Why are Turner's fishermen dressed as Greeks? The great British art quiz

Fish Market on the Sands, Early Morning, 1824, Joseph Mallord William Turner. Photograph: Hastings Museum & 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 Hastings Museum & Art Gallery, whose collections cover a multitude of world cultures, archaeological objects, fascinating fossils and more. Hastings Museum’s art collection includes works by some of the most significant British artists of the last few centuries including JMW Turner, Sylvia Gosse, Harry Furniss and Walter Sickert, among a number of wonderful international paintings, prints and sculpture.

You can see works from Hastings Museum Art Gallery on Art UK here. Find out more on the website here.

1. 

   Francis Grant and Edwin Landseer collaborated on this 1864 portrait of English traveller and writer Lady Brassey. What painterly subject did Landseer often return to?

   1. Women of the aristocracy

   2. Animals

   3. Landscapes

   4. Botanical images

2. 

   Before becoming well known as a painter of stormy coastal scenes, what was Sarah Louisa Kilpack’s career?

   1. Pianist

   2. Florist

   3. Textile designer

   4. Stage actor

3. 

   This portrait of Signor de Rossi by Walter Sickert was painted in 1901. Sickert returned to London from Venice in 1905 where he had been making a living as a portraitist. Upon his return, he joined a group who then met on a weekly basis in his studio – what was the group's name?

   1. Rebel Art Centre

   2. Camden Town Group

   3. Chelsea Arts Club

   4. Friday Club (later to become the Bloomsbury Group )

4. 

   Edward Leslie Badham’s Autumn Sunshine, Bourne Walk is one of hundreds of his paintings of Hastings. In regard to this particular painting, where does Bourne Walk derive its name?

   1. A stream that ran through Hastings

   2. The company Bourne & Son, which had several properties on Bourne Walk

   3. The nickname for the nearby waterworks

   4. The street marked the boundary between two sides of the town

5. 

   JMW Turner’s watercolour depicting a morning fish sale on the beach at Hastings features two figures in Greek costume, one with an arm in a sling. What are these figures making reference to?

   1. The modern Greek enlightenment

   2. The Greek war of independence

   3. Turner’s fondness for Homer’s Iliad

   4. The Hastings fishermen’s interesting turn of phrase (‘It’s all Greek to me!’)

6. 

   Thérèse Lessore’s second husband was the previously mentioned Walter Sickert. Which member of the London Group, which Sickert was also a member of, was Lessore previously married to?

   1. Jacob Epstein

   2. Robert Bevan

   3. Bernard Adeney

   4. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

7. 

   Before moving to Hastings in 1967 where she developed her thematic approach to painting beach scenes and fishermen of the old town, Laetitia Yhap studied at which art school?

   1. East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing

   2. Goldsmiths

   3. Ruskin School of Art

   4. Slade School of Fine Art

8. 

   The Italian artist Giovanni Paolo Panini was a proponent of a style that focused on architectural fantasy: placing together buildings, ruins and other architectural elements in fictional combinations. What was the style?

   1. Classical realism

   2. Tenebrism

   3. Capriccio

   4. Rococo

Solutions

1:B - In this portrait, Francis Grant painted Lady Brassey while Edwin Landseer was responsible for the addition of her four legged friends. Though well known for his paintings of animals, Landseer is best known for the lion sculptures at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. Image: Mrs Brassey, 1864, Francis Grant (1803-1878) and Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873); Hastings Museum & Art Gallery , 2:A - Sarah Louisa Kilpack was a King’s Scholar at the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Kate Loder. Kilpack made a living performing in concerts and teaching before giving up music and concentrating on art after the death of her father in 1876. Image: Martello Tower at Bulverhythe, East Sussex, c.1867, Sarah Louisa Kilpack (1839-1909); Hastings Museum & Art Gallery , 3:B - The Camden Town Group was founded by Sickert, among other artists, and began meeting informally in 1905 before being officially established in 1911. The group was influenced by post-impressionism and expressionism and artists Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Image: Signor de Rossi, 1901, Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942); Hastings Museum & Art Gallery , 4:A - The Bourne stream ran through Hastings old town, between All Saints Street and the High Street. Work to cover the stream began in the early 19th century, finishing with the construction of the Bourne road in the early 1960s. Badham moved to Hastings in 1905 and was killed after a direct hit on his house during a bombing raid in 1944. Image: Autumn Sunshine, Bourne Walk, Hastings East Sussex, 1914, Edward Leslie Badham (1873-1944); Hastings Museum & Art Gallery , 5:B - The Greek war of independence was a topical issue at the time of painting. In fact, in early 1824, there was widespread funding in Britain on behalf of the Greek cause. Joining the figures in Greek costume is a group of fashionable women, a boy with a hoop, fishermen in their 'tanfrocks' and fishwives with baskets of fish. Image: Hastings: Fish Market on the Sands, Early Morning, 1824, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851); Hastings Museum & Art Gallery , 6:C - Thérèse Lessore was a founding member of the London Group, which combined members of the Camden Town Group and the Vorticists. Lessore married painter Bernard Adeney in 1909 and they divorced in 1921. Lessore married Walter Sickert in 1926, becoming Sickert’s third wife. Image: The Daredevils, Thérèse Lessore (1884-1945); Hastings Museum & Art Gallery , 7:D - Laetitia Yhap studied at the Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts and at the Slade School of Art. She moved to Hastings, where she still lives to this day, and took to painting the everyday life of the fishermen working on the Stade beach in Old Town Hastings. She is known for constructing her own boards for her paintings, creating shapes that deliberately distort geometrical forms. Image: The Boat, 1987, Laetitia Yhap (b.1941); © the artist. Photograph: Hastings Museum & Art Gallery , 8:C - Giovanni Paolo Panini was an Italian painter and architect who worked in Rome and is known as one of the vedutisti (view painters). Most of his works, especially those of ruins, have strong parallels to capriccio themes, appearing to depict fantastical architecture, cities and realms. Image: Classical Ruins, c.1730-1740, Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765); Hastings Museum & Art Gallery

Scores

1. 8 and above.

   A brush with greatness!

2. 7 and above.

   A great impression!

3. 6 and above.

   A good impression

4. 5 and above.

   A palatable score

5. 4 and above.

   A palatable score

6. 3 and above.

   A palatable score?

7. 2 and above.

   Better do some brushing up

8. 0 and above.

   Better do some brushing up

9. 1 and above.

   Better do some brushing up