A fact from In the Ploughed Field: Spring appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 June 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that the character of the mother in the painting In the Ploughed Field: Spring is believed to personify Spring?
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Latest comment: 2 years ago22 comments5 people in discussion
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
... that history of the painting In the Ploughed Field. Spring, starting from the 1840s, is unknown? Source: Брук, Яков Владимирович; Иовлева, Лидия Ивановна (2005). Государственная Третьяковская галерея — каталог собрания (in Russian). Vol. 3. ISBN 5-93221-081-8. p.73
Overall: I assume good faith on the references. I think that the image could be used though. I also think that the hook should say "the history". SL93 (talk) 15:50, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
I was going to update the original hook to add "the" as SL93 suggested, but ended up striking the hook, as it is not adequately supported by the article. It looks like there's a 50 year gap in its history between the 1840s and 1893, when the painting was bought by the gallery where I believe it still resides (if I've read the article correctly), so the most recent 129 years are known. Actually, for a GA, the information is somewhat confusing. The painting's name seems to have changed a number of times during the 1830s through around 1840, a period oddly described as in "the first few decades after its completion", so it had to have been known initially, if forgotten for much of the rest of the 19th century. I think a new hook is needed. There are also statements in the article that don't add up: "he lived in Tronikha from 1819 to 1832" and in the next sentence, "spent half of his life in Tronikha"; as he died at age 66, this latter can't be true. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:50, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
I will try to fill in that information to make up for not connecting those dots if the nominator has trouble, but I'm not sure what I can do with English sources. SL93 (talk) 18:03, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
It appears that I made a mistake in the hook. The history of painting from 1840s to 1893 is unknown. The linked source supports this. However, I forgot to include this sentence outside of the lead. It's now fixed. Perhaps the hook could be changed to something along the lines of: "... that the history of the painting In the Ploughed Field. Spring, from 1840s to 1893 is unknown?" — Goldencall me maybe?19:35, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
I don't see a painting's whereabouts being unknown for 50 years as an interesting subject for a hook. Something else entirely would probably be better. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:26, 29 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
Golden, I was able to check the Figes source but not the other two that support "personifying Spring", and it didn't mention "Spring" at all; indeed, Figes calls her a "peasant goddess" and "mother of the Russian land", both a far cry from the ancient goddess Flora. I'm leery of hooks that favor one theory over another, and if the article is going to mention the one goddess, it should probably mention the other. (The "is believed" phrasing can also be a problem, because it's vague: is it art historians, art critics, and where does the belief come from?) I like the article, but it doesn't seem to have an obvious hook to it. Maybe that the mother character has been likened to those two goddesses? SL93, any thoughts? BlueMoonset (talk) 04:31, 4 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Spring is mentioned in both of the sources you did not check. There is no other goddess that the mother figure has been compared to—Flora is the personification of spring. So there's no favouring one theory over the other. But I'm open to any other ideas you have for the hook. — Goldencall me maybe?07:53, 4 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
I can't reconcile the Figes source with the other theories, particularly that while Golden says there is no other goddess that the mother figure has been compared to, Figes does, as I noted, call her a "peasant goddess", which is not the goddess of spring. (Flora is indeed a goddess of spring, so I have no objection to the personification part.) So citing Figes in the article for the "personifying Spring" phrase is, I believe, problematic. SL93, if you have read the Figes yourself and you're not concerned about this goddess difference and are willing to give the ALT1 hook (restated below) an AGF tick, that should finish things. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:03, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
@BlueMoonset: The term "peasant goddess" here does not refer to her being a goddess of peasants, but rather to her being a goddess in a human peasant's form. The mother is still only compared to a single goddess, Flora. Regardless, I have no objections to the alternate hook. — Goldencall me maybe?06:08, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Also, I don't believe it is just "believed" anyway. I also don't see how "peasant goddess" refers to a goddess of peasants. There are two other references used and not just the Figes source anyway. SL93 (talk) 17:38, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
I have removed the Figes citation directly after "personifying Spring" since there's nothing in Figes that draws this comparison even remotely—he's heading in a different direction entirely. Since I gather that the two sources I can't see do make the comparison, what remains is fine. SL93, since no one knows Venetsianov's actual intentions when painting it, I'm also fine with "believed", since these are art historians and/or critics rendering their own judgments well over a century after the painting was created. To make a blank statement in Wikipedia's voice without the "believed" would be problematic, so perhaps there needs to be some wordsmithing in the paragraph. (The article does have "as if she", which may be sufficient, though I believe there is a word missing after "she".) BlueMoonset (talk) 19:24, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Yep, there was a missing word; Fixed now. I think the "as if" should be sufficient enough to indicate that this is not the painter's own interpretation. Let me know if there needs to be any other change. — Goldencall me maybe?19:28, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Just to say the form of the title, with the full stop/period, is really unusual in English. Do any sources by mother tongue Anglophones (like Figes) use it? I would expect a colon or dash. It's also not grammatical. Once you start using full stops, you need one at the end too. Johnbod (talk) 19:58, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
Golden, should the article title be in title case, In the Ploughed Field. Spring? The first page of a Google books search suggests that is more common than In the ploughed field. Spring. The Wikipedia policy is at MOS:TITLE. TSventon (talk) 09:49, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Golden:, I saw at least four English language book sources via Google books, I don't know how useful they are, hopefully at least one will be of some use. TSventon (talk) 13:26, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
Link Pavel Tretyakov and Tretyakov Gallery at first mention in the body.
Earwig shows no copyvio.
The references are all reliable and the Russian language ones are used in the Russian article (a GA). Spot-checks on a few I could access found them supporting the claims made. AryKun (talk) 10:48, 14 May 2022 (UTC)Reply
Just to say the form of the title, with the full stop/period, is really unusual in English. Do any sources by mother tongue Anglophones (like Figes) use it? I would expect a colon or dash. It's also not grammatical. Once you start using full stops, you need one at the end too. Johnbod (talk) 19:58, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Johnbod: I've moved the comment from the DYK review page as it doesn't relate to the review. To answer your question, it appears that Figes and Sarabyanov both use a colon instead of a period, whereas Gray and Stites use slightly different names: "Ploughing, Spring" and "In the Field: Spring", respectively. Moving the article to "In the Ploughed Field: Spring" seems like the best option here, as this is also the result we get from translating the Russian name. — Goldencall me maybe?20:34, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
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I assume good faith on the references. I think that the image could be used though. I also think that the hook should say "the history". SL93 (talk) 15:50, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
I was going to update the original hook to add "the" as SL93 suggested, but ended up striking the hook, as it is not adequately supported by the article. It looks like there's a 50 year gap in its history between the 1840s and 1893, when the painting was bought by the gallery where I believe it still resides (if I've read the article correctly), so the most recent 129 years are known. Actually, for a GA, the information is somewhat confusing. The painting's name seems to have changed a number of times during the 1830s through around 1840, a period oddly described as in "the first few decades after its completion", so it had to have been known initially, if forgotten for much of the rest of the 19th century. I think a new hook is needed. There are also statements in the article that don't add up: "he lived in Tronikha from 1819 to 1832" and in the next sentence, "spent half of his life in Tronikha"; as he died at age 66, this latter can't be true. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:50, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
Approving alt1. SL93 (talk) 19:33, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
