Guess the Artist

Your clues this week are:

• The artist was French and active throughout the second half of the 19th-century.
• The artist's surname was also French, although it was derived from the name of an Italian Alpine village.
• The artist was legendary for quirky behavior: eating sans utensils at dinner parties; going to Mass every day though hating priests; exhibiting paranoia that other artists would steal techniques; avoiding the touch of other humans; and, most telling of all, experiencing wild bursts of activity in which many canvases would be started but not finished. Some have suggested autism, although a bi-polar disorder might be more fitting.

And


• The painting seen here was created during the early part of the artist's mid-career. This was a good thing because we can barely recognize early works -- they are strong and full of energy, but of a truly dark palette. Of course, this painting -- while light -- is also atypical of that which we expect from the artist. It wasn't until late-mid to early-late career that the artist settled on a unified theory that every organic shape in nature can be reduced to cylinders, spheres and cones. The geometry pusher ... now that is the artist we know and love.

Please email me your guesses over the coming week. I'll post the winner and correct answer with next week's guessing game. Good luck!

The Answer Two Weeks Ago:

The clues two weeks ago led straight to dear Samuel Palmer (English, 1805-1881) and his watercolor In a Shoreham Garden (ca. 1830). Corinne was the first reader to email with the correct answer, and neither she nor I know why Palmer's father-in-law, John Linnell (1792-1882), was such a pill towards him. These things are always a mystery to me, but in real life I believe thinking too hard about in-laws and their motivations is just asking for trouble. Anyway, congratulations to you, Corinne, and thank you to everyone who participated!

Comments are closed for this post.