Monday, February 16, 2009

Night Class Mystery

You’re looking at a picture of a costumed model posing for art students. It's nighttime, and they're working by electric light.



Can you guess when it was painted? Please vote in the poll at left. Answer tomorrow.
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For those coming to my 12:00 talk today "Dinotopia: Behind the Scenes" at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, USA, here are some more details:

Free visitor parking only in lot 13 across Mannakee Street from the college to the left of the Board of Education Building. No ticketing in this lot from 10:00 AM until 3:00 PM, 2/16/09. The Theater Arts Building is at the center of the campus. Contact Professor Ahlstrom at 240-567-7639 Ed.Ahlstrom@montgomerycollege.edu

5 comments:

Erik Bongers said...

Ah, another opportunity for me to be utterly wrong with the hightest possible level of pseudo-logical blah.

Let's see...

Clothing of the participants is vital of course. Unfortunately the reproduction has very low resolution. But I do see the heardress, a person wearing a tie...
What about that boy's collar? Looks more like Frans Hals' dutch burgers...

Then the lights...
Oh, look, they even have lights on their table! So it's probably rather recent then...
But wait, those aren't electrical lights on the tables!? I see glass tubes sticking out! That means oil lights, or at least electrical lamps that still mimick traditional oil lamp design.
That pushes the date back of course...
Would only those two strange looking big lights be electrical?

I voted for 1901. Still early for electrical lights in common use I think, but this event would have been a hype of course. Something super-modern for the time being.

Unknown said...

Just got back from my first ever visit to NYC and thought of Dinotopia the whole time I was in the Natural History Museum.

Unknown said...

Jim,

Can you make the image a little smaller so that I can get a better peek? thanks. ;v)

James Gurney said...

Sorry, Frank. That's the only size I could find of the image. My eyes aren't even good enough to notice all the details Erik pointed out.

Eric, how lucky you are to see the Natural History museum. Did you see the James Perry Wilson dioramas?

Unknown said...

I loved them so, so much! I could've spent a week wondering around just those dioramas. It's the most beautiful museum I've ever seen.

Thanks so much for giving me a context when I did visit the dioramas!

I was hoping to bump into you at the Society of Illustrators.