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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 03:48, 23 August 2015 [1].

The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished

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Nominator(s):  – iridescent 15:08, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a picture of a right foot; The Parthenon magazine was a great admirer of said foot, saying it "seemed to glow with the rich juice of life", but The London Magazine disliked the foot and felt it did not have sufficient heroic character. The foot in question is attached to The Combat, a very large painting of highly questionable taste, which in the mid-19th century was considered by some critics as among of the greatest artworks of all time, but which has gradually faded into obscurity.

The double lead image breaches the MOS, but in this particular case I feel it's appropriate to do so. The Combat has spent the last 150 years marinating in the air of Edinburgh, and hasn't been cleaned; as a consequence, it's acquired a layer of grime. While an article on a painting obviously has to include an image of the painting in question, it's hard in this case to make out what the picture is actually of. Consequently, I've included a black-and-white engraving of the image immediately beneath it, to act as a visual guide to the original; the engraving in question is specifically discussed in the article, so it's not a superfluous illustration. – iridescent 15:08, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support Up to the usual quality, & I agree re the lead image - a very good solution I think. Quibbles: I do think 2nd versions by the artist should be mentioned, and engravings. Here that info is only picked up from the caption "Engraving by G. T. Doo, 1848, based on a reworked version of the painting completed by Etty in 1845". Also, can the grime be referenced? Johnbod (talk) 15:44, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding the grime, not that I can find, which is why I don't specifically mention it, but it's obvious just looking at the state of it. Per my comments below, because it's been to big to move it hasn't been included in any exhibitions so hasn't been written about much in the last century. I can cite for the similar-sized Sirens and Benaiah deteriorating, but I'm reluctant to make explicit inferences as Etty was something of an experimenter with paint mixes so different paintings have degraded as different rates. The information about the second version and the engraving is already there in the body text (in the Legacy section, as the engravings weren't until 20 years after he painted it); I don't personally think it's significant enough to mention in the lead as well but have no objection if you feel that it does. – iridescent 17:21, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, missed the stuff in "Legacy" somehow. I take it the #2 is still in private hands, as far as the sources tell? In a much cleaner condition, I'll bet. Johnbod (talk) 01:33, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Tracked #2 down to the Ringling Museum of all places. I knew that John Ringling was the last collector listed in Farr (1958) as owning it, but assumed it had been sold on after his death. Although their website doesn't appear to list it, I can find a 2006 blog post which mentions seeing it there, so I'm assuming Ringling hung on to it and it entered his museum after his death. (I wouldn't add an image of it unless it comes from an official Ringling source; because the original was in the Royal Scottish Academy, there are a lot of student copies floating about.) – iridescent 16:47, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Great, thanks. Johnbod (talk) 13:38, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Squeamish Ossifrage

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I'm of mixed opinions about the dual-image lead. The argument presented is somewhat persuasive, but it seems equally possible to move the etching to the Composition section to maintain MOS compliance. I would prefer the MOS standard, but I won't consider this an actionable objection.

Johnbod immediately above you wrote WP:VAMOS, so if he doesn't see an issue with the lead images I'm not concerned. – iridescent 17:14, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • When sources have been assigned an ISBN, there's no need to also provide an OCLC number; the goal is to have an identifier, not all identifiers.
  • There's no need, but as I see it there's also no reason not to. My feeling is that including them doesn't distract from anything or take up any significant space, and it means one fewer click per item for anyone who wants to check the sources for themselves. – iridescent 17:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • A quick survey of past FACs reveals little consistency here; reviewers have at various times requested only one identifier (which, admittedly, is my practice) or both identifiers. As the FA criteria do not provide specific guidance, I presume this is safely a matter of editorial discretion. However, consistency of formatting is an FA expectation, so the three Smith sources should have OCLCs included as well, for parity. And, actually, while I'm looking at the Smith sources, the 1996 work needs be re-ordered to come before the 2001 sources. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:52, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Added all three. Resorted the Smith references by date, although I still think alphabetical order makes more sense. – iridescent 17:59, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • ISBNs should be presented as ISBN-13s with correct hyphenization. User this tool to covert.A s
  • Done, although I'm singularly unconvinced a bot wont just come along and convert them back; the pan-WMF ISBN guidance at meta uses unhyphenated ISBNs in all their examples, so that's presumably what the bots will follow. Done and then undone, as the hyphenated ISBNs were generating a mass of error messages. Anyone else, feel free to have a go if you think you can get it to work. Given that the hyphens will be stripped out the moment anyone clicks through to Special:BookSources anyway, I don't see this as a significant issue. – iridescent 17:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Meta page on the topic is an embarrassment, as it doesn't even seem to acknowledge the existence of ISBN-13s to begin with. Fully hyphenated ISBNs, according to the issuing organization, are the "most correct" form. And, in general, they're what's been preferred in my past experience at FAC. As an aside, I've never had a bot mangle them in one of my editorial contributions. As for the error messages... sometimes templates are cranky. I'll go see if I have any better luck fixing this! Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:30, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • And fixed. It looks like you were having some problems with the last (checksum) digit when converting between ISBN-10 and ISBN-13. They should all be squared away now. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:38, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The answer may simply be no, but is there any discussion in reliable sources about the current condition of the work? Discussion of conservation status?
  • Not to the best of my knowledge. It hasn't been written about much in the last 100 years—Etty has long been out of fashion, and The Combat is too big to have been included in any recent exhibitions (and thus to have been discussed in catalogues). The conservation status can safely be assumed to be "left to rot"; in the current climate the Scottish National Gallery is going to have much higher priorities than a painting by an English artist which even if restored would be too big to display. (I suspect that following the second referendum there will be a two-way repatriation of artworks between London and Edinburgh, which will bring the SNG's Etty's into the hands of the Tate who do have the cash to restore them, but that's well into WP:OR territory.) Manchester City Gallery restored the similar-sized The Sirens and Ulysses, but that was a showcase project which took five years and cost a fortune; Sirens is also much more in keeping with current tastes than The Combat. – iridescent 17:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unfortunate, but we're bound by what others provide us. I suspected that was the case, but felt obligated to ask. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:38, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • In general, I have not undertaken a thorough prose review, although I'm dubious about the inclusion of a small quote from The Parthenon review immediately followed by a blockquote that includes the same excerpted passage. One solution might be to cut the blockquote entirely, but I don't think that's the only approach that could be taken here.
  • I'm not convinced; there isn't anything obvious to be cut from the blockquote, and I can't really see any reader being inconvenienced by the repetition of such a short snippet. I'm reluctant to lose that particular quote, as it exemplifies the tone of contemporary reviews. This series all rely heavily on quotations from contemporary reviewers for their "reception" sections, as Etty has received so little critical coverage after his death. – iridescent 17:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let me give this use a little more thought. My concern's as much about due weight as reader inconvenience, but your argument is a cogent one. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:38, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

None of my objections are substantial barriers to meeting the standard. Assuming no substantive prose concerns are raised by those with more time to examine them, I'm happy to conditionally support promotion. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:19, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for being so prompt in looking at this! – iridescent 17:11, 27 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Support Comments from Tim Riley I'll be supporting this excellent article, but a few small points first, if I may:

  • Composition
    • "with regards to history paintings" – is "with regards" rather than the usual "with regard" intentional?
      • Reworded—I think this was my overzealously trying to stop it looking too similar to The Destroying Angel, which makes a very similar point regarding Etty's painting "history paintings" of non-existent events. – iridescent 16:48, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reception
    • Not sure it's necessary, or even advantageous, to quote "which seems actually to glow with the rich juice of life" and immediately quote it again within the blockquote.
      • Per comments above I don't consider it a problem, but as you're the second person to have mentioned it I've removed the first instance. – iridescent 16:48, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Legacy
    • "the most prestigious honour available to an artist" – more prestigious than the Prix de Rome? Or does this just refer to Britain?
      • I had Britain in mind, but would make a case that in this period "most prestigious in England" and "most prestigious in the world" were synonymous. France was reeling from military defeat and economic destruction, Continental Europe hadn't recovered from the Napoleonic Wars, and the US was still a backwater. – iridescent 16:48, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • "The Combat was the first very large work…" – three incidences of "very large" in 28 words.
    • "He produced nine very large paintings in total, although as time went by his canvases came to be increasingly dominated by nude women." – I can't quite get a handle on this: the two halves of the sentence don't seem to belong together. The first deals with the size of his canvasses and the second with his preferred subject, and the "although" suggests that the latter is somehow antithetical to the former.
      • That's a product of my over-familiarity with him, I think. His history paintings were generally pretexts to shoehorn as many nude and scantily-clad figures into a canvas as possible; the nine monumental paintings were atypical of his output, as they were more conventional morality pieces like this one, in which if there was any nudity it was relevant to the composition rather than gratuitous. (In The Combat and Benaiah the male nudity wouldn't have raised an eyebrow given the obvious debt to the Elgin Marbles; in The Sirens and Ulysses both male and female nudity have an explicit purpose as an illustration of temptation; the three Judith pictures were straightforward religious art with no nudity, and the Joan of Arc tryptich showed historical scenes from her life, again without nudity.) – iridescent 16:48, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's all from me. Nothing to cause alarm and despondency, and I look forward to supporting promotion to FA. – Tim riley talk 13:35, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Now very happily supporting. Tim riley talk 17:36, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In One of Etty's major works, it was exhibited at numerous major exhibitions before Etty fell out of fashion in the second half of the 19th century, including the seminal Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. - I'd slot the subordinate clause in the middle to preserve the chronological flow, thus: "One of Etty's major works, it was exhibited at numerous major exhibitions, including the seminal Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, before Etty fell out of fashion in the second half of the 19th century."
Done ‑ iridescent 16:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise looks fine, hence support on comprehensiveness and prose (above point pretty minor...) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:07, 8 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments by Lingzhi
    • "...he is more defiant " ambiguous referent (also in image caption). • Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:01, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • The wording in the source is "[he] thrusts his leg out before his body ... a more forceful gesture than that given to the figure in the completed canvas ... the expression is also more determined than in the full-scale work, where he appears to implore mercy rather than to fight back"; I couldn't think of a more obvious way to summarise that in two words than "more defiant" but if you can, feel free. This preliminary sketch needs to be mentioned, to show (or strongly imply, anyway) that Etty initially intended to show the defeated soldier in a very different pose, but I don't want to go into a great deal of detail on it. ‑ iridescent 16:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • shouldn't the refs be Burnage, Sarah (2011a) Burnage, Sarah (2011b) etc.? ditto for smith. I know the links click thru correctly, but what if someone prints it out?
      • Possibly, but this is how the citation templates output. Per a conversation I had once with you, I have a strong dislike of the way Wikipedia articles have such a proliferation of citation styles, and try not to deviate from the templates without very good reason (if I had my way, "not using standard citation templates without an excellent reason" would be a quickfail criterion). In the case of the Burnage references at least, it doesn't make any particular difference since they're all citations to chapters in the same book. (I don't see it as a particular issue, as long as the internal links work; the likelihood of someone trying to track down the original source via a printout of a Wikipedia article, without web access, is fairly minimal. Besides, any hypothetical reader doing more research on Etty is inevitably going to come across the books in question anyway. ‑ iridescent 16:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • re "In 1845, Etty took a smaller 89 by 118 cm (35 by 46 in) version of The Combat, which had been painted by an unknown Edinburgh artist.".. This sentence seems odd. Should it be a compound sentence (comma, subord conj) with the sentence after it?
      • This reads oddly, because it's describing an odd situation; feel free to have a shot at rewording it if you think you can make it clearer. Basically, Etty was asked to provide a smaller version for Doo to work from to make his engraving. Rather than paint a copy himself, he just bought a copy in Edinburgh (The Combat was at the time hanging in the Royal Scottish Academy so there were a lot of student copies being made of it in Scotland), and retouched it until he was satisfied; he then gave this to Doo to work from. ‑ iridescent 16:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I poked around for an hour or so in online sources, trying to find any gaps in the coverage. Turned up nothing, of course, but I did my due diligence. I am satisfied this fulfills all criteria for FA. • Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:58, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator note: Lingzhi, would you say you conducted a full source review (for formatting and reliability)? I think this is about ready, but we need a source review. --Laser brain (talk) 01:10, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Revisiting the "2011a" point mentioned above: Iridescent seems to suggest that the template won't permit display and linking to "2011a" and "2011b" formatting. I just tried it, however, and it works fine (see my final test edit). As I mentioned, I would prefer to see that formatting. However, I recall that years ago I complained about FACs using extremely non-standard formatting, but consensus then was "if it's consistent, then it's permissible." If we still go by consistent == acceptable, then YES, I have conducted a full source review, and all is OK. • Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:50, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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