Who is invisible in this painting?: the great British art quiz

This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home of the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues, by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK sets the questions.

Today, our questions are set by Government Art Collection. It is the most dispersed collection of British art in the world, with works displayed in more than 365 buildings and in 155 capital cities worldwide. The collection promotes British art and plays a key role in cultural diplomacy. Works can also be seen by the wider UK public through exhibition loans, digitally and partnership projects.

You can see art from the collection on Art UK here. Find out more on the Government Art Collection website here.

Michael Armitage’s painting The Octopus’s Veil is produced in oil on his signature choice of traditional Lubugo bark cloth, obtained from which of the following trees?

In Greek mythology, the Judgement of Paris was a contest between the three most beautiful goddesses of Olympus, for the prize of a golden apple. Which three goddesses competed?

Hera, Athena, Aphrodite James Thornhill’s painting shows Paris choosing the goddess who promised to give him Helen, the most beautiful woman as his wife. Hera, wife of Zeus and queen of the ancient Greek gods, represented the ideal woman and was the goddess of marriage and the family. Athena was the Olympian goddess of wisdom and good counsel, war, the defence of towns, heroic endeavour, weaving, pottery and crafts. Aphrodite was an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, beauty and pleasure. Her major symbols include myrtles, roses, doves, and swans. Image: The Judgement of Paris, c 1705, James Thornhill (1675/6–1734), Government Art Collection

Sally Payen’s painting Fence and Shadow, Invisible Woman and the Telephonic Tree brings attention to women’s peace camps and anti-nuclear protests that began in Britain in the 1980s. Where did the famous “Embrace the Base” protest take place?

This portrait by Gerrit van Honthorst shows Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia in courtly attire, against a sumptuous red curtain. It was painted around 1630 in The Hague, her home in exile after a brief reign in Bohemia with her husband Frederick V from 1619 to 1620. By what other name was the queen known?

Emma Hart’s enigmatic and playful ceramic sculpture uses pattern motifs to question issues of surveillance and control, with a title riffing on the prison phrase “get back in your cell” and the cockney slang for ear “shell like”, its title is Get Back in Your Shell Like. Which non-museum space was this work displayed in last year?

Imagine yourself as a guest at costume balls and tea parties in the beautiful gardens of British embassies around the world in the 19th century. Which embassy building does Johann-Heinrich Luttringhausen’s 1841 painting depict?

The neon work Faded Wallpaper by artist Tina Keane references a classic first-wave feminist text that explored issues of women’s mental and physical health in the 19th century. Which of the following literary works does it allude to?

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) “Based loosely on the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman”, as the artist explains, the artwork “is concerned with visual perception, madness and the search for identity. A woman, isolated within a room, becomes obsessed with the wallpaper surrounding her, seeing within its faded patterns strange images … she begins to strip the wallpaper away … questioning her own self-image, her imagination and her sanity.” Image: Faded Wallpaper , c 1988, Tina Keane (b 1940), © the artist. Photo: Government Art Collection

Painted in 1650, Portrait of a Lady wearing an Oyster Satin Dress is the earliest work by which woman artist in the Government Art Collection?

You got…

Slim majority

Hung parliament

Landslide victory

Submit answers