h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't know much about art, but I went to an exhibition years ago that had this huge painting of a raven and a dove, carrying an olive branch in its mouth, flying over a tumultous sea - its a famous picture by someone painting between rembrandt and renoir (well that was the name of the exhibition it was in) and its been bugging me for YEARS who painted it and what its called. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated - its like one of those song lyrics you can't remember the rest of the song for. oh dear, coherency rate low today. sorry about that.

The subject will have been to do with Noah's Ark and the Flood.

As I remember it, the Raven was sent out first and flew about a bit and came home when its wings got tired.

It was sent out again a bit later and didn't come back - presumably having found somewhere to do Raven type tings.

Later a Dove was sent out (probably a homing pidgeon??) which returned with a sprig of new, green leaves in its beak to show that the world was coming back to life after a nasty catastrophe.

The whole thing is an allegory to remind you that God is always watching and although nasty people get up to evil things, they will not get away with their behaviour for ever (or even for long). 'Cos eventually God gets fed up and sorts them out!

Sorry I cannot help with the artist.

A-ha. I'm fairly sure it's "The Assuaging of the Waters" by John Martin. He was a Victorian painter who specialised in enormous depictions of Biblical scenes, often involving mass destruction, screaming sinners and general burnin'. Top stuff. This one is quite sedate, by his own high standards.

Anyway, there's a picture of it here:-
http://www.yale.edu/ycba/exhibit/past/exhpast.htm#John Martin
so see if it's the one you're thinking of...

Yay!! Thank you so much, both of you - that is exactly the painting - now i can sleep at night x2

I remember this one from a fine arts field trip to Auckland. Discussion of the work centred not on the use of light and shade, but of certain opiates...

I once had an oil painting by numbers kit. I painted a dog.

Did the dog have a number on it?

There were several numbers. Each number represented a colour. It was quite a good system and the picture was ok.

Strangely I painted a cow at the weekend. No numbers, but it did have 'X's and 'O's all over.