Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Moses (painting)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Merge to Robert B. Sherman. Cbrown1023 22:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moses (painting)

Moses (painting) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Group Nomination for deletion I am also including the following paintings by the same painter with this nomination:

• Sacrifice (painting) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
• Self Portrait (painting) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

The person who painted these pictures, Robert B. Sherman, is clearly encyclopedically notable as an important songwriter. However, painting appears to be a avocation or hobby of his and these paintings do not appear to be sufficiently notable to warrant articles for themselves - or I would argue, even anything beyond very brief mentions in his main article. It is worth noting that a famous songwriter paints as well, but if he is not a particularly reputable painter beyond the association with his songwriting celebrity, I don't think individual paintings deserve their own articles - if they have not received attention from art critics and the images are also not in mass production and there is not other outstanding circumstance related to the painting itself. Furthermore, I am concerned that the articles seem to come across as essentially advertisements for buying the limited edition prints from a website ( and the "symbolism" sections - what there is of them - appear to be OR).

Please note: this group afd nomination has the blessing of the other editor, User:Robertissimo who recently tagged two of the articles with merge recommendations[1].

oops - one of the articles was tagged as merge by another editor. I'm informing that editor too. Bwithh 23:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Bwithh 23:18, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete all, possibly augment existing mention of interest in painting into main Robert B. Sherman article. Numerous figures, past and present, famous for other pursuits also paint. Noel Coward, Elke Sommer, Tony Bennett, Queen Victoria (and her multiple-great-grandson, Prince Charles), and Frank Sinatra spring immediately to mind; none seem to have separate articles on individual works. A painting by Winston Churchill recently made headlines when it sold for £612,800. It doesn't have an article. These articles demonstrate that the paintings are part of the avocational oeuvre of a notable songwriter, but, per nom, they don't include multiple sources discussing the individual works and they do include a possibly commercial aspect. (NB: I ran across a rather good 1990 article from the LATimes on celebrity painters that discusses the business of selling their art). Robertissimo 04:27, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete all as vanispamcruftisement. They lack only the "buy now" button. Very lame. --Dhartung | Talk 04:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
• Merge all three into the main article (with deletion of the commercial aspects). He's in my eyes a gifted artist and deserves to have his paintings discussed in Wikipedia. While alive, Churchill was considered a Sunday painter, but now his paintings fetch high prices. The same for Herman Brood, a Dutch singer who committed suicide in 2001. Even if I don't appreciate Brood's paintings, they also fetch high prices now. This two examples to stress the point that a person may have great fame in his / her principal occupation, but behind that person may lurk another artist who deserves equal attention. Whatever the outcome of this vote, the images should be kept in Wikipedia JoJan 06:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
  • may lurk another artist who deserves equal attention - but we need reliable sources showing a reputation now, not a possible one in the future Bwithh 06:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
    • I proposed to merge the content of these three articles into the main article of Robert Sherman. As to his reputation : Imdb states : "The London Exhibition was widely covered by TV, radio and printed press. Robert subsequently enjoyed a succession of successful art exhibitions in the United States" ([2]). Another appraisal can be found here : [3]. In other words, his work as a painter is at least NOTABLE today. If I were to follow your reasoning about future reputation, then Vincent Van Gogh, who sold only one painting in his whole life (to the Belgian painter Anna Boch), would never have been mentioned in Wikipedia if he were alive today. JoJan 13:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. While useful for its listings, the IMDb is not really a reliable source for biographical material. The text cited above is an unreferenced, user-submitted "minibiography" and includes a great deal of hyperbole and at least one glaring inaccuracy (I would hate to see it be used as a source indicating that "Her Royal Highness" is an appropriate appellation for the late Queen Mother). And you're quite right; in his lifetime, the estimable van Gogh was probably not, in WP terms, a notable painter. Robertissimo 14:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment As Robertissimo states, IMDB is not a reliable resource and is not one which is typically used to assess paintings anyway. Absolutely if Van Gogh were alive today, he would not be encyclopedically notable for Wikipedia if he had no reputation. Wikipedia is not a crystalball and adding articles based on our own personal ideas about what unknown art should be appreciated is original research Bwithh 16:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete all per Robertissimo and Bwithh. I oppose a full merge as this would create too much focus on the painting in the Robert Sherman article. --Kubigula (talk) 05:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

• Do not delete per JoJan: Although this artist is not as notable for his paintings as Van Gogh has become postumously, few artists are. Robert Sherman has had showings in London, England; Vevey, Switzerland; Los Angeles and Orlando, Florida. The fact that he is, on the other hand, a world class songwriter should; therefore not detract from his painting career. His work in both fields has received notariety. His painting is clearly more than a hobby, in as much as he sells prints of his work. That said, the article, for mentioning this fact, is not an advertisement, but a statement of fact which proves it is of a professional nature. There is no "click to buy" button on the article nor is this anymore an advertisement of the artist's work than is any article about a piece of intellectual property. One could use this arguement that an image of Paris, France is really just a shameless bid for tourist dollars, when such is not the case. More importantly and to the point, after studying the Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, there seems to be no valid reason for deleting this page. It should not be up to the editors whether or not a published and publicly displayed piece of art is "important" enough for inclusion on Wikipedia. For this reason alone, the article should not be deleted nor should the artist's other work, Sacrifice (painting). I have not endorsed "Merging" of this page with the artist's main page, because it would prove confusing and disturb the flow of the main article, whereas all out "deletion" would be inappropriate for the reasons I've cited above.Howard352 16:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. The issue at hand is whether the works in question are notable, and nothing in the articles makes a solid case that they are. If they have been discussed in multiple independent reliable sources, that's not apparent from the existing articles. You might - and I emphasize might - be able to make a case for a sub-article along the lines of Painting Career of Robert B. Sherman or similar, but I know of no other celebrity artist (see brief list above) with same. Note, too, that the articles in question are not being considered for deletion under the criteria for speedy deletion; if they could have been speedied, I believe they would have been. Different standards apply for deletion through AfD. Robertissimo 17:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Comment : Wikipedia:Notability states literally : Notable means "worthy of being noted" or "attracting notice", not "important" or "famous". It is not synonymous with fame or importance. It is not measured by Wikipedia editors' own subjective judgements. It is not "newsworthiness". -

The question is thus : "Are these works worthy of being noted" ? If there haven been major exhibitions of his work and if these exhibitions have been covered widely by the media (answering the question : "Are they attracting notice ?") then the paintings of Robert B. Sherman can be considered notable. I don't consider this a subjective judgment from my part as his paintings have been discussed in the media (= independent, non-trival source). Furthermore, his works have been judged worthy of several expositions in the UK, US and Switzerland. In my view these works have thus been judged "worthy of being noted" and have been "attracting notice", thus satisfying the guidelines of WP:NN. JoJan 19:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Response to Robertissimo (above)' The fact remains that this is a published and publicly seen work. The fact that Wikipedia does not yet have a wide library of visual artist's works should not be an argument for deletion of this artist's work, rather it should encourage the creation of a few pages of (for example) Tony Bennett's better known pieces, if in fact there are any pieces which have been seen by large numbers of people, (as Robert Sherman's work has and is). Please also see the following page: Talk:Moses (painting) for further arguments made regarding this article. I have laid out why this "work in question" is notable.Howard352 19:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Merge all to Robert B. Sherman. Not notable enough for its own article, but we can salvage a couple sentences from each and put it in the main article. --Wizardman 18:37, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I agree with the sentiment, but it seems to me that the Robert Sherman article has just about the right amount of content regarding his painting. You could expand it a bit, but I'm concerned that too much about the paintings would overemphasize their importance in his career.--Kubigula (talk) 19:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.