Christmas Puzzle 2016 - Recollections of our Absent Friend, Tom Lubbock

The Independent on Sunday Christmas Details Competition no longer exists, but the memory remains. As you raise your glasses to "Absent friends", think of Tom Lubbock, who gave us all so much fun through the year and particularly at Christmas. Some will disagree about the term "fun". I think there is still a bottle or two in the Details cellar.

As a little piece of hommage to Tom and his colleagues over the years, I have very hastily put together a few details for those who like a puzzle. I am sorry that none of them is modern or even in the last couple of centuries. I used whatever came quickly to hand on Christmas morning. If anyone finds the answers, please post them to vonthoma@yahoo.com by 6th January 2017. I shall post up the names of the most successful "entries". The only prize will be the plaudits of the readers of this blog and myself. I shall publish the correct answers, too.

Happy Christmas to all those who entered into the spirit of this competition over the years.

If anyone wishes to send me any further puzzles, I shall, within reason, put them on this blog with due acknowledgement.

Names of painters and titles of paintings are needed.

1.

 Where can you find this small painting within a painting?

 Where is this beast to be found?

 In what painting can this woman be found?

 What are these odd constructions and in which painting can they be found?

In which painting can this collection of objects be found and who painted them?

In which painting can this act of entreaty be found and who painted it?

What are these characters looking at and who painted them?

Whose hands are these and in which painting do they appear?

And whose is this hand and who painted it?

This disembodied hand looks unearthly, but who painted it and where can it be found?

All Good Things Must Come to an End

As I understand it, the last Details Competition was published last Sunday, 6th March. The last two Details Competition results will be published next Sunday. It is not known if the Competition will continue in the future.

Will there be a Christmas style Easter Details Competition?

I see that a correspondent has raised the issue of the future of the Competition in the light of impending changes to the paper.

"So, will the Details competition remain, now that the Independent is to be purely online? Or was this season's omission the shape of things to come? Jenny"

Old Details Competitions - A Collector's Obsession

I have mentioned elsewhere, I think, that my interest in the Details Competition began around 1995. My wife, who studied and achieved a History and Theory of Art degree, first took an interest in the Competition. She won a competition in the mid 90's. This sparked my interest and the Christmas Competitions sealed it. Thereafter, I tried to keep copies of each competition. I had varying success, as sometimes I was abroad and the Review never left the shores of the UK. A kiosk proprietor in Paris showed complete incomprehension when I asked him about it. In the end, I showed him a copy and he said that he had never seen it.

Consequently, I had to try to make arrangements with friends and family to buy the paper for me and to send a photo of the competition to me when we were away. This led to gaps in the collection. On other occasions, I made a trip to the local library in Devon if I had been away on a Sunday and took a photo of the competition once I could locate the Review section. On one notable occasion, I found that the whole page had been torn out, thus frustrating my plan. To get hold of a copy, I had to visit a library in Plymouth, breaking a rail journey to do so.

All this is leading up to a question to any regular readers of this Blog, to know if they, too, have collected old competitions?

In my collections, which I have recently made digital in a somewhat amateurish and time consuming way, I have only one competition before Competition number 515. After that date, I have many gaps, specifically:

518, 520, 521, 524, 527, 530, 534, 536, 537, 541, 542, 543, 545, 546, 548, 549, 561, 579, 586, 589, 595, 596, 611, 615, 616, 617,651, 652, 703, 704,  752,  802, 836, 837, 839, 850, 867, 887, 893, 904, 906, 916, 937, 943, 944, 955, 965, 987, 988, 989, 1005, 1006, 1041, 1042, 1047, 1057, 1058, 1059, 1066, 1067, 1068, 1070, 1090, 1097, 1098, 1108, 1109, 1110, 1111, 1119, 1120, 1121, 1122, 1123, 1140, 1247.

This list has been amended. Thanks to Chris for sending me some of the missing numbers.

If anyone has any of these copies, I'd be happy to receive them, and indeed to supply any of the others that I have which make up the rest of the collection.

Details 1285 Deja Vu

The detail in this week's Competition has appeared previously. Those with longish memories will remember it, no doubt. However, it is a different crop from the one published the first time round.

To my knowledge, Tom Lubbock deliberately re-presented the same painting and artist only in his Christmas Competitions. This seemed to be a kind of recognition of the regular contributors, a reward for their long service and perhaps to give them a slight edge over the once a year competitors who were more interested in a crate of champagne than European paintings. A Details Competition is for Life, not just for Christmas.

I say "deliberately re-presented" the same picture and artist, as he once or twice made an error by doing so in the weekly competition towards the end of his life.

The painting was by John Byam Liston Shaw, titled The Boer War "Last Summer things were Greener". Details 1014.

On another point, you may be interested in Tom Lubbock's website where you can find links to his articles. There are plenty there to keep you company, although the hosting website that is referenced,

http://journalisted.com/tom-lubbock?allarticles=yes

is no longer funded. I found that a small percentage of the links to some of Tom Lubbock's articles do not work. Nearly all are from the Independent's archive.

You can also find Tom Lubbock's collages on the site.

http://tomlubbock.com/journalism.html

Spectacular Answers

Here are the answers to Jenny's Christmas Spectacular Details Quiz. Many thanks for providing the entertainment.

JANUARY SPECTACULAR!

1 Grant Wood, American Gothic.  Art Institute of Chicago.
2 Stanley Spencer,  Portrait of Louis Behrend.  New Walk Museum, Leicester.
3 Dora Carrington,  Lytton Strachey.  National Portrait Gallery,  London.
4 Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin,  Self Portrait.  Louvre, Paris.  A pastel.
5 Georges de la Tour,  St Jerome Reading.   Royal Collection, London.
6 Jean Dubuffet, Portrait of André Dhôtel. Centre Pompidou, Paris.
7 El Greco,  A Cardinal.  Metropolitan Museum, New York.
8 Gino Severini,  Self Portrait.  Private collection.
9 Nicolaes Maes,  The Account Keeper. St Louis Art Museum, Missouri.
10 Henri Matisse, Self Portrait.  Musée Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambresis.
11 Mary Cassatt,  Mrs Cassatt Reading to her Grandchildren.  Private collection, New York.
12 Pablo Picasso,  Jaime Sabartes.   Museu Picasso, Barcelona.
13 Jusepe de Ribera,  A Knight of the Order of Santiago.  Meadows Museum, Dallas.
14 Rembrandt van Rijn,  Rembrandt’s Mother.  Wilton House, Wiltshire.
15. Pierre Bonnard, Self Portrait,  Musée Bonnard, Le Cannet, near Cannes.
16 Joshua Reynolds,  Self Portrait.  Kenwood Gallery, London. But he and his studio churned out this image several times, so not 100% sure, but I do not think it is the Dulwich one.
17 Stanley Spencer, Self Portrait with Patricia Preece.  Fitzwilliam, Cambridge.
18 Titian,  Portrait of the Doctor Andreas Vesalius. Pitti Palace, Florence.
19  Tommaso da Modena,  Cardinal Nicholas of Rouen.  One of the Forty Illustrious Members of the Dominican Order, Chapterhouse of the Dominicans, Treviso.
20 Vuillard,  Portrait of Philippe Berthelot.   Private collection.
21 Roger Fry,  Self Portrait.  Private collection.
22 Lucian Freud,  Portrait of David Hockney.  Private collection.
23 John Singer Sargent,  Vernon Lee/ Violet Paget.  Tate Gallery, London.
24 Quentin Metsys,  The Moneylenders.  Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao.

Patrick's 112 Fingers Identified!

Patrick has supplied a set of answers to his Competition which identify all the paintings. Many thanks to Patrick for providing the answers.