Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 51.12cm x 66.52cm
Producer: Big Ben, MB Puzzles
Notes: This is a very beautiful park above Aspen. The bell shaped mountains in the background glow a reddish colour in the sunlight & they are reflected on the lake, hence the mountains called Maroon Bells and the lake Maroon Lake. [TravelPod site]
Maroon is a dark red color. Maroon is derived from French marron (“chestnut”). The first recorded use of Maroon as a color name in English was in 1789. [Wiki]
Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 51.12cm x 66.52cm
Producer: Big Ben, MB Puzzles
Notes: Alabama Hills are a “range of hills” and rock formations near the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the Owens Valley, west of Lone Pine in Inyo County, California.
Though geographically considered a range of hills, geologically they are a part of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
The Alabama Hills were named for CSS Alabama. When news of the Confederate warship’s exploits reached prospectors in California sympathetic to the American Civil War Confederates, they named many mining claims after the ship, and then the name came to be applied to the entire range. [Wiki]
Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.5cm
Producer: Sure-Lox
Notes: The royal Château de Chambord at Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, France is one of the most recognizable châteaux in the world because of its very distinct French Renaissance architecture that blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Italian structures.
The building, which was never completed, was constructed by King François I in part to be near to his mistress the Comtesse de Thoury, Claude Rohan, wife of Julien de Clermont, a member of a very important family of France, whose domaine, the château de Muides, was adjacent. Her arms figure in the carved decor of the château. [Wiki]
Size: 750 pieces
Dimensions: 86.36 cm x 30.48 cm
Producer: Panorific, Sure-Lox
Box: photo
Notes: Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian 15th-century Inca site located 2,430 metres above sea level. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, which is 80 kilometres northwest of Cusco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often referred to as “The Lost City of the Incas”, it is perhaps the most familiar icon of the Inca World.
The Incas started building the “estate” around AD 1400 but abandoned it as an official site for the Inca rulers a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham. [Wiki]
Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 51.12cm x 66.52cm
Producer: MB Puzzles, Big Ben
Box: photo
Notes: A tropical garden features tropical plants and requires good rainfall or a decent irrigation or sprinkler system for watering. These gardens typically need fertilizer and heavy mulching.
Tropical gardens are no longer exclusive to tropical areas. Many gardeners in colder climates are adopting the tropical garden design, which is possible through careful choice of plants and flowers. Main features include plants with very large leaves, vegetation that builds in height towards the back of the garden, creating a dense garden. Large plants and small trees hang over the garden, leaving sunlight to hit the ground directly. [Wiki]
Size: 300 pieces
Dimensions: 46cm x 36cm
Producer: Ceaco
Artist: Thomas Kinkade (born January 19, 1958 in Sacramento, California) is an American painter of realistic, bucolic, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products via The Thomas Kinkade Company. He characterizes himself as “Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light” (a trademarked phrase), and as “America’s most-collected living artist”. Media Arts, the publicly-traded company that licenses and sells Kinkade’s products, claims that 1 in 20 homes in the U.S. feature some form of Thomas Kinkade’s art.
Kinkade has received criticism for the extent to which he has commercialized his art—for example, selling his prints on the QVC home shopping network. Others have written that his paintings are merely kitsch, without substance, and have described them as chocolate box art. [Wiki]
Painting: “I take a great deal of pleasure in finding out-of-the-way places, small wonders that sometimes seem to go unnoticed like the cottage behind the gate in Hidden Cottage II.” [Thomas Kinkade site]
Size: 300 pieces (oversized)
Dimensions: 46cm x 61cm
Producer: Ceaco
Artist: Thomas Kinkade
Painting: “The Hour of Prayer anticipates the dawning of a Peaceful Kingdom when time will be no more and prayer will be a direct communion with the divine. Until then, we must content ourselves with such glimpses of immortality as can be found in the Garden of Prayer, which exists in the hearts of the faithful.” [Thomas Kinkade site]
Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 48.26cm x 35.56cm
Producer: The Canadian Group, Sure-Lox
Artist: Rod Chase, Photorealist
Painting: Twilight in Central Park
Notes: Rod Chase is known to his collectors for producing photo-realism at its finest. The talented artist says, “Being a photorealist, I am dependent on finding accurate reference material for each painting.” Chase works with acrylics on canvas, spending hundreds of hours on each painting with the ultimate goal of presenting a fresh, unique, and elegant approach to familiar subjects. The detail in each painting is remarkable, but the mood each is equally impressive. [Rod Chase site]
Size: 500 pieces
Producer: Parlor Puzzles, Soft-touch velvet backing
Artist: John O’Brien – John’s artwork conveys a series of mystery and romance seldom found in contemporary art. With exquisite craftsmanship, poetic ideals, and a modern awareness, he created a unique style, which has come to be known as “contemporary romantic realism”. His passion for France, Italy and Ireland can be seen in the romantic settings of elegant interiors, European street scenes, and neighborhood cafes and pubs. [John O’Brien site]
Size: 500 pieces
Dimensions: 33.02cm x 48.26cm
Producer: Rose Art, Jewel Scapes series
Artist: Josephine Wall is an English born artist who currently resides in the seaside community of Dorset, England. She specializes in mystical, surreal-like, fantasy paintings. [Bio on Josephine Wall site]
Notes: Mortals hold seashells to their ears to hear the sounds of the seas and imagine life in the deep waters below. Perhaps a mermaid would look into a seashell to see and hear the sights and sounds of the earth above. All of us can embark on a magical voyage through the universe using our imaginations to carry us along. [Josephine Wall UK site]
Size: 500 pieces
Notes: Aristides (530 BC – 468 BC) was an Athenian statesman, nicknamed “the Just”. Herodotus is practically our only trustworthy authority. Aristides is praised by Socrates, in Plato’s dialogue Gorgias 526a-b, as an exceptional instance of good leadership. [Wiki]
It is unknown to which gardens this puzzle is referring. A search reveals Aristide/Aristides/Aristidis gardens present in Greece, the States, and the United Kingdom. I also do not have a record of the artist who created the picture. A clarification is welcome – if you have any clue as to the location of these gardens and the author of the picture, I would much appreciate that information.
Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.5cm
Producer: Impressions, Sure-Lox
Notes: Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of 412 ha of public grounds. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape but 20% larger than Central Park in New York, to which it is often compared. It is over 5 km long east to west, and about half a mile north to south. With 13 million visitors annually, Golden Gate is the third most visited city park in the United States after Central Park in New York City and Lincoln Park in Chicago.
The 2 ha Japanese Tea Garden is the oldest public Japanese garden in the United States. The garden was designed by Makoto Hagiwara for the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, including still-standing features such as the Drum Bridge and the tea house. Subsequent additions included a pagoda and Zen garden. It is the site of the introduction of the fortune cookie to America. [Wiki]
Size: 1000 pieces
Producer: Warren, RoseArt, Prestige Puzzle series
Notes: A still life (plural still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on). With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Greek/Roman art, still life paintings give the artist more leeway in the arrangement of design elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of subjects such as landscape or portraiture. Still life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted. [Wiki]
Size: 1000 pieces, 1 missing
Dimensions: 68cm x 48.1cm
Producer: Mega Brands, Click series
Notes: Tranquility is the quality or state of being tranquil; calmness; serenity. The word tranquility appears in numerous texts ranging from the religious writings of Buddhism, where the term passaddhi refers to tranquillity of the body, thoughts and consciousness on the path to enlightenment, to an assortment of policy and planning guidance documents, where interpretation of the word is typically linked to engagement with the natural environment.
Being in a tranquil or “restorative” environment allows individuals to take respite from the periods of sustained “directed attention” that characterise modern living. In developing their Attention Restoration Theory (ART), Kaplan and Kaplan proposed that recovery from cognitive overload could most effectively be achieved by engaging with natural restorative environments, that are away from daily distractions and have the extent and mystery that allows the imagination to wander, thereby enabling individuals to engage effortlessly with their surroundings.[Wiki]
Size: 1000 pieces
Producer: Buffalo Games, Robert Silvers
Artist: Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853 – 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. [Wiki]
Painting: photo. “The Starry Night” depicts the view outside his sanatorium room window at night, although it was painted from memory during the day. The center part shows the village of Saint-Rémy under a swirling sky, in a view from the asylum towards north. The Alpilles far to the right fit to this view, but there is little rapport of the actual scene with the intermediary hills which seem to be derived from a different part of the surroundings, south of the asylum. The cypress tree to the left was added into the composition. [Wiki]
Notes: Mosaics, one of the oldest forms of surface decoration, date back to the 4th-3rd millennium BC. Mosaics take on a painted effect by forming pictures or patterns from compositions of small pieces of various colored materials (glass, stone, ceramics, metals, etc.). The most well known mosaics were produced during the Byzantine Empire (4th to6th century) in Ravenna, Italy. Today, in the age of computers, mosaics have taken on a new form. In 1995 Rob Silvers utilized computers to combine thousands of photographs to make digital mosaics. [Buffalo Games site]
Size: 1000 pieces
Dimensions: 73cm x 48.5cm
Producer: Sure-Lox, Impressions series
Location: site
Notes: Notre-Dame Basilica (French: Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal) is a basilica in the historic district of Old Montreal, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The church is located at 110 Notre-Dame Street West, at the corner of Saint Sulpice Street. It is located next to the Saint-Sulpice Seminary and faces the Place d’Armes square.
The church’s Gothic Revival architecture is among the most dramatic in the world; its interior is grand and colourful, its ceiling is coloured deep blue and decorated with golden stars, and the rest of the sanctuary is a polychrome of blues, azures, reds, purples, silver, and gold. It is filled with hundreds of intricate wooden carvings and several religious statues. Unusual for a church, the stained glass windows along the walls of the sanctuary do not depict biblical scenes, but rather scenes from the religious history of Montreal. It also has a Casavant Frères pipe organ, which comprises four keyboards, 97 stops, over 9000 individual pipes and a pedal board. [Wiki]
Size: 1000 pieces
Notes: Kraków Old Town is the historic central district of Kraków, Poland. It is one of the most famous old districts in Poland today and was the center of Poland’s political life until King Sigismund III Vasa relocated his court to Warsaw in 1596. Medieval Kraków was surrounded by a 3 km defensive wall complete with 46 towers and seven main entrances leading through them. The fortifications around the Old Town were erected over the course of two centuries. In the 19th century most of the Old Town fortifications were demolished. The moat encircling the walls was filled in and turned into a green belt known as Planty Park. [Wiki]
Size: 750 pieces
Dimensions: 59.37cm x 39.4cm
Producer: Sure-Lox, Impressions series
Location: site
Notes: The Museum of Arts and Traditions of Sevilla is a museum in Seville, Andalusia, Spain, located in the María Luisa Park, across the Plaza de América from the Provincial Archeological Museum. The museum occupies the Mudéjar Pavilion (Pabellón Mudéjar) designed by Aníbal González and built in 1914. The exterior is ceramic over brick, and has three doors with archivolts adorned with glazed tiles (azulejos). [Wiki]
Size: 500+ pieces
Producer: New Fangled Angles series
Artist: Myles Pinkney is an outstanding fantasy artist. Magic flows through each one if his illustrations, bringing to life a fantasy realm outside that of the architecture of traditional mythology. He also deals with Arthurian legend and religious subject-matter. Works such as “Christmas Presence” and “Merlin’s Oak” demonstrate Pinkney’s ability to articulate his artistic vision in the painstaking detail of his painting. [Gallery of Wizardry site]
Painting: photo
Notes: Merlin’s Oak is a famous oak tree that once stood on the corner of Oak Lane and Priory Street in Carmarthen, South Wales. In local tradition, Carmarthen is said to be the birth place of the mythical magician Merlin, claiming that the origin of the name Carmarthen, or Caerfyrddin comes from Myrddin, the Welsh name for Merlin. Merlin is said to have made a prophecy regarding the old oak tree:
When Merlin’s Oak shall tumble down,
Then shall fall Carmarthen Town.
Other versions of the prophecy state that when the tree falls, the town will drown or flood. [Wiki]
Size: 750 pieces
Dimensions: 68.58cm x 48.26cm
Producer: Crystals and Candlelight series
Artist: Josephine Wall
Painting: photo
Box: photo
Notes: Camelot is the most famous castle and court associated with the legendary King Arthur. Absent in the early Arthurian material, Camelot first appeared in 12th-century French romances and eventually came to be described as the fantastic capital of Arthur’s realm and a symbol of the Arthurian world. The stories locate it somewhere in Britain and sometimes associate it with real cities, though more usually its precise location is not revealed. Most scholars regard it as being entirely fictional, its geography being perfect for romance writers; Arthurian scholar Norris J. Lacy commented that “Camelot, located no where in particular, can be anywhere”. [Wiki]
