Talk:Hope (Watts)

Influence, if any, on Picasso's The Old Guitarist

This discussion is about the influence, if any, on Pablo Picasso, and if the painting Hope, played an influential role in the making of Picasso's The Old Guitarist. Iridescent has reverted an edit that reads:

"Although Watts's work was seen as outdated and sentimental by the English Modernist movement, his experimentation with Symbolism and Expressionism drew respect from the European Modernists, notably the young Pablo Picasso, whose distorted features and broad sweeps of blue in The Old Guitarist (1903–1904) may have been inspired by Hope.

It now reads: "notably the young Pablo Picasso, who reproduced Hope's intentionally distorted features and broad sweeps of blue in The Old Guitarist (1903–1904)." The word reproduced seems a stretch, at least according to the Tate source ("seems like the precursor to Picasso’s own Blue Period paintings, such as The Old Guitarist 1903–4"). The other source, Tromans|2011|p=40, is unverifiable online. Coldcreation (talk) 11:51, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

While we'll never know for sure whether Picasso saw Hope, it is highly likely that he did. This was something I almost mentioned at the FA nomination, but trusted that Iridescent had faithfully represented Tromans. I looked online and found that Andrew Graham-Dixon stated in the Telegraph: "The young Picasso was clearly much influenced by the languorous, emaciated heroine of Watts’s most famous Symbolist canvas, Hope, a huddled figure shown blindfold on a globe floating in blue infinite space, who is reincarnated in many works of Picasso’s own Blue Period." --Hillbillyholiday ^talk 12:02, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Per my comments at the FAC, the Tate website is not a reliable source; regarding Hope, it's so riddled with obvious errors (e.g. Watts also omitted the star, the only note of optimism, at the top of the picture despite the star very obviously still being there), that I suspect the errors are intentional to catch plagiarists. The reference to Paul Barlow was kept in per this request—Barlow was also a Wikipedia editor and was citing himself in this article, and has recently passed away so I tried to keep at least one reference to him in as a mark of respect. As Hillbillyholiday points out, it's no problem at all to provide any number of sources for The Old Guitarist being influenced by Hope. (Remember, during Picasso's Blue Period this was one of the most widely-reproduced paintings in the world; for him not to have been aware of it would be like a modern-day artist being unaware of the Mona Lisa.) ‑ Iridescent 12:17, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

(Adding) I've replaced "reproduced" with "echoed", which leaves enough ambiguity to cover the unlikely event that Picasso wasn't intentionally copying Watts, since it's beyond dispute that the compositions are the same. ‑ Iridescent 12:40, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Factoid removed to talk page

The following factoid was removed and is included below for discussion and checking (also needs a secondary source if to be used at all):

The Hard Rock/Blues outfit, Humble Pie (band) featured the second version on the inside of their gate-fold sleeve for their eponymously-titled third album, Humble Pie (album) in 1970.

Carcharoth (talk) 10:46, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

• Source: O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 10:57, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I think this kind of fact is best linked in the other direction -- from the Humble Pie article to here. I'd only include something like this here if there are sources that focus on the painting that mention it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:03, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Mike is right. The source above is perfect for use in the Humble Pie band/album articles. I do like this sort of trivia myself (there really needs to be a better way to access such links other than 'what links here', which is often bloated by navboxes) - I actually suspect Wikidata may one day help in that respect. But trivia can overwhelm articles like this and needs to be strictly curtailed using editorial judgement. Carcharoth (talk) 11:29, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

References

What links here

Since the 'what links here' dynamic listing for this article isn't excessively bloated by the use of templates (there is only one template ({{George Frederic Watts}}), and that (correctly) isn't used on all the articles in the template), the following is a snapshot: the 21 articles linking here on 19 January 2017 (excluding 'Main Page') are: Hope, 1998 Winter Paralympics, George Frederic Watts (*), Five Little Pigs, Hope (disambiguation), 1886 in art, The Old Guitarist, Postman's Park (*), Jeremiah Wright, The Audacity of Hope, Watts Gallery (*), Little Holland House (*), 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address, List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice (*), The All-Pervading (*), Kitsch movement, Found Drowned (*), Physical Energy (sculpture) (*), Mammon (painting) (*), After the Deluge (painting) (*).

Of these, ten (*) include links generated by the template. Of these, the article is linked directly from the article text in Mammon (painting) (plus an illustration there and a reciprocal mention and illustration here) and from a footnote in After the Deluge (painting). It is mentioned in the lead, infobox and article text (plus illustration) in George Frederic Watts. In the other seven, it is only linked from the navbox footer template. That leaves ten other articles linking to this article. Hope uses it as an illustration. Hope (disambiguation) is a disambiguation page. 1886 in art is a listings page. 1998 Winter Paralympics mentions the painting in the article text, and there is a reciprocal mention here. Ditto for The Old Guitarist, Jeremiah Wright, The Audacity of Hope, and 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address (where it is also used as an illustration).

This article is also linked from Kitsch movement (but that is not mentioned here). The final example of a link to this article from another article is Five Little Pigs - that is a bit strange and might be classed as trivia. It probably falls into the same category as the (not-yet-linked but mentioned) example of Humble Pie (album) (given above). There are also several similarly trivial reference to this painting in the works of E. Nesbit (the works on The Bastaple Children), which is apparently what the alt text phrasing 'blindfolded girl sitting on a giant orange' was inspired by (see here). There is also a reference to the painting in the work The Wonderful Garden (1911) by E. Nesbit (here). The painting is also used as an illustration in Five Little Pigs and Kitsch movement. Carcharoth (talk) 13:46, 19 January 2017 (UTC) The first E. Nesbit and Agatha Christie mentions ('Five Little Pigs') are already in the article, the second E. Nesbit mention is absent. Carcharoth (talk) 13:50, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Hope (Burne-Jones and De Morgan and Lawrence)

Is the subject of the Hope (Burne-Jones) article what is mentioned in the 'Subject' section? (We do have File:St Margaret's church - window by E Burne-Jones - geograph.org.uk - 1718963.jpg). And is the De Morgan work File:Hope in a Prison of Despair.jpg or something else? And what is the reference to the work of Thomas Lawrence there for? There doesn't seem to be any source or reason to use that example? Carcharoth (talk) 14:43, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

The 1871 watercolour is, but not the 1896 painting which obviously post-dates this. The De Morgan painting in question is By the Waters of Babylon (Hope in a Prison of Despair was later). The Thomas Lawrence painting is there as the most generic example of the traditional British School depiction of Hope I could find, but if you have a better one just substitute it. ‑ Iridescent 17:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

File:By_the_Waters_of_Babylon_(1882-1883).jpg ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.251.44 (talk) 22:57, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

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