Christmas Details 2014 - Answers

The answers to the Christmas Competition were published last weekend. The results are to be found below. There is little to be said except that Tom Lubbock never laid "crafty tripwires". Others may wish to comment.

 

Christmas Details Competition - Head Games

Christmas Details 2014 - There are 24 details to find this year. The theme is hats and headgear. I do not think the details are difficult to identify, so there will be no despair this year. Consequently, it is likely that there will be a large number of entrants with the all the correct answers. Arguably, that is in the spirit of Christmas. I won't be posting up the competition images while the paper is still on sale.

I noticed that the competition is online, so readers can go here to see the competition images:

 http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/christmas/entertainment/christmas-details-competition-who-is-beneath-the-hats-in-these-wellknown-paintings-9936255.html

The only other comment I have is that there are two paintings included which are by the same painter.

Another Detail that no-one could identify

It's happened again. This time no-one was able to identify a detail chosen by Jenny Gilbert (Competition 1224).

It was from Forging the Anchor by Stanhope Forbes

Jenny Gilbert states that "no correct solutions (or indeed guesses) came in".

I can only recollect one other occasion when this happened in Tom Lubbock's time. I suspect it partially reflects a lack of interest caused by the downgrading of the prize from champagne to prosecco. There is little incentive except for the personal satisfaction. I suspect many aesthetically visually erudite regulars have abandoned the competition.

One wonders if some Christmas cheer might emerge so that the Christmas Competition, shortly to be published, will once again reward any winning competitors with champagne?

DETAILS 1193 - A CASE OF POOR REPRODUCTION

I wonder if others looking at the Details Competition last week found the reproduction of the detail for Competition number 1193 to be unacceptably poor? I suppose this is the new era of prosecco prizes, so anything is possible.

I think it might be better to offer a bottle of champagne to the "first out of the hat", rather than the print prize, with runners up receiving prosecco, though I accept others might disagree.

If anyone could not identify the detail for 1193 as a result of the poor colour reproduction, it was from a painting by Edouard Vuillard.

Details 1191 The End of the Champagne Years

This Competition marks the end of an era. Anyone who won before this week's competition can count themselves lucky. The champagne has run out. The cellars of the Independent on Sunday can now only accommodate.....Prosecco. The man who is the answer to this week's competition, too, is perfectly in tune with a downgrading of the sensory pleasures, ironically enough. Though perhaps Jenny Gilbert is making a point for Alexander Lebedev, who is reportedly seeking to offload the loss-making paper(s). I am not entirely sure if the owner is Alexander Lebedev or his son, Evgeny, as I have access only to Wikipedia on these points, but the Telegraph indicates as follows:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/10576763/Independent-owner-Lebedev-looking-for-buyers.html

"Mr Lebedev has had to prop up years of losses at IPL, which made an operating loss of £17.5m in the year to September 2012, the most recent set of figures.

Last year, he warned that efforts to destroy his businesses in Russia meant he was not making enough money to sustain The Independent's losses. The former KGB spy said his banking and airline businesses had been ruined with only his potato farming operation remaining lucrative."

Details 1187 - Another obscure print from the United States - Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

One can only say "I told you so" about these impossible print details. We have ended up at the logical consequence of Jenny Gilbert's policy: few, if any can find the details of such prints. The Christmas Competition was proof of this. This recent detail 1187 has achieved something which has not happened for 20 years - there were not three winners, only one correct answer. I hardly see how this will encourage anyone to take an interest in the Competition, or indeed, buy the paper.

A recent correspondent has noted that a very large number of details come from the Art Institute of Chicago and another that many come from the same reference book. It would be interesting to know if the said reference book contains this obscure Altdorfer print.

I think that J Knapman of Weybridge deserves all three bottles this week. (I think it's at least his/her tenth win in ten years or more, so s/he deserves it.)

Salome with the Head  of John the Baptist - Albrecht Altdorfer

Details 1184

Well today and last week we were free, mercifully, from the drawings of infants and cherubs, although the last one - 1182 - was Cupid. Few competitors found the Barocci Cupid, in my opinion, as only long in the tooth regulars were winners. Certainly this week (1184) is a distinct change of scene and indeed not from the Art Institute of Chicago. Quite challenging, I think, and likely to lead in a number of false directions.  

Details 1182

Details 1182

One might have thought that the Details devotees had received enough punishment over the Christmas period searching for image number 9, the Rodin sketch. Apparently not, as were are once again presented with sketch/study/drawing of an infant. It was pointed out to me by a correspondent that number 9 in the Christmas Competition and indeed last week's Bronzino are not in fact paintings, yet Ms Gilbert continues to refer to them as paintings. At least this week's painting (which it is not) is not held in the Art Institute of Chicago.

The elusive detail number 9 in the Christmas Competition was from the drawing below.

I believe that the full result will be published next Sunday.
 

Details returns to normal

After the challenge of the 16 detail Christmas Competition which lingered long after Christmas, we return to the more sedate single detail weekly puzzle. I wonder if others have noticed that there are more details from 19th and 20th centuries and very few now from the Renaissance period.  

Christmas Details 2013

This year's Christmas Competition was published last Sunday. I think that most regular entrants will find that most of the paintings are quite well known, or at least, not that difficult to track down. However, at the time of posting, I am still looking to identify one detail. Good luck to everyone.

The Answers to Christmas Details 2013

Details 1177

This was another detail that eluded me, though it seemed somehow familiar.

This turned out to be by George Frederick Watts. It is one of several versions of Time, Death and Judgement.

Tomorrow, the Christmas Competition will be published. It will be interesting to see if it will be as difficult as last year's. Normally, there are one or two details which entrants state were the hardest to find. 

Details Competition Number 1172

In my opinion, the detail which has been published in this week's New Review has been reversed. It is printed in the New Review as follows:

However, I think that the original of this, the portrait from which it is taken, looks to the right rather than to the left. It was a challenge to locate the original and I was mislead by my thinking to believe that it was later than it actually is.

Posted on Sunday17th. By the way, this was by Van Dyck and was a portrait of Lucas Vorsterman. I would place it as the second most difficult to find of the current year.

Posted Saturday 23rd. It's possible that there are number of similar paintings and etchings some of which may be looking to the left or to the right. 

Most difficult detail so far this year was 1149:

The answer to this was :

Portrait of Lady Thynne by Anonymous.

Christmas Details Competition from Times Gone By 1992 to 2000

Christmas Details 1992 to 2000

I am indebted to Jenny, a correspondent to this Blog who has sent images of these earlier Christmas Competitions to me. It is a strange experience for me to see these for the first time after so many years. For anyone who wishes to pit their wits against these, I have cropped them to remove any scribbled answers (as far as possible).

Christmas Details 1992 - The First Competition - "Christmas Quiz"

Christmas Details 1993 -  "Christmas Details" - Fine Art Sweets and Chocolates

Christmas Details 1994 - "Christmas Details" - No theme

I see here the Sickert portrait of Edward VIII which appeared in a later Christmas Conmpetition and which I was unable to find.

Christmas Details 1995 - "Christmas Details" - Theme - Red Patches

Christmas Details 1996 - "Christmas Details" - Theme - Diagonals

Christmas Details 1997 - "Christmas Details" - Theme - Flat Patches

Christmas Details 1998 - "Christmas Details" - Theme - Points of Light

Christmas Details 1999 - Theme - Advent Calendar

Christmas Details 2000 - Theme - Darkness Visible - Silhouettes

Christmas Details Competition from Times Gone By 2001-2009

Looking through my Details records, the Christmas Competitions stand out. Perhaps the reason for this is the time spent over long dark days, sometimes in inhospitable libraries, though I once remember finding Poussin's   Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion while browsing through Sister Wendy's 1000 Masterpieces in W H Smith's, a book which I subsequently bought. 

The intrinsic value of the Christmas Details Competition is not in the completion of the hunt for the answers, but in the ongoing process of searching itself, followed by the reward of finding each answer. The longer the detail eludes identification, the greater the satisfaction at finding it. My comments recently about the software that is now available to assist the competitors do reflect a feeling that I have which is that competitors with no knowledge of or interest in art history can find the answers and indeed win a competition by pressing buttons on a smartphone. Tom Lubbock used to congratulate the winners, but such congratulations would be empty, I think, if all their efforts consisted in using crude image searches. 

Not wishing to be a hypocrite, I do admit that I use the resources of Google and other library resources myself, but I hope not in a mechanistic way. Does this matter? It matters to me as the Competition is about art and invites the competitor to use her/his knowledge of art, not just to operate a search programme. So in 2009, I was unable to find one last detail, which was the hand of a St John the Baptist. I eventually found it by searching through Tom Lubbock's series of "Great Works" where I found that he had featured the picture in one of his critical essays. This gave me immense satisfaction as I had found the last answer and it also enriched my knowledge of Phillipe de Champaigne.

I am aware that there has been quite a number of views of this Blog in recent days and one or two correspondents have written to me. I can't answer correspondence at present but I shall do so after 7th January. 

Relatively speaking, I think that the Christmas Competition has got easier in recent years. 

There is a traditional toast at Christmas for "absent friends". For me, in this Blog, this brings to mind the late Tom Lubbock, a truly original critic, refreshingly fearless in his opinions who approached works of art from unexpected angles and sowed seeds of thinking that continue to bloom. Though I never met him, he was still a kind of friend through his writings and remains so.

Following that line of thinking, I have decided to put up Christmas Competitions from years gone by. My original pages from the Review are beginning to oxidize and decay. Putting them here will prolong their life! I am putting up Christmas Competitions from 2001-2009 inclusive as that is all I have from Tom Lubbock's years. One day, I may try to obtain the earlier competitions from the 1990's.  Apologies for the scrawl and scribble on the originals that was added in those years of endeavour. I did not find all the answers in every year. I have also got the "Answers" which Tom Lubbock published in the following January. I could put these up here if anyone is interested.

Any comments are welcome here.

If anyone has copies of the competitions prior to 2001 and can post them up here or send an image to me, it would be much appreciated. I have got the answers, but I have no idea which details were included in the competitions.

One final point I would make is that some of the earlier competitions were exceptionally difficult, resulting in one year in there being only 12 fully correct answers. Consequently, it can be a real test and there is nothing wrong with that.

Christmas Details 2001 - "Face off"

In 2001 I failed to find the answer to number 3 which was by "Anonymous, South Netherlandish". Tom Lubbock decided that entrants who gave the "wrong" answer to two other details were not to be penalised. I disagreed with him on this point and wrote to him at length, explaining what I thought. He wrote back to me as follows:

Dear

Thanks for your protest. It's like this. You have rules. But there will always be situations where it is not clear how those rules should be applied or interpreted - as the compendious history of law and legal rulings attests.

The Christmas Details results produced a tricky situation. Correct answers were required. But those two recurrent incorrect answers weren't incorrect in the normal way (eg rough guesses, or mix-ups with a similar picture). Rather, the contestants had identified the detail, had a reproduction of the correct picture in a book in front of them - but unfortunately their book gave them the wrong title. It seemed to me it was the book that was incorrect , not them. So the wrong answers were allowed. (At least, I know this is how the Bosch mistake occurred, about the Picasso I don't know, I only strongly presume, but allowing one, I allowed the other.) That's how I decided to apply/interpret the rule, the word "correct" - by the spirit not the letter.

Of course the decision is disputable. But the point is, it wasn't a concession to ignorance. The wrong-title people had identified the picture which the detail came from - and so those who gave the right titles weren't being robbed (and no naming or apologies needed). It was a concession to bad luck: precisely a matter of fairness, as I saw it. Though I could perfectly well have stuck to the letter, and just said "bad luck!" - hence mention of Christmas. (It strikes me that many, much more important matters also turn on somebody's decision to say, or not to say, "bad luck") But I wonder, if you'd been adjudicating this, whether you would actually have decided it differently.

Yours

Tom Lubbock

Christmas Details 2002 - "Straight Answers"

I recollect that this year I failed dismally to find more than half a dozen answers. There were only 12 fully correct entries. 

Christmas Details 2003 - "Drawn and Quartered"

Christmas Details 2004 - "Christmas Quilt"

I found these fabrics very interesting to spot as some of those which appeared to me to be from one era were in fact from another.

Christmas Details 2005 - "Christmas Posts"

I enjoyed this one, too. My last one here was the Munch, I think. I thought at one time that I would never find it. It is notable here that these were numbered vertically in columns. Poor Tom Lubbock was always the victim of the staff at the IoS who made mistakes...

Christmas Details 2006 - "White Lines"

This was the hardest competition that I ever succeeded in completing. For me, Number 1 was atrociously difficult. I only found it by a laborious process of examining the style of the lettering which eventually led me to Joan Miro through his squiggles and ultimately to Photo: This is the Colour of my Dreams. This search covered a period of several whole days. There was also an error here where the IoS staff included the same detail twice. I corresponded later as follows:

Dear Mr Lubbock
As one of your occasional correspondents about the Details Competition and a failed entrant for the 2006 competition (though with a correct set of answers), I wondered if you intended to use the "missing" picture from the 2006 Competition? "Missing" because Pierrot was included twice?
I should be intrigued to see what other difficult task could have lain in wait....
Are you likely to use this for one of the regular competitions? Or will it remain forever mysterious?
Yours sincerely


"Dear

Well, I didn’t see a copy of the paper that carried the results of the Xmas competition, but in the text that I wrote for it (which may have been cut, of course) I said that the detail that got lost was from Saenredam’s Interior of the Church of St Udolphus (1649). It would have showed an area of white wall with a bit of brown rafter peeping in. This painting has already appeared in the regular competition (Details 567) and so it won’t appear again – at least, I try not to do repeats, except in the Xmas competition, when the visual theme sets the agenda.

Yours sincerely
Tom Lubbock"

Looking at this now and Tom Lubbock's selection of images, it might have been something like this: 

Would I have been able to find that?

Christmas Details 2007 - "Can you get your head around these images?"

This was (another) year when I failed to find all the details. The details that eluded me were number 2 which was a portrait of Edward VIII by Sickert. I just could not decide what the image was of, it did not occur to me that it was a head-on view of a busby.  Number 5 was another error by the IoS staff who did not select the circular part in the painting but a tiny bit out of the top left hand corner of Bruegel's Children's Games. Nonetheless, some entrants managed to find the answer.

Christmas 2008 - "Can you get your head around these jumbled-up bodies?"

This was not too difficult.

Christmas 2009 - "It's all in the Details"

As I noted earlier, number 8 of John the Baptist caused me the most trouble.

This was the last Christmas Details that Tom Lubbock put together as he was very seriously ill in 2010 and died in 2011. 

Christmas Details Competition 2012

Christmas Details 2012

The 2012 Details Competition will be published next Sunday. The golden days of Tom Lubbock's sometimes desperately difficult puzzles at Christmas are over. The difficulty of the Competition has not eased simply because Tom Lubbock died and another person sets the puzzles. It is because the resources for finding the answers have become much more accessible to everyone. So whereas in the early years of the competition the essential resources were a certain amount of scholarship and a good supply reference books or libraries, today all that is needed is the internet, Google and an even more precise software tool which I shall not identify. Sadly this last requires no knowledge of art history whatsoever. Is this dumbing down inevitable? Does anyone care about this apart from me?

Good luck to everyone and I shall look forward to any comments.

Christmas details Competition - A Dog's Life - The Answers

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.