Today, our questions are set by Government Art Collection. It is the most dispersed collection of British art in the world, with works displayed in more than 365 buildings and in 155 capital cities worldwide. The collection promotes British art and plays a key role in cultural diplomacy. Works can also be seen by the wider UK public through exhibition loans, digitally and partnership projects.
You can see art from the collection on Art UK here. Find out more on the Government Art Collection website here.
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Michael Armitage’s painting The Octopus’s Veil is produced in oil on his signature choice of traditional Lubugo bark cloth, obtained from which of the following trees?
Papyrus
PawPaw
Moringa olifeira
Ficus
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In Greek mythology, the Judgement of Paris was a contest between the three most beautiful goddesses of Olympus, for the prize of a golden apple. Which three goddesses competed?
Aphrodite, Hera, Demeter
Hera, Diana, Aphrodite
Athena, Diana, Demeter
Hera, Athena, Aphrodite
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Sally Payen’s painting Fence and Shadow, Invisible Woman and the Telephonic Tree brings attention to women’s peace camps and anti-nuclear protests that began in Britain in the 1980s. Where did the famous "Embrace the Base" protest take place?
Defence CBRN Centre, Winterbourne Gunner
RAF Greenham Common
RRH Brizlee Wood
RAF Honnington
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This portrait by Gerrit van Honthorst shows Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia in courtly attire, against a sumptuous red curtain. It was painted around 1630 in The Hague, her home in exile after a brief reign in Bohemia with her husband Frederick V from 1619 to 1620. By what other name was the queen known?
Faerie Queen
Winter Queen
Grandmother of Europe
Queen Mother
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Emma Hart’s enigmatic and playful ceramic sculpture uses pattern motifs to question issues of surveillance and control, with a title riffing on the prison phrase "get back in your cell" and the cockney slang for ear "shell like", its title is Get Back in Your Shell Like. Which non-museum space was this work displayed in last year?
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Royal Courts of Justice
Leytonstone Library, Waltham Forest
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
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Imagine yourself as a guest at costume balls and tea parties in the beautiful gardens of British embassies around the world in the 19th century. Which embassy building does Johann-Heinrich Luttringhausen’s 1841 painting depict?
The British Embassy, The Hague
The British Embassy, Rome
The British Embassy, Vienna
The British Embassy, Paris
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The neon work Faded Wallpaper by artist Tina Keane references a classic first-wave feminist text that explored issues of women’s mental and physical health in the 19th century. Which of the following literary works does it allude to?
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
Marie Stopes, Married Love or Love in Marriage (1918)
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Painted in 1650, Portrait of a Lady wearing an Oyster Satin Dress is the earliest work by which woman artist in the Government Art Collection?
Mary Beale
Angelica Kaufman
Joan Carlile
Anne Killigrew
Solutions
1:D - The work is influenced by the Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock print tradition, demonstrated by Armitage's handling of the sea and the way animal and landscape become one as the tentacles branch and weave into the form of the doum palm. Armitage’s work complicates the historical dialectic between western and non-western cultures, merging European styles with east African subjects and materials. This work refers to the practice of fisherman on the east coast of Kenya who purify octopus by beating them to remove their ink on the nearby beach. Image: The Octopus’s Veil, 2016, Michael Armitage (b 1984) © the artist. Photo: Government Art Collection , 2:D - James Thornhill’s painting shows Paris choosing the goddess who promised to give him Helen, the most beautiful woman as his wife. Hera, wife of Zeus and queen of the ancient Greek gods, represented the ideal woman and was the goddess of marriage and the family. Athena was the Olympian goddess of wisdom and good counsel, war, the defence of towns, heroic endeavour, weaving, pottery and crafts. Aphrodite was an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, beauty and pleasure. Her major symbols include myrtles, roses, doves, and swans. Image: The Judgement of Paris, c 1705, James Thornhill (1675/6–1734), Government Art Collection , 3:B - The Women’s Peace Camp was established at RAF Greenham Common, Berkshire, in 1981, to protest against the nuclear weapons that were being housed there. The protest that took place in the next few years included famous actions such as Embrace the Base, where hundreds of women joined hands in a giant circle around the perimeter of the base. Although the missiles were removed in the early 1990s, protests continued at the site until 2000. Image: Fence and Shadow, Invisible Woman and the Telephonic Tree, 2017, Sally Claire Payen (b 1964), © the artist. Photo: Government Art Collection , 4:B - Elizabeth Stuart (1596-1662) was electress of the Palatinate and briefly Queen of Bohemia as the wife of Frederick V. Because her husband's reign in Bohemia lasted for just one winter, Elizabeth is often referred to as the Winter Queen. Image: Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, c 1631, Gerrit van Honthorst (c 1590/2–1656), Government Art Collection , 5:C - The satellite dish acts as a conduit relaying messages from the outside world into the private space of the home, represented here by the keyhole on the arm of the dish. The work was shown as part of Ways of Seeing for Waltham Forest Borough of Culture, in which 68 Collection works were shown in public spaces from libraries and schools to a hospital and a horse-riding stable. Image: Get Back in Your Shell Like, 2017, Emma Hart (b 1974), © the artist. Photo credit: Government Art Collection , 6:D - A visit to the embassy in Paris in 1827 would have included, no doubt, a delightful stroll through the garden in the company of the ambassador’s wife, Lady Harriet Granville: "You do not know how enjoyable it is at the moment. It is perfect retirement, and as fresh and fragrant as if it was 50 miles from a town. Roses and orange trees are all in bloom." Image: British Embassy in Paris from the Gardens, c 1841, Government Art Collection , 7:C - "Based loosely on the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman", as the artist explains, the artwork "is concerned with visual perception, madness and the search for identity. A woman, isolated within a room, becomes obsessed with the wallpaper surrounding her, seeing within its faded patterns strange images ... she begins to strip the wallpaper away … questioning her own self-image, her imagination and her sanity." Image: Faded Wallpaper , c 1988, Tina Keane (b 1940), © the artist. Photo: Government Art Collection , 8:C - Born Joan Palmer, Carlile (1606-1679) was one of the first professional female portrait painters working in England. Carlile's life was largely shaped by the politics of her day and her family connections. Her father was an official of the royal parks of St James's (under James I) while her husband, the poet and dramatist Lodowick Carlile, was also connected to the royal parks and the royal household. This work was acquired in 2018, the year the Collection bought only artworks by women, to mark the centenary of the Representation of the People Act. Image: Portrait of a Lady Wearing an Oyster Satin Dress, 1650s, Joan Carlile, Government Art Collection
Scores
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6 and above.
Landslide victory
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0 and above.
Hung parliament
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3 and above.
Slim majority
