User talk:Ham II

Ham, imo we should NOT be doing this! MOS:ART specifically advises against it, as the RC regularly moves stuff around. For example Charles I in 3 positions is currently in Edinburgh, though I admit most of the category is less likely to move. I know you were just tidying the parents. Johnbod (talk) 18:00, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnbod: Sorry, I should have known better! I've toyed with the idea of having a Category:Paintings in Buckingham Palace and a Category:Paintings in Hampton Court Palace as a way of tidying up Category:Paintings in London and Category:Paintings in the Royal Collection of the United Kingdom. Perhaps I should hold fire?

The triple portrait's in Edinburgh for an exhibition, so I would never have moved that one (or, rather, added Category:Paintings in Edinburgh to it), but on the Royal Collection's page there's no way of seeing its usual home, if it has one. I see that at Charles I in Three Positions we say "The painting currently hangs in the King's Drawing room at Windsor Castle" with a ref from 2021 (the perils of "currently"...). I'll remove that but keep the 2021 ref for the location field in the infobox, for now at least. Hope all's well with you. Ham II (talk) 07:39, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thanks, though I'm a good deal less on wiki these days.... Actually, most of the Windsor ones are either "fixtures" or less likely to be moved (Waterloo Hall etc), but they do still seem to move them around, esp between Buck House & Hampton Court. Also Holyrood seems to get more and better stuff these days... Perhaps we could rename, and restrict the Windsor one, & leave the others. Hope you're well, Johnbod (talk) 07:05, 27 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Leonardo list

Hey! Hope you're well, its been a second. The google sheet of Leonardo drawings is finished. I had another crack at it earlier this year—can't remember if I finished it (maybe you did?), but it is indeed complete. I also have a list of concerns (inconsistencies and such in Zöllner) that I can put somewhere, maybe article talk. Are we set to covert it to tabular format? Aza24 (talk) 22:20, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ope, I'm now seeing your holiday note on your user page (enjoy!)—please no rush with this. Aza24 (talk) 16:01, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Aza24, always great to hear from you! I think I got to the end of the sheet around December or January, but one thing I got stuck on was whether to use the old "RL" accession numbers for the Royal Collection, which are what Zöllner uses, or the current "RCIN" ones (which, for Leonardo's drawings, also have a "9" before the old number, so that RL 12542 becomes RCIN 912542). So, after initially transcribing 90-odd Royal Collection accession numbers as they appear in Zöllner, I left 261 unfinished "RCIN 9_ ones; they're the ones now in blue.

I've now decided to go with the current Royal Collection accession numbers, and have done a Find and Replace for all the "RL" ones. I also changed every "r" and "v" in a Royal Collection accession number to "recto" and "verso" spelled out in full. That still leaves the remaining RCIN ones to be finished.

Are you happy to help with filling these last ones in? If so, shall we go about this the way we did before – one of us going from the top down and the other from the bottom up? Then we should be ready to convert these into Wikidata items. Here are the existing Wikidata items, by the way. Thanks for all your work on this. Ham II (talk) 12:17, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Aza24: Just letting you know that I've now got the "RCIN 9_s down to under 100, so this is progressing!

Ham II (talk) 10:04, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I'm so sorry, I've been completely swamped IRL, I'll put this on my list for later this week though. Aza24 (talk) 22:20, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Aza24: No need – I finished this today! It probably won't be till next weekend that I get these onto Wikidata, though. Ham II (talk) 22:36, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Have either of you come across any more hints of the erotic drawings that Brian Sewell has described? [1] No Swan So Fine (talk) 12:31, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@No Swan So Fine Interesting. I have not (and I guess I missed that footnote in Nicholl), although there are quite a few detailed drawings of genitalia in his notebooks (for instance), but none that seem easily categorizable as erotic. Perhaps you've seen that Hokusai has quite a bit of erotic art?—well preserved in that case. Aza24 (talk) 22:29, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

SW19

Do you feel that the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club is a public place as far as art is concerned? It is an exclusive private members club and the grounds are inaccessible outside of the championships. I've just created Statue of Fred Perry as well as the Five Lady Busts, and there is a water feature that would qualify. No Swan So Fine (talk) 12:36, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@No Swan So Fine: I think the question would have to be whether the art is visible from the public roadway. I can just about make out Fred Perry's statue on Google Street View; the blown-up photo behind it was changed sometime between 2022 and 2024 to the one that's in Art UK's images, making the dark sculpture less visible in Google's photo, but it is there. The busts are also outside Centre Court, but where? A new section at Centre Court might be the best way to cover these sculptures. I can't see the fountain from Google Street View. Ham II (talk) 07:11, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a good ref for Family from another place? I'm just trying to create the Wikidata item. I can't find it on the Bible of ArtUK. Worthington's website (possibly in error) describes the piece as Experiments in Colour 4. No Swan So Fine (talk) 14:04, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They make a big play about how accessible to the community they are, and there are tours, I think taking people into the main courts, a museum, of course a shop, & so on, all year round. Johnbod (talk) 03:16, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is really about whether to include the All England Club's outdoor sculptures in the list of public art in Merton, I think. Tours all year round put me in mind of the Houses of Parliament and this discussion from long ago, although possibly only the Peers' War Memorial, being in a closed-off garden, is really comparable. Ham II (talk) 18:04, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can't believe that was 10 years ago! I'm still inclined to remove the parliamentary sculptures on the basis that museum ones could be included as well. Waterloo Vase, Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker etc No Swan So Fine (talk) 07:32, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Spudgun67: Are there any photographs of the Cherry Groce memorial to your knowledge? No Swan So Fine (talk) 10:18, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All I can find with a licence suitable for Wikimedia Commons is this photo with the memorial in the background. I couldn't find anything on Family from Another Place, sadly. Ham II (talk) 18:04, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@No Swan So Fine I've just uploaded some. Spudgun67 (talk) 22:17, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:Decorative artists

I think we could do without this category, or at least a rename and better definition. As I expect you know, it mostly is oldspeak for architectural painters, stuccoists etc, though to modern auctioneers "decorative" typically means, cheap, crap, or both. Either way, I don't think it helps our readers. What do you think? Obiously we need something to collect artists of the applied/decorative arts, but I don't think this is the right name. Cheers. Johnbod (talk) 01:47, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This really is a puzzler. There are several Objet d'art[ists] categories in there as well. No Swan So Fine (talk) 10:16, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think just need better names, and perhaps a split between "Architectural artists" (dominant in the Catholic sub-cat), and "Artists in the decorative arts", like the potters, enamellists and so on. Johnbod (talk) 01:17, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Applied artists by medium? Most artists cats are painters or sculptors, this could be a parent cat to scoop up architects and performance artists maybe. No Swan So Fine (talk) 07:27, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Johnbod; sorry I've only been able to give this my proper attention now. Inasmuch as I can piece together my motives from a year ago, I created the category because I was moving Calligraphers, Ceramists, Enamellers, Glass artists and Jewellers out of Category:Artisans, where I didn't think they belong – and there was already a category for Decorative arts (as there was for Catholic decorative artists), whereas there wasn't (and still isn't) one for Applied arts. I would probably therefore have assumed it was best not to start an "Applied art(s)" category tree, just as there isn't one for its counterpart "Fine art(s)"; both those terms are possibly more antiquated than their alternatives. (I think our only cats using them are the more recently created ones for Fine Arts of Bihar, Fine art of Austria, Austrian fine art awards, Fine art festivals in Austria and Applied art in Austria, and then Fine art photographers with one subcategory, American fine art photographers.)

Of course, in practice we're probably still going to reflect this division somehow (the subcategories of Category:Decorative artists aren't going to be moved to Category:Artists), and it's a question of whether we pick the label "applied" or "decorative" for the less highly regarded set of artforms. To be honest, I didn't know there was an old sense of the term "decorative artist" which isn't precisely equivalent to "someone working in the decorative (i.e. applied) arts". Perhaps that does count against Decorative artists in a category name, and by extension Decorative arts. But ngrams do show "decorative arts" and "decorative artist(s)" to be the most commonly used terms, so I think it could be tricky to argue the case for renaming the category tree to "applied arts" (perhaps pruning away the "decorative artists" in the old sense in the process).

I'm inclined to leave things as they are, but would you want to make the case for a wholesale move to "applied arts" and "applied artists"? Ham II (talk) 16:40, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I say above, I'm much happier with "Artists in the decorative arts" than "Decorative artists", which I see as not only ambiguous, but not a term modern art historians would ever use. "Applied artists" perhaps isn't very idiomatic (just like "decorative artists"), so "Artists in the decorative arts" may be best. I'm not putting much faith in those ngrams for these reasons; I note "decorative art" is in a 20-yr nosedive though. Happy B'day, btw - is it a big one? Johnbod (talk) 17:49, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers! It's not a round number – despite the Birthday Committee rather going to town this year – but obviously it is an ever-increasing one...

I think you're right about "applied artists"; there's not so much evidence of that one in use. The Getty's Art and Architecture Thesaurus has no entry for "applied artists", but it does have one for "decorative artists" ("Artists who create decorative arts, which are primarily utilitarian in form or function, but that have aesthetic value provided by the design, decoration, or embellishment, including ceramics, furniture, textiles, and other household or utilitarian objects.") and also "decorative painters" ("Painters who specialize in creating embellishments, adornments, or ornamentation, often specifically those that are temporarily put up on a stage, or for a holiday or another special occasion.") I take it the old meaning of "decorative artist" you mention is an extension of "decorative painters" to encompass other media besides painting (since you mentioned stuccoists)? Is there a good source for that usage somewhere, given that the Getty basically is defining "decorative artists" as "artists in the decorative arts"? In a WP:CfD nomination I think there would have to be proof that the ambiguity exists.

As I mentioned, when I created Category:Decorative artists it slotted in between the existing Category:Decorative arts and Category:Catholic decorative artists. What do you think should happen with the Catholic category? Ham II (talk) 13:29, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Plenty of "decorative painters" in this search - mostly Victorian books, but still used by Michael Levey. The Catholic category is very largely this type, which as I said above I think should go to "architectural artists" (after some weeding out). Johnbod (talk) 14:17, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnbod: "Architectural artists" is an awkward one, because the Getty defines that term as follows: "Artists in any medium whose primary subject matter is architecture, including buildings, gardens, or other aspects of the built environment. The term may be used to distinguish those who design architecture as art, rather than designing only constructions having purely a functional purpose." So, two meanings there, neither of which is the one we'd be intending for the category – I think that term's best avoided if we want something foolproof. I wouldn't have a problem with "Decorative painters" and "Catholic decorative painters". Ham II (talk) 08:37, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, as I said at the start, I think that mostly conveys to modern readers that they painted flowers in vases or something. Not GB Tiepolo etc. I suppose the stuccoists have their own category somewhere. "Painters of decorative schemes" might be a bit better. Johnbod (talk) 13:58, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So would you like to see Category:Artists in the decorative arts, and within it Category:Painters of decorative schemes, and within that Category:Catholic painters of decorative schemes? (Or – perhaps better as it wouldn't involve any pruning – forget the last two and just rename the Catholic category Category:Catholic artists in the decorative arts?) And, as I assume Smasongarrison's creating of the Category:Decorative artists by nationality tree is what started this off, Category:Artists in the decorative arts by nationality, Category:American artists in the decorative arts, etc.? I'm not really enthused, but I'm not deeply opposed either. As some concision would be lost, I think such a move would only be successful if evidence can be presented that "decorative artists" has multiple meanings (and, probably to a lesser extent, the same for "decorative" in general with the decorative painters). Ham II (talk) 14:57, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Happy Birthday!

Have a happy birthday, Ham II! Supplied by the Wikipedia Birthday Committee, have one free cake! Enjoy! Best wishes to you on your special day!

CREditzWiki (Talk to me!!) 00:02, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Birthday!

Hungry? Here's a little snack for you on your birthday, from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day, Ham II! --Nedia Wanna talk? Stalk me 03:50, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]