Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Pyotr Bagration

Pyotr Bagration

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 10 Jan 2014 at 04:30:54 (UTC)

Reason: A great quality painting of a very significant Russian-Georgian general from the Google Art Project
Articles in which this image appears: Pyotr Bagration
FP category for this image: Wikipedia:Featured pictures/People/Military
Creator: George Dawe

Support as nominator --Երևանցի ^talk 04:30, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The colour looks a bit wacky IMO, although the file description says it's "a faithful photographic reproduction". Has anyone seen the original? nagualdesign (talk) 04:40, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it does look a little saturated, but I think the Google Art Project scans the original. Please see here.--Երևանցի ^talk 04:45, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd already looked there to see if it was a scan or a photo, but found nothing definitive. The small specular reflections around the centre of the image (his collar) and nowhere else might suggest that it was a flash photograph. Also, Google 'scan' books by carefully photographing them. It's a good image (ie, dataset), but I don't have much faith in the saturation level or white balance, personally. Just a hunch. nagualdesign (talk) 05:41, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've come across two different scans of the same painting that look nothing alike. For instance, the Google scan of The Ninth Wave that was promoted a few weeks ago looks very different from all the versions on the internet. This version, which is an FP in Russian Wiki, look highly saturated to me, but it seems to be the most common version of the painting on the internet. [1] But since the internet is not something to rely on, I tend to believe that the Google version is closer to the actual painting. For comparison, RIA Novosti (Russia's state news agency) has this painting on their website [2]. --Երևանցի ^talk 08:47, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment One of the most interesting facts about this portrait is that the artist George Dawe painted more than 300 portraits of Russian military men.

As usual, if you are intending to use an artwork on the front page, then I urge you to include the relevant encyclopedic information about the artist, as well as the subject.

In accordance with this, please rename this "Portrait of Pyotr Bagration", since it is the man himself, or even a photograph. Amandajm (talk) 05:28, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unless the painting is itself notable, this is more interesting, for our purposes, as an image of the subject rather than as a piece of work in its own right. Similarly, we don't generally list lots of details about a photographic portrait unless the photograph or photographer is notable. J Milburn (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This guy was (and still is) quite famous in Russia and Georgia and is the man responsible for stopping Napoleon's advance into Russia in a famous battle at the outskirts of Moscow. According to his article, Napoleon said that "Russia has no good generals. The only exception is Bagration". So he was a major figure. The painter seems to be an average 19th century English painter. At least, he has an article. --Երևանցի ^talk 00:39, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Response to J Milburn. If the painting was a little newer, it would be in copyright, and subject to the artist's permission. Copyrights protect artists, whether they are considered great or not. Vincent van Gogh never sold a painting, and therefore was not considered at all significant. Caravaggio was unknown until the present century. It is not for the assessors of Featured Picture candidates to judge the relative importance of the artist. The artist's ownership of the creativity needs acknowledgement. In this case, the artist is of interest in himself, whether his work is great or not. The only artists who do not require a sentence in the caption are those who are so great that their names are household words. You don't need to tell your reader who Leonardo da Vinci was.

The point that I am making here is that Front Page assessors need to improve the manner in which artists are dealt with, in general. That may mean a better acknowledgement of photographers and printers as well. Amandajm (talk) 05:39, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The pictures for the Main Page's Picture of the day paned are selected by @Crisco 1492:. You should bring that up with him. AFAIK captions on individual nominations are not used for the POTD's captions. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 05:46, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely. Discussions related to the main page are not supposed to be at individual candidacies. If you feel that the current crediting format is inadequate, open a discussion at WT:POTD. I believe I've pointed this out before. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:00, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And no, captions used here are not used on the main page (usually, unless it's a very technical topic that I have trouble describing in my own words). The captions here are for reviewers of the image and thus just have to provide adequate context for understanding the image. Captions on the main page are for general readers and should thus convey the essence of the topic shown by the featured image (and maybe a bit about the image itself). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:02, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Amandajm, no one is saying we should hide who created the painting, it's just that you seem to want the TFP blurb to be about the painting, rather than the subject. You say that it "is not for the assessors of Featured Picture candidates to judge the relative importance of the artist", but it certainly is the job of assessors here to judge the relative value of the painting for our purposes; judging, for instance, whether this painting is valuable to illustrate a particular painting (it isn't, as we have no article on the painting), the style of an artist or school (it could be, but isn't, as it isn't used in any articles like that) or the subject of the painting. Again, if TFP is a photo of a bird, we make the blurb about the bird, not about the photo. So it will sometimes be with paintings. J Milburn (talk) 12:31, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And the fact that this image is one of a commissioned series of 300 by the same artist would not be interesting to the general public? Amandajm (talk) 14:26, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say anything about what will be interesting to the general public. We're not here to write a general interest magazine. We've got to ask how and to what extent this image contributes to the encyclopedia- that's the primary criterion for becoming a FP. Is it more valuable as a representative of a set of 300 paintings? Or is it more valuable as the sole image we use of a famous general? I think the latter. As far as I can tell, you don't recognise this as a painting of someone, and only as a painting. J Milburn (talk) 16:11, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think she's addressing me. Note that I said "topic shown by the featured image", or (in other words) "subject of the featured image". Not the image itself, except where it is notable on its own. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:57, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 08:56, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]