Details 1110

This detail was well nigh impossible to find:

The Independent noted that there were very few entries, but nonetheless there were three winners. As far as I can see, there is no record of this image on the whole of the internet. The answer to the competition is that the title of the picture is Portrait of a Child Holding Rosehips. The attribution is to William Peake.

Details Competition 1085

This was another detail that I could not find. If anyone knows this, I'd be interested to hear. It is too late to enter the Competition now. I suspect that there are two people in this painting and that it is religious or mythological. Potentially it is hard to date as it could be 19th century as well as much earlier. It could be Spanish, though it might be Titian, etc.

Details 1084

As far as Details Competition 1084 was concerned, I did not agree with the title given to it by Jenny Gilbert: Vetheuil: Sunshine and Snow. This title has been superceded as it is now accepted that the picture is of Lavacourt under Snow which is the title that the National Gallery uses.

Details Competition 1079

I was not able to identify this detail from last week's Competition. It looks as if it might be a Pissarro, but it defeated my attempts to find it.

P.S. It was a bit disappointing not to learn how many correct entries there were for the Christmas Competition. I think the Commentary by Jenny Gilbert hints that it will have to be made more difficult for the 2012 Competition.

This was revealed to be "The Fields" by Alfred Sisley.

Christmas Details 2007

Above is the Christmas Competition from 2007. I was unable to find number 5 or number 2.

Details 1076

Last week's detail looked very familiar, but proved not to be so. It was a bit of a challenge to find the artist who came from an unexpected quarter - a person best known for his three dimensional work - Auguste Rodin. It is an unusual subject, too: A Centaur carrying off a Young Man.

RE: [Details Competition Independent on Sunday] New comment on Christmas Details Competition 2011 - Was it the ea....

Hello Greensleeves

Thank you for the comment.

Perhaps I am wrong about this. When a friend of mine won at Christmas in 2007, he got twelve bottles. Maybe it was an error and it should have been six bottles.

I think you'll find the answers, but If you get really stuck, let me know and I shall pass on the necessary information to you.

With best wishes

Details Detective

Christmas Details Competition 2011 - Was it the easiest ever?

Times must be harder at the Independent on Sunday as the prize for the Details Competition has been reduced. In 2011, there are now just two runners-up for prizes and the first prize, the case of champagne, is just six bottles instead of 12. However, it was good to see it back, keeping up Tom Lubbock's tradition. In my opinion, it is the easiest ever and I expect that there will be many correct solutions. Only one image, number 9, caused any trouble at all. The rest were pretty familar. 

Be interested to know if others felt the same. 

Details Competition 2011

For posters asking about a copy of the 2011 Christmas Comptition, "Fingers on Buzzers..." I suggest that you email details@independent.co.uk or obtain a copy from a Public Library. Cannot publish the 2011 Competition at present.

Christmas Details Competition 2011

There is every reason to believe that the Independent on Sunday will publish a Christmas Details Competition 2011 on this coming Sunday, 18th December. There was no competition last year because of the illness of Tom Lubbock who died in the New Year. Since then the Competition has been set by Jennie Gilbert. In my opinion, there has been an increase in the number of more modern pictures in the Competition, something which I think may well be repeated in the Christmas Competition.

It will be intriguing to see what choices have been made. Tom Lubbock used to throw in pictures from old competitions, but no matter what he did, every year quite a number of people found all the answers.

Sometimes mistakes are made in the publishing of the details so one year a minute part of one painting was selected as a detail by mistake by magazine staff. Tom Lubbock excluded this from the Competition proper, even though some people did manage to find the answer.

Does anyone know in which year the first Christmas Competition was set by Tom Lubbock and what all the details were that he set? I think it was in 1994. The first weekly competition was set in September 1990.

Here was the last Christmas Details Competition that ever appeared which was two years ago in 2009.

Details 1048

I could not identify this week's detail. Suspect it's from a forthcomign exhibition of Mountains torrents etc  from Switzerland, etc.

Tom Lubbock 1957-2011

Sadly Tom Lubbock died. A number of obituaries and appreciations, etc, are available online.




http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/tom-lubbock-19572011-2181072.html



http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jan/16/tom-lubbock-appreciation-laura-cumming



http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/tom-lubbock-artist-critic-and-independent-great-dies-at-53-2180273.html



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/tom-lubbock-passionate-and-erudite-chief-art-critic-for-the-independent-and-the-independent-on-sunday-2180191.html

The Details Competition is continuing under the supervision of Jennie Gilbert.

Tom Lubbock is unwell

Tom Lubbock is not well. Please see the following:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/07/tom-lubbock-brain-tumour-language

There has been a recent exhibition of his work: Please see:


http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/tom-lubbock-collages-that-cut-to-the-quick-2149535.html

February and March 2009

Details 830

All three winners this week were friends of mine. Giovanni di Paulo is not the most well known of painters.

Details 831

One of my friends won this one.

Details 832

On the left here is this week's puzzle (Sunday, March 8th)

This proved to be a very difficult detail to track down. I had a fruitless search and I suspect many others will have, too.

We shall see. (On Sunday, there will be a million right answers as the painting is well known and has been recently publicised by Barack Obama who says it is his favourite as it hung on his grandmother's wall. It was by Watts and titled "Hope".)

Mr Lubbock sometimes goes from the familiar  to the obscure, although it could be that the image above is also well known and I just do not recognise it. 

As expected, there was a very large number of correct answers to the Christmas Details competition. Well, it is Christmas.

The Competition puzzle for 924 was as seen on the left: I suggest that it was one of the most tedious details to find. However, I did eventually discover that it was painted by Thomas Couture.

The week after that was an exceptionally easy detail - a knee from the Stonebreakers by Courbet. The winners will be published this week, but I should imagine that there would have been a bagful of correct entries.

This week's, 926, was in a different catergory, though. It was a real poser:

I thought it might be an engraving by Mantegna, but in the end it turned out to be by an artist I had never heard of: Girolamo da Treviso. It is a bizarre piece of political satire, a 16th century anti Roman Catholic picture showing the Four Evangelists Stoning the Pope.

This answer won't be published until a week tomorrow: 8th February.

This blog may not be continuing for too long as I think the Independent on Sunday will be taken over or "fold" fairly soon. It is losing readership hand over fist and is too London centred.

Christmas Details 2008

This is the easiest competition for a number of years. I wonder how many correct entries there were? We shall see on 18th January.

Details Competition 919, 920 and 921

The Details 919 was one that I could not find. I did find very similar images of the metal pot that the woman is balancing on her head. This was by Louis le Nain. I looked for Louis Le Nain on the web. However, it was nowhere to be found. Today's newspaper tells me that the picture is in the V&A and a search in the V&A site finds the image quite easily.

Tom Lubbock made an interesting claim for the image of the milkmaid, arguing that it should be widely known.

I am not sure, as I think the style of le Nain is a little wooden.

Well, last week's image (920) was a William Blake, and even though he has such a distinctive style, it was not so easy to find. It turned out to be Beatrice on the Car with Matilda and Dante.

This week's - 921 - is a seasonal one.

I think that the Christmas Details competition will be published on 20th December.

Details Competition 917

I thought that Tom Lubbock's choice of Vilhem Hammershoi in Details 917 was quite difficult to identify. This was partly because the detail might well have been from another period. Also, not that much of Hammershoi's work can be found outside printed texts. "Interior of Courtyard, Strandgade 30" has had little exposure.

However, as is so often the case, the picture had recently appeared in an exhibition in London. So the metropolitan audience of the Independent have a much greater chance of finding the answer.

It will be interesting to see how many winners are from London this Sunday.

(The paper is clearly failing now (given its declining sales) and the increasing attention to a smaller and smaller segment of the potential audience will only accelerate the decline. )

I also thought it was a pity that Tom Lubbock did not think to mention the significance of the title of the painting by Poussin in 916 - The Ashes of Phocion collected by his Widow. Mr Lubbock was more interested in the type of landscape. Perhaps the landscape surrounding other significant human events was worthy of note, too.

This blog is an occasional discussion of paintings which appear in Tom Lubbock's Details Competition in the Independent on Sunday.
The Christmas Competition is the most difficult, with usually about 16 paintings to identify.
Last year's Competition was almost impossible, I was unable to identify two images: one was an incorrect detail which Tom Lubbock had not selected. However, some entrants managed to find the correct answer. I believe that Mr Lubbock discounted this answer for all entrants who got all the other answers correct.
I was unable to find number 5. See below.