Previously I’ve mentioned including the artist’s name when posting artwork but today, instead of fiddling with Wikipedia, I thought I’d go the extra pedantic mile here and write about artwork citation.

The MLA and Chicago Manual of Style give the basic format for artwork citation as:

• Artist name
• Title of the work in italics (or underlined, but not in quotes)
• Date it was created (or n.d. if date is not available)
• Repository, museum, or owner followed by the location of the institution

Example note citation:

Mark Rothko, Number 22, 1969, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Bibliography entries are the same except the artist’s last name is given first.  [src]

And if you want to go the extra mile you can add:

• Material or medium such as oil on canvas, marble etc. 
• Dimensions of the work

A complete citation also includes the source of the image used. If found online the web site address (URL) and access date are given. If from a book the author, title, publisher information, date, and page number of the reproduction are given.

In addition, if the photographer of the artwork is known they should also be listed.

That covers citations in publications but what of museum or gallery citations or wall labels. Museum labels seem to vary quite a bit. Some examples:

From the Smithsonian:

Ross Dickinson, Valley Farms, 1934, oil on canvas, 39 7/8 x 50 1/8 in. (101.4 x 127.3 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum

From the De Young Museum in San Francisco:

Rachael Neubauer (b. 1968)
Jowls, 1999
Polystyrene foam, urethane, laquer
Museum purchase, WAGF Grant

Getty Center:

Portrait of James Christie
1778
Thomas Gainsborough
English, 1727 – 1788
Oil on canvas

Museum labels can also include descriptions and analysis of the artwork as well as short biographical information about the artist.

So a blog post could follow a style as seen at a museum, allowing for some freedom and variation, or use the very specific publication format. For myself I like the format used by American Art Review magazine which is essentially the printed citation format shown first here (minus the dimensions and the medium which I usually include in the tag section). An example from AAR magazine:

Edward Hopper, Captain Upton’s House, 1927, o/c, 28 x 36, private collection.