As a little quiz for Easter Week here's an eggy picture challenge. Perhaps you immediately know the work depicted or maybe you just vaguely recognise the distinctive style and so can only hazard a tentative guess ... nevertheless the challenge is the same: who's the artist?

Being images they are fairly immune to attempts at googling the answers, although as usual I will leave it to your honesty and discretion if you feel you need a little online help in distinguishing Van Dyke from Van Eyck, or Manet from Monet. Note that some of the images I've posted are details of larger works which I have cropped, either to focus more on the eggs themselves or perhaps just to remove the artist's signature. Be aware also that some artists were apparently so enamoured of the shape and symbolism of eggs that their works appear here more than once.

As before (see the Halloween quiz) I'm posting the whole thing twice; the first to be left untouched for any late-comers who may wish to give it a try, the second to be updated with the answers and/or clues. So who's the artist?

No. 1


No. 2


No. 3


No.4


No. 5


No. 6


No. 7


No. 8


No. 9


No. 10


No. 11


No. 12


No. 13


No. 14


No. 15


No. 16


No. 17


No. 18


No. 19


No. 20


No. 21


No. 22


No. 23


No. 24


No. 25


No.26


No. 27


No. 28


No. 29


No. 30

As said above I'll leave the opening post untouched and will use this second post to confirm correct answers by identifying the artist and giving the title of the work. Should extra clues be needed I'll add them here, but only once you've all struggled for a while.

So who's the artist?

No. 1

Claude Monet - Still Life with Eggs in Blue (1907).

No. 2

Hieronymous Bosch - The Concert in the Egg (1475)

No. 3

Maurits Cornelius Escher - Hen with Egg (1917).

No.4

Diego Velázquez - Vieja friendo huevos: Old woman frying eggs (1618).

No. 5

William Hogarth - Columbus Breaking the Egg (1752).

No. 6
 
Salvador Dali - detail from Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937).

No. 7

John Tenniel's illustration of Humpty Dumpty in the first edition of Alice through the looking Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll. Carroll did not explicitly say Humpty was an egg, Alice only remarks that he looks "exactly like an egg", which Humpty finds to be "very provoking". Fearing that she has offended him, Alice clarifies that she said he looks like an egg, not that he is one, which provokes a discussion on semantics and pragmatics in which Humpty Dumpty states, "my name means the shape I am".

No. 8
     
Detail from The Fight Between Carnival and Lent painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1559. Those are some very big eggs she has there - goose perhaps.

No. 9

Henry Moore - Egg Form: Pebbles (1977).

No. 10

Paul Cézanne - Still Life With Bread and Eggs (1865)

No. 11

René Magritte - Elective Affinities (1933).

No. 12

The Cosmic Egg by William Blake, from his uncompleted prophetic book Vala, or The Four Zoas which was never published, however this particular plate was printed in an obscure treatise on alchemy written by Alexander Roob (1808).

No. 13

The Egg Dance (ca. 1620) by Pieter Brueghel the Younger.

No. 14

Salvador Dali - Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943).

No. 15

A selection of stunning jewelled eggs made by Peter Carl Fabergé to be given as Easter presents amongst members of the Imperial Russian family.

No. 16

Hendrick Bloemaert - Old woman selling eggs (1632).

No. 17
   
It's the devillish little egg-monster from the central panel of The Last Judgment triptych by Hieronymous Bosch (painted shortly after 1482).

No. 18

A self portrait by René Magritte, La Clairvoyance (1936).

No. 19

Gustave Doré, Les marchands cassèrent l’œuf de rokh from the Fifth Voyage of Sinbad, as published in the French magazine 'Le Magasin pitoresque' (1865).

No. 20

Leonardo da Vinci's Leda and the Swan albeit the copie by Cesare da Sesto as the original is lost.

No. 21

Max Ernst, The Inner Vision: The Egg (1929).

No. 22

Jean-Baptiste Greuze - Broken Eggs (1756). A glum, young servant girl slumps next to a dropped basket of broken eggs - although that hardly warrants the domestic catastrophe seemingly about to break forth - with even the young boy running for cover. It's usually interpreted as an allegory about the loss of virginity and innocence. 

No. 23

Cracked Egg (Blue) by Jeff Koons, 1994, which was the first of five versions each rendered in a different vivid colour.

No. 24

Vincent van Gogh - Still life with birds' nests (1887).

No. 25

Pieter Aertsen, The Egg Dance (1552).

No.26

Pablo Picasso - Still Life: Eggcup and Egg (1923).

No. 27

Frans Hals - Shrovetide Revellers, painted in around 1616–17. 

No. 28

Joachim Beuckelaer - The Four Elements: Air (1570).

No. 29

Damien Hirst - Beautiful Creme Egg in the Sky (2012).

No. 30

Chicken and Egg by Banksy.

Eggzelent, an Easter quiz! 

If I come across as a bit gushy please forgive me but I'm still full of Italian bubbly (Prosecco) and Spanish lager (Madri) which accompanied the gorgeous, slow-roasted shoulder of lamb Mrs V presented for Easter dinner. There were also choices of wines, white (McGuigan's Pinot Grigio) from Australia and red (Rioja Tempranillo) from Spain. The family are still here (girl, her man, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, nephew, niece and great-niece) so I'll have to be quick. I'll probably come back later or tomorrow.

To start off with though, I'll guess at No.11 which looks quite surreal as being by Salvador Dali.

Number 11 is certainly surreal although it's from a somewhat different school of surrealism than the one you've suggested. So no, it isn't Dali, although he may well crop up elsewhere.

Probably the hardest quiz we have ever had - well researched MM! I spotted a couple of  possible Breugals (sp)  in there but don't know which of them painted them - and also new to me. Several styles are of course familiar but no idea where to start looking. .....interested to see how Leda's offspring came about (hatched babies, of course, yes.) This may be more strewn pearls......

I'll leave No.11 but try No. 17. That's also surreal but seems 400 or more years older - Hieronymous Bosch?

Priscilla wrote:

Probably the hardest quiz we have ever had ...

Oh surely not. Actually I thought some of these pictures were almost too obvious. Besides you yourself have already noticed a couple of the trickier Flemish old masters (and I did intimate that googling would be permitted, with discretion, if you are struggling to decide, say, between Mijnheer Brueghel senior and M. Brueghel junior). Besides I reckon that guessing, even of the wildest sort - is completely in order, if not actually to be encouraged.

The artist for the painting of 'Leda and the Swan' was actually a very accomplished anatomist and natural scientist, so he probably should have known better ... especially as I've noticed he gave the recently-hatched babies mammalian belly-buttons. But it's all allegorical, innit.

No. 17 ... yes indeed Viz, very well done. The devillish little eggman is a small detail taken from 'The Last Judgment' triptych by Hieronymous Bosch, which was painted shortly after 1482 and so well before modern surrealism was a thing.

Meles meles wrote:

I thought some of these pictures were almost too obvious.

On that note I'll go for No.15 as being by Carl Fabergé.

John Tenniel of course for N07  Humpty.... as for the rest, mm.

There you go Tenniel and Fabergé, they weren't so hard.

That chicken in No. 30 looks a bit street - so I'll guess it's a Banksy.

Being a bit rushed for a few days I am doing a guess batch - here goes 1. Cezanne in blue mode
17 - Rembrandt ? (same sort of face on differing bodies - or is that a dreadful injustice?)
Pressing on14 Younger Breugal and 9 older one - or the other way round - or not at all.
7 - daft enough to be a Dali.
10 - Not sure that Hepworth ever did bronzes  0r that Moore did shapes within another. Hopeful guesses there if ever. 
As for the middle ages not into that art at all - nordmann used to be if it was gross enough, anyway.
And then there are the Dutch masters who loved food stalls. I'll never get those sorted. 

I like the one showing man doing a sort of dancing egg smash - interesting...... they did have such mucky floors in those days didn't they? Thanks, MM, anyway. Now have to cook for the approaching hungry herd.(not doing eggs)

Vizzer wrote:

That chicken in No. 30 looks a bit street - so I'll guess it's a Banksy.

Oh get him, "a bit street eh" ... said in my best Jules and Sandy polari. Seriously though, and putting aside my rather infantile camp mockery (which in any case no-one under 30 years of age will get anyway), actually you're spot on: it is a Banksy.

Or at least I think it is as I can't find that it was ever actually stencilled onto an urban wall or wherever, while any online search of "Banksy chicken and egg" immediately produces results that show that it can readily be bought as reproduced poster artwork, and indeed even on bathtowels, kitchen cookware and a range of 'exclusive' crockery. That's the problem with anonymous pop-up street art: though it's probably not all completely bollux, and people are certanly making lots of money out of the name ... is it any of actually by the original artist?

Anyway, I'm going with the internet ... so yes it's a Banksy.

Priscilla wrote:

Several styles are of course familiar but no idea where to start looking. .....interested to see how Leda's offspring came about (hatched babies, of course, yes.)

So many artists have done Leda and the Swan that I too didn't know where to begin. No. 20 does seem definitely Renaissance and Meles' subsequent clue of the artist being 'a very accomplished anatomist and natural scientist' has made be lean towards the boy from Vinci - so I'll go for Leonardo.

P.S. Priscilla I know you said you were in a hurry, but it looks like your numbering is out of sync. The clue numbers are located above each picture. No. 17 and No. 7 have already been answered while the one you've suggested as being a possible Barbara Hepworth is surely No. 9 (rather than No. 10).

Priscilla wrote:

Being a bit rushed for a few days I am doing a guess batch - here goes  ...

Yes No. 1 is certainly someone's période bleu, but it isn't Cezanne's (though he does appear elsewhere).

Priscilla wrote:

Pressing on [is] 14 Younger Breugal and 9 older one - or the other way round - or not at all?

I think you're giving the numbers below, not above ...  but yes in no. 8, the woman making waffles with the large (goose?) eggs is Pieter Bruegel the Elder - a detail from 'The Fight Between Carnival and Lent' painted in 1559 ... while no.13 (what you've called 14) is Pieter Brueghel the Younger - 'The Egg Dance' (painted ca. 1620).

Priscilla wrote:

I like the one showing man doing a sort of dancing egg smash - interesting ... they did have such mucky floors in those days didn't they?

The egg dance was a traditional Easter game involving the laying of eggs on the ground and dancing among them whilst trying to break as few as possible. Another variation (depicted by the young man dancing on the mucky floor) involved tipping an egg from a bowl, and then trying to flip the bowl over on top of it, all with only using one's feet and staying within a chalk circle drawn on the ground. I cropped the picture of the egg-dancing man but he is actually performing in what appears to be a brothel, so the mucky floor - strewn with broken eggs, bits of food and wilted flowers - probably has very deliberate symbolic meaning.

Priscilla wrote:

7 - daft enough to be a Dali.

Indeed, but did you actually mean no. 6?

By the way egg dances are still performed today, and in England they are often performed with an additional hindrance being danced blindfolded:

Vizzer wrote:

So many artists have done Leda and the Swan that I too didn't know where to begin. No. 20 does seem definitely Renaissance and Meles' subsequent clue of the artist being 'a very accomplished anatomist and natural scientist' has made be lean towards the boy from Vinci - so I'll go for Leonardo.

Yes, no. 20, the painting of Leda and the Swan is by Leonardo da Vinci, although strictly it's the copy by Cesare da Sesto because the original is now lost. I thought the face of the lady had a certain familiar, almost enigmatic look, almost as though I've seen her depicted somewhere before, no?

Priscilla wrote:

Not sure that Hepworth ever did bronzes  Or that Moore did shapes within another.

But a good guess nonetheless, no.9 is Egg Form: Pebbles by Henry Moore (1977).

No. 18 is obviously a self-portrait but I can't think who it is. I was going to say Francis Bacon but it looks nothing like him and I don't think that's his style of painting anyway.

Yes no.18 is a self-portrait ... but then again maybe it could perhaps be entitled "This is not a self-portrait".

No 1 - Picasso? he had a blue period  so did he do it - not one of his best is it? I'm sure Braque never had a blue time nor wimsy either. 

Thank you for egg dancing info. One of the blessings of Res Hist has always been the revelation of new stuff.

Meles meles wrote:

Yes no.18 is a self-portrait ... but then again maybe it could perhaps be entitled "This is not a self-portrait".

I was trying to identify one of the (few) male painters without facial hair - wildly guessing from Walter Sickert to William Orpen to Norman Rockwell to Lucien Freud but none of their faces seemed to fit. You're 'this is not a self-portrait' clue, however, has made me suspect that it's a younger René Magritte. The style of painting certainly fits.

No 24   Van Gogh  It seems he collected birds' nests and then painted several of them - all very gloomy and odd to my mind.  But then he was; figures.

No. 18 is indeed by René Magritte, La Clairvoyance (1936). Eggs, with their smooth outer shape hiding complex potential life within, seem to have appealed to surrealists: there's another one by him here.

No. 24 is Still life with birds' nests, one of a series Vincent van Gogh painted (1885 - 1887). His fascination for bird’s nests went so far that he started seeing thatched peasant’s cottages as bird's nests, but I agree, they are all rather gloomy.

Bloemaert the Old woman egg seller  No16  and then  No 4 - because of the rather Iberian man (think Rafa? - well just sayin') Diego Velasquez and  the usual Dali  symbolic muddles - No 14

Until I started a Googling finger trip,  had no idea of the egg featuring in so many art works. i also delighted in the  greatly unappreciated   art of designer decorated eggs. ... and fried eggs have inspired many apparently; mmm.... diet and the struggling artist? All food for random thought - and yes, it's raining here again

Well done for getting No. 16 ... Hendrick Bloemaert, Old woman selling eggs (1632). I actually really like all those "Dutch masters who loved food stalls", as you put it above, as they very often portray their subjects as real people - unlike the almost caricatures one gets with say, Franz Hals, for whom the symbolism and allegory is often more important. Bloemaert's elderly egg-seller looks like someone you could readily chat to - indeed she actually looks rather like the lady that has a vegetable stall in the daily market near me.

No. 4, with it's heavy shadows and the spotlight-style shafts of illumination is, at least to me, typical Diego Velázquez, it's his Vieja friendo huevos - Old woman frying eggs (1618). I assumed I knew it from the Prado gallery in Madrid but was surprised to learn it is in the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland. Again - especially when compared to his formal paintings of the Spanish Royal family, aristocratic members of the court, their pets and even their dwarves - this picture to me says so much more about the relationship between the young man (with his obviously recent hair-cut and it's over-neat fringe), and the older woman. I've always assumed he was her son or perhaps more likely her grandson, which then begs the question: where's his mother/her daughter, or daughter-in-law? 

You said, "think Rafa? - well just sayin", as though that should be obvious, but I'm afraid I had to look him up. I now assume you meant Rafael Nadal the tennis-player. They're certainly both very good-looking lads, although being close to northern Spain a lot of the young men around here do look just like that.

And yes no. 14 is a typical Salvador Dalí muddle, which he pretentiously (could he ever be otherwise) entitled, Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943), depicting a man emerging from an egg (symbolising new life and beginnings) while two people look on; the New Man’s head representing North America and his hand resting on Europe, thus symbolizing America’s ascent into power during WWII.

Dalí certainly liked eggs: the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres (Catalunya), just the other side of the border from me, is festooned with egg shapes:



Meanwhile there is still another Dalí egg to be found here.

If there's another Magritte as well as the self-portrait, then I'd guess it's either No. 11 or No. 23. With its clean lines and use of light blue colour then No. 23 seems in keeping with his style, so I'll go with that.

Vizzer wrote:

If there's another Magritte as well as the self-portrait, then I'd guess it's either No. 11 or No. 23. With its clean lines and use of light blue colour then No. 23 seems in keeping with his style, so I'll go with that.

Hmmm. You might want to rethink that statement as no. 23 certainly wasn't by Magritte, if for no other reason than he'd have been long dead by then.

In which case let's try Magritte for the caged egg in No. 11.

Yes indeed, it's René Magritte's, Elective Affinities (1933).

Shame on me  should have got this first No27 Frans Hals  -Mardi Gras Was/is that really a Dutch thing?

I had a jolly aunt whose  enchantingly eccentric happy home was adorned with his smiling people - my intro into art appreciation aged 6,  as it happens.

No 22 Girl with broken eggs - and possibly a bigger problem and the man responsible perhaps.... all very symbolic; there' such a lot of this in these pics, MM.... interesting Anyway by Jean Baptiste Greuze.   The research has been such pleasure. How sad that after all  your work only Viz and I have tried to take on the challenge.  I have a way  to go yet but think Klee is in there too

Priscilla wrote:

Shame on me  should have got this first No27 Frans Hals  -Mardi Gras Was/is that really a Dutch thing?

Carnivale is certainly a big thing in some towns in Flanders, though I doubt whether many wear necklaces of herring, eggs, mussels, sausages and pigs' trotters, like Hals' Shrovetide Revellers. Mind you in Dunkerque the mayor still throws herrings from the balcony of the town hall into the carnival crowd:



And yes the broken eggs in Greuze's allegorical painting are probably the least of the young serving girl's problems. But it seems a bit of an odd subject for a painting - who, I wonder, would choose that to hang on the wall?

Well done for getting the Bloemaert answer Priscilla, I think I would have taken forever to get that one. If your suggestion of Picasso wasn't right for No. 1 then I reckon Pablo did No. 26. I can't see the egg in the picture though, it looks more like a penguin with a large slice of Victoria sandwich or galette on its shoulder.

Pablo Picasso, way back in 1923, named his work, Still Life: Eggcup and Egg ... so who are we to disagree with the master?

However I'm not convinced and frankly I'm more inclined to agree with you, Viz.

No. 2 looks very much like it's from the Low Countries, 15th or early 16th Century. We've already had a Breughal the Elder, a Breughal the Younger and a Bosch, so is it another by one of those or is it by someone else? I'll guess at de Jonge Pieter.

No. 2 is indeed from the Low Countries, and yes he's already appeared once already. He's another one that had a thing about eggs and I could have posted quite a few more from him, such as this one (from a different work),

If it's not Breughal the Younger then I'll guess that it's probably another by Hieronymous.

Yes, well done, it is indeed another by Bosch: The Concert in the Egg (1475) ... while my little supplementary clue was a small detail taken from perhaps his most famous work, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1495–1505).

Bosch's images, even those depicting Earthly Delights within a tranquil Garden of Eden - with the suggestion of an innocent group love-in inside a giant eggshell (and why not, this is Eden after all) - nevertheless still have a certain disturbing, controlling, almost malevolent, air about them. But these are still very mild in contrast to his representations of Hell - which are frankly so sadistically horrifying and populated by such creatures of vivid, hybrid and grotesque imagination.

I can well imagine his long-suffering wife saying:
"You're very quiet and pensive again this morning Hieronymous. Another bad night? Come Zoeteke, a pfenning for your thoughts ... "

Back to the grindstone because of this quiz nagging away.

No1 - not too well copied re colour, threw me. It's a Monet. I had forgotten what  a really fine painter he was before his eyesight  gradually went and we became enthralled by his later blurred vision work
N0 10 - Cezanne - I had further forgotten just how many studio still life works he did  as well as taking on the great outdoors. he had a good healthy diet if he also ate all that fruit.

Perhaps not.... My student studio still life of mackerel in tissue and newspaper  took several days one June....... the colours became most interesting but complaints went in from students who lived near by so my palette enthusiasm was a bit short lived and swiftly curtailed.

Sorry to be so tardy in responding - I took advantage of the good weather to cut the grass and plant the last of my potatoes, before the forecasted rain to night. And anyway you've worked no.s 1 and 10 out for yourself: Claude Monet Still Life with Eggs in Blue (1907) and Paul Cézanne Still Life With Bread and Eggs (1865). That leaves us with a couple of engravings (possibly illustrations for books); a woodcut seemingly initialled ME; a surrealist painting; something that looks like it's from a treatise on alchemy; and a couple that look to be ultra-modern.

No29 Damian Hirst..... well you said modern and tho I am not to well up on that stuff really -  only today have just planned sending family off to the Saatchi gallery in Sloane Square which displays quality work of the unknowns and were Hirst was 'discovered.'  An ex pupil of mine had some coronation linked electronic stuff shown last year - lovely place.
There  also being good bistros about there I think I have swung it to my young ones; being a bossy gran is fun!

Yes, no.29 isn't what I think of as a typical Damien Hirst - not nearly enough like an anatomy specimen but perhaps I'm just showing my ignorance - it's called Beautiful Creme Egg in the Sky (2012). It reminds me a bit of some of the stuff by Victor Vasarely, though not as geometric nor optically complex obviously.

Sloane Square eh? Très chic mais très cher. Long ago I lived relatively closeby in South Kensington (in a tiny, grotty bedsit, although the building it was in had once been a stately townhouse, complete with a grand doric-columned portico) and so passed through Sloane Square quite often on the way to Victoria Station, and I think I once saw something at the Royal Court Theatre. I can remember the Venus Fountain in the centre of the square, which depicts Venus, obviously, but also King Charles II and Nell Gwynn - apparently she had a house nearby.

Now whenever I see a picture of the planet Saturn I'll no doubt be thinking of a creme egg. The power of art.

The characters in No. 5 are reminiscent of those in the Night Watch, so could it be an engraving by Rembrandt?

Rembrandt produced some fine prints but I always think of him as primarily a painter. The artist of no. 5, whilst an accomplished painter, is most famous for his satirical prints and cartoons - a contemporary once refused to pay him for a completed commission by claiming he was "an engraver, and no painter", but was successfully sued for saying it. He also lived almost a century after Rembrandt, albeit that the subject of picture no.5 is from a century before Rembrandt's birth.

So it's a Hanoverian-era engraver depicting a Tudor-era scene. In which case it could be by William Hogarth.

Yup, that's yer man, it's William Hogarths' 1752 engraving of Columbus Breaking the Egg. 

The print - which was quite popular and so a good money-earner for Hogarth - refers to any brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple or easy after the fact. It's the apocryphal story in which it is said that Christopher Columbus - having successfully returned from his first voyage to the New World and being told that finding the new trade route was inevitable and no great accomplishment - then challenged his critics to make an egg stand on its tip. After his challengers give up, Columbus does it himself by tapping the egg on the table to flatten its tip just a little, to demonstrate that, yes it's easy, but only once someone else has showed first how it can be done. The story's premise however predates Columbus by at least a century as it was already "an old tale" when it was recounted in relation to another supposedly impossible feat, when Filippo Brunelleschi completed the dome of Florence cathedral in 1436.

PS :
The motif of Columbus' Egg also features in several memorials to him, such as this one in Seville, Nacimiento de un Hombre Nuevo (Birth of a New Man), by Zurab Tsereteli,



... and this one in Ibiza, Huevo de Colón, by (yet again) Salvador Dalí.

Interesting stuff as ever, MM.
After wading through hundreds of wood/lino cut prints of assorted chickens and eggs I got the ME one. Never heard of him should I have?  My college tutor was much taken by German  Woodcutters and tried all ways up to get me as enthused  but though I can admire  the disciplines needed were not me; one slip of the blade and the design would be ruined and probably anyone standing near too.
Anyway, it seems that for No 3 - one Maurits Cornelius Escher caught your eye (how? I spent ages looking and there were hundred to choose from, MM?) Imagine all that  carving to get a minimal effect; good egg, that man.... yuk - do I mean that? Perhaps not.

Escher's artwork was inspired by mathematics and features such things as impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. The images were very popular when I was at university, particularly amongst maths and science students, and I can recall one serious textbook on materials' science that headed each chapter with one of his drawings to illustrate things like crystallography, phase changes, atomic stacking, lattice imperfections etc. The chicken and egg print is rather untypical of his work (it's a very early piece) and was unknown to me until I started searching. You're probably more familiar with these ones by him:

         

Ah yes - the clever stuff...... love the flying geese and all so very clever. Another which I think really good is No 21 I'll say Picasso because of the fluid lines; his simple (!) linework ability is truly awesome. Who else could deliver it thus? hence my guess. One thing which has been so impressive about this quiz is finding the huge output on many artists. It has been such a pleasure and so sad that only 2 of us have have followed it through so far. It's doubtful that I will track down any more - the blue egg fascinates. That so many artists have been captivated  and explored  the theme has been a revelation. As for egg decoration - stunning - and goose egg carving really enthralling stuff. My thanks, MM.

Although only you and Vizzer have shown much interest, at least so far, I have nevertheless enjoyed myself too, and like you have learned so much. Besides, getting the right answer was ever only a part of the challenge: the ensuing discussions and diversions, at least for me, have been even more interesting. But resolving the remaining pictures might need some help - especially that Dutch market seller as there are so many of those to choose from - although (and I'm repeating this) at least one as yet unrevealed artist has already appeared here as the painter of another eggy work.

No. 21 isn't by Picasso although I certainly see what you mean about it and the fluid linework ...  such as with this simple portrait of his (Picasso's) beloved dachshund, 'Lump':



No.21, is probably classed as a more dada-ist than pure surrealist painting (he says trying desperately to sound as if he knows what he's talking about) as it's by a German artist and a WW1 veteran who, when it was painted, was living a rather bohemian lifestyle in France during that strange inter-war period. He became fascinated by birds and they often crop up in his works.

Meles meles wrote:

(and I'm repeating this) at least one as yet unrevealed artist has already appeared here as the painter of another eggy work.

Does this mean that No. 6 is also by Salvador? It really does look like a Dali.