Полякова И.М. Учебно-методическое пособие для развития навыков устной речи на английском языке для студентов 3 курса отделения романо-германской филологии по теме : “Живопись” Редактор – доцент кафедры английского языка гуманитарных факультетов Числова А.С.

Целью данного пособия является сбор материала по теме «Живопись» и разработка системы упражнений, направленных на овладение, развитие и совершенствование профессиональных умений и навыков устной и письменной речи студентов 3 курса РГФ в процессе их работы в аудитории под руководством преподавателя и самостоятельной работы. Работа состоит из нескольких частей. В первой части представлен основной лексический материал по данной теме. Последующие части состоят из ряда упражнений и заданий, основной целью которых является контроль знаний, усвоенных студентами при изучении данной темы, закрепление и усвоение лексического материала и отработка его в заданиях коммуникативной направленности. В пособие включены также тексты о живописи, взятые из оригинальной художественой литературы и журналов по искусству. Данные тексты были подобраны для пополнения лексического материала и наглядной иллюстрации его употребления в литературе. Задания по устной речевой практике имеют целью закрепить полезный лексический материал, и направлены на обучение студентов понимать и передавать определенную информацию, использовав необходимую лексику по данной теме. В приложении для желающих дается материал на самостоятельное изучение, состоящий из статей, взятых из журналов последних лет, о художниках и выставках.

These materials on the topic “Painting” are designed for the students of English in their fourth year to be studied during the 6-th semestre within the course of Practical English. The work at the topic will take 6-8 hours (about three weeks) of classroom work and is planned as a part of students’ classroom activity. The topic is important for educated advanced learners of English and includes terms which will broaden their vocabulary and enable them to read and speak about the art of painting expressing their opinion on works of art and the profession of an artist. The reading material and exercises are preceeded by a topical vocabulary which falls into smaller thematic clusters of words and phrases to help students easily find and learn the words they need. Lexical exercises that follow such as matching words, looking for synonyms, paraphrasing sentences and filling the gaps encourage students to explore and use the topical vocabulary. Other exercises such as the discussion of the reading material or the description of a reproduction are aimed at developing and perfecting students’ skills in using the new vocabulary freely, profusively and spontaniously in their speech. All the selected texts taken from the magazines and fiction are authentic. Many of them are supplied with pre-reading tasks to start a warm-up discussion. The exercises that follow the texts are aimed at preparing students for further discussion and encourage them to use the new words they have encountered in the process of reading. There are also writing tasks arising from the content of the passage. To save time in class students should be asked to prepare most of the reading passages as well as the vocabulary exerceses at home. The last part of the work includes supplementary reading material which could be used both in classroom work for scanned reading or for students’ reading at home. The following sources were used:

1. Art in America. – Nov., Dec.2000, Jan., Febr., March 2001. 2. Author/s. – Sept., Nov., Dec.2000; March, Feb., Dec. 2001. 3. Bawden N. Circles of Deceit. – Macmillan Ltd., 20000. 4. Ishiguro K. An artist of the floating world. - Faber and Faber Ltd, 1987. 5. Maugham S. The Moon and Sixpence.-М., “Прогресс”,1963. 6. New English-Russian Dictionary. - Ed. by Yu.D. Apresyan, 3-d three volume edition. – M.: 1998. 7. O'Henry Short stories. - М., “Прогресс”,1977. 8. Time.- May, Oct.1999. 9. Webster’s New World College Dictionary.- Ed. by M.Agnis, 4th edition. 10. Белявска В.П. пособие по английскому языку для художественных вузов и факультетовю М.: «Высшая школа», 1972. 11. Практический курс английского языка 2 курс:учебник для педвузов по спец. «Иностр. Яз.»/под ред. В.Д.Аракина.- 5-е изд. – М., 1999.

Painting

A picture is a poem without words. Horace (65-8 BC)

All art is but imitation of nature. Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD)

Vocabulary

Art искусство to practice an art — заниматься искусством; — абстракционизм; classical art — классическое искусство; modern art — современное искусство; primitive art — примитивизм; graphic art — графическое искусство, графика; plastic arts — пластическое искусство; art school — художественное училище; Art Nouveau - франц. стиль модерн (художественный и архитектурный стиль конца XIX - начала XX вв.); antique art - античное искусство; folk art - народное искусство; decorative art - декоративное искусство; applied art - прикладное искусство; art of building - зодчество; art castings - художественное литье; Graphic (black-and-white) art – искусство графики; art is long, life is short посл. — жизнь коротка, искусство вечно; Fine Arts – изобразительные искусства; (the) Academy of Arts – Академия художеств; pictorial art – живопись;

Painting n 1) живопись; а) вид изобразительного искусства; finger painting — рисование пальцами (о маленьких детях, рисующих масляными красками); Flemish painting — фламандская живопись; hard-edge painting — амер. "живопись четких контуров"; wall painting — амер. настенная живопись (традиционный элемент пейзажа больших городов); water-color painting — акварельная живопись; oil painting 1) живопись масляными красками; 2) картина, написанная масляными красками; б) (произведение) роспись; изображение, картина; to authenticate a painting — устанавливать подлинность картины to do a painting — рисовать картину; to restore a painting — реставрировать картину; a painting depicts, portrays, shows — картина изображает,

представляет; в) занятие живописью; рисование; to be taught painting — обучаться живописи; Two hobbies she really enjoyed, painting and gardening. — У нее было два занятия, которые ей по-настоящему нравились: рисование и садоводство. Syn: coloring 2) окраска,; малярное дело; painting and decorating — малярные работы; mural painting стенная живопись; dip painting окрашивание окунанием;

Paint 1. n 1) а) рисование б) рисунок; 2) а) краска; окраска ; to dilute paint — разводить краску; to mix paints — смешивать краски; to scrape paint — соскабливать краску; to spread paint evenly — ровно распределять краску; to spray paint — распылять краску; paint chips — краска облетает; paint peels — краска сходит, слезает; б) (pl.) краски; a box of paints – ящик с красками.

2. v а) писать красками; to paint a portrait in oil(s) — написать портрет масляными красками paint from nature - рисовать/писать с натуры; Syn: depict, portray, delineate б) заниматься живописью; в) расписывать красками (дом, стену, окно и т.д.); to paint a wall — расписать стену; paint in вписывать красками; The trees in the background were painted in later by a different artist. Деревья на заднем плане были дорисованы другим художником. Syn: colour; Depiction – изображение;

Depict v изображать на картине, рисовать The artist depicted him strolling through a garden. — Художник изобразил его гуляющим в саду. Syn: picture, portray, paint;

Portray v рисовать портрет; изображать (кого-л.) Portrayal – рисование портрета, изображение;

Delineate v 1) набрасывать, чертить, намечать The exact position is delineated on the plan. — На плане отмечена точное местоположение. 2) (переносное значение) схематически изображать (то, что должно быть создано); делать набросок; набрасывать Our laws and the whole constitution of our state having been thus delineated. — Таким образом, сделан предварительный проект наших законов и конституции в целом. Syn: sketch out, outline очерчивать, обрисовывать, изображать Syn: draw, portray

Deliniation – изображение;

Sketch 1. n эскиз, набросок to draw, make a sketch — сделать набросок; a composite sketch — сложный эскиз; a rough sketch - предварительный набросок; Syn: drawing, draft, outline. 2. v 1) рисовать эскиз, делать набросок; I always sketch with pen and paper. — Я всегда делаю свои наброски на бумаге ручкой. 2) описывать в общих чертах;

preliminary sketch – предварительный набросок; outline/study набросок; эскиз / этюд; to draw up an outline, to make an outline — сделать эскиз, набросок; bare, broad, general, rough outline — приблизительный набросок; Syn: sketch, draft

Draw - чертить, рисовать, набрасывать рисунок; The assignment is to draw a horse in motion. — Задание - сделать набросок бегущей лошади. Syn: sketch, design, trace out, delineate; make a picture of to draw in pen and ink – рисовать тушью;

Drawing – 1) рисование; черчение; 2) рисунок, набросок, эскиз (сделанный ручкой, карандашом или мелком); 3) чертеж to do, make a drawing – рисовать; a freehand drawing — чертеж от руки; a line drawing — чертеж; рисунок пером или карандашом;

Colour 1. n; тж. color 1) цвет (обычно яркий), оттенок, тон, колер; out of colour — выцветший, выгоревший; (Antonym) without colour – бесцветный; перен. "серый", обыкновенный, ничем не примечательный, незаметный; 2) краска, красящее вещество, пигмент; This one is painted in dark colours. — Эта картина нарисована темными красками. Syn: colouring сущ. 1) окрашивание, раскрашивание; 2) окраска, расцветка, цвет; 2. v.; тж. color иметь или придавать цвет; красить, раскрашивать; окрашивать;

Design n чертеж, эскиз, набросок; рисунок, узор; Syn: delineation; v рисовать, изображать, делать эскизы наброски, создавать узоры и т. п. Syn: sketch, delineate, draw. trace out 1) набрасывать (план, рисунок); dash – n быстрый набросок; мазок; штрих; v набрасывать краску на холст; dot – n точка; v ставить точки, особая техника письма в живописи (не мазками, а точками так наз. пуантилизм); to block in – набрасывать (рисунок, схему).

* He blocked the picture in roughly – Он сделал набросок картины. to execute – выполнять, исполнять; оттенять, подкрашивать (рисунок); execution – мастерство исполнения; выделять (изображение); experience – квалификация, to retouch – делать поправки (о мастерство; картине); to express – выражать; to scrape (out) – стереть уже expression – выразительность, написанную экспрессия; часть картины; to render – воспроизводить, paint in true colours изображать изображать, правдиво передовать; to paint from life – писать с натуры; rendering – передача, изображение; to draw from nature – рисовать с represent – изображать; натуры; representation – изображение; to load – класть густо краску; to convey – передавать, выражать to prime – грунтовать холст; (идею и т.п.); to heighten – усиливать интенсивность to varnish – лакировать, покрывать краски, делать цвет более ярким; лаком.

Painting – живопись, роспись, картина;

Battle painting –батальная живопись; Genre painting – жанровая живопись; Anecdotal painting – разновидность жанровой живописи; Historical painting – историческая живопись; Landscape painting – пейзажная живопись; Monumental painting – монументальная живопись; Mural painting – фресковая живопись; “plain-air” painting – пленэристическая живопись; plain-air technique – пленэрная живопись; in the open air – на открытом воздухе (на пленэре); “plain air” (фр. plein air) – пленэр (живопись на открытом воздухе вне мастерской) portraiture – портретная живопись; собир. портреты; water-color painting - акварельная живопись;

Picture 1. n картина; рисунок a picture by Rubens — картина Рубенса to draw, paint a picture — рисовать, писать картину 2. v изображать на картине, рисовать Syn: depict, illustrate, draw, paint.

a piece of art – художественное произвдение; art work 1. художественное произведение; 2. оригинал; a work of art – произведение искусства;

Types of pictures: piece – картина; • battle piece батальная картина; • conversation piece живоп. жанровая картина (изображающая группу scene – вид, пейзаж, картина; людей (особ. членов семьи) за scenery – пейзаж (всегда в ед.ч. и каким-л. обыденным занятием); только о природе); • life-size размер в натуральную landscape – пейзаж; ландшафт (вид величину (о картинах, скульптурах); живописи и картина, изображающая • half-life size в половину натуральной пейзаж); величины; city-scape/townscape - городской • masterpiece – шедевр; пейзаж; • to create a masterpiece создать marina / sea piece/ water piece/sea- шедевр; scape - картина, изображающая • enduring masterpiece бессмертный морской вид, морской пейзаж, марина; шедевр; flower piece – натюрморт с цветами; still life – натюрморт; fruit-piece натюрморт с фруктами; portrait – портрет; prior art прототип; • self-portrait автопортрет; panel тонкая доска для живописи; • half-lengh portrait поясной портрет; панно; длинная узкая картина; • full-lengh portrait портрет во весь fresco – фреска, фресковая живопись; рост; line art штриховой рисунок; • shoulder-lengh portrait погрудный black-and-white – рисунок пером; портрет; • knee-lengh portrait портрет по art collection коллекция произведений колено; искусства • group portrait групповой портрет; daub – n плохая картина, мазня; v малевать; • equestrian portrait конный портрет; highlights – самая светлая часть miniature – миниатюра (вид живописи картины; и небольшая картина, обычно портрет); in the foreground – на переднем плане; caricature – карикатура; in the background – на заднем плане; reproduction – репродукция, копия; in the middle ground – на втором • art reproduction художественная плане; репродукция; against a background – на фоне; art print художественная репродукция, иллюстрация;

master – великий художник, мастер; • old masters – cтарые мастера, особенно художники XVII-XVIII вв.; картины старых мастеров; • moderns – cовременные художники; painter – живописец, художник; artist – художник (в широком смысле слова); landscape painter — пейзажист; portrait painter (portraitist) – портретист; painter of sea-scapes – маринист; still life painter – художник, пишущий натюрморты; pastel(l)ist (pastel painter) – художник, рисующий пастелью; black-and-white artist (a painter in black-and-white) – график; colourist - художник-колорист; dauber – плохой художник; draughtsman (draftsman) – рисовальщик;

art dealer маршан; тот, кто продает и покупает картины; торговец произведениями искусства colour-man - торговец красками art-lover – любитель искусства; art-worker - художественный деятель;

Some skills of the painter:

his painterly talents — краски кистью; манера handling – умение его талант к живописи; письма; художника владеть complete command of creative work – кистью; colour – великолепное творчество; verve – живость и владение цветом; finished technique – яркость (описания); the brush – искусство отточенное мастерство; сила изображения, художника; to group – подбирать индивидуальность brushwork – манера гармонично краски, художника; художника накладывать цвета; exquisite work – тонкое мастерство;

exhibition halls (rooms) – выставочные залы; paint shop изостудия; studio – мастерская художника; art exhibit художественная выставка; loan exhibition – выставка картин, • exhibit n экспонат; v выставлять, временно предоставленных экспонировать; владельцами для экспозиции (музеем art exhibition художественная или отделтным лицом); выставка; display – n выставка; v выставлять, art gallery — художественная галерея; показывать; a picture gallery – картинная галерея; varnishing-day – день накануне a picture show – выставка картин; выставки (когда художники могут • show – выставка; подправить свои картины, покрыть их one-man exhibition – персональная лаком); выставка; вернисаж; private exhibition – частная выставка; opening day – вернисаж; • at the exhibition – на выставке; pictures hung on the line – картины, выставленные так, что центр картины находится на уровне глаз зрителя;

Painter’s articles: sketch-book альбом, тетрадь для • to adjust (set) an easel – поставить, рисования; укрепить мольберт; drawing-block тетрадь для рисования; easel-picture картина на мольберте (во easel мольберт; время рисования); • The easel is a frame which supports • He continued working on his easel- the painting during its progress. — pieces. — Он продолжал работу Мольберт - это подставка, на над картиной, стоявшей на которой устанавливается картина мольберте. во время работы над ней. Canvas холст, картина, полотно (о a box of paints набор красок; произведении искусства: фильме, colour-box ящик с красками; картине и т.д.); a set of (oil) paints набор (масляных) • to stretch canvas – натягивать холст; красок; frame n рама; v вставлять в раму; stretcher подрамник, на который palette knife мастихин; натягивают холст; colour pan палитра (доска для paint brush кисть (для рисования); смешивания красок); paint oil олифа; lacquer лак; paint-box коробка красок; solvent растворитель;

Colour and Paint: painter's paint/decorative paint • pastel blue пастельно-голубой, художественная краска; нежно-голубой; water paint водная краска; play of light игра света; flat paint/dull paint матовая краска; line and colour рисунок и краска; water-colour 1) обыкн. мн. акварель, colour scheme палитра (колорит) акварельные краски 2) акварель художника; (рисунок); palette n палитра; колорит художника; oil-colours/ oil(s) масляные краски; v стирать уже написанную часть gouache гуашь; картины мастихином; crayon цветной карандаш, цветной coloration колорит (в живописи); мелок, пастель; рисунок цветным colour scale/ scale живоп. цветовая карандашом, гамма; пастелью; colour match цветовое согласование; hue краска, оттенок, тон, цвет; цветовое уравнивание; colour tone оттенок; relations of tone and colour tint краска, оттенок, тон, в котором соотношение тона и цвета; преобладает белый цвет (в картине); colour rendition спец. цветопередача, half-tint полутон; верность воспроизведения цвета; primary colours/ simple colours/ effect (часто pl) впечатление от fundamental colours основные цвета; сочетания красок на картине; cold and warm tones холодные и division of colours приемы теплые тона; дивизионизма (живопись раздельными semi-tones полутона; мазками); • low-toned pictutres картины, the play of colours игра (переливы) написанные в смягченных тонах; красок; subdued tones приглушенные тона; riot of colours изобилие, богатство broken tones неровные тона; красок; flesh colour телесный цвет; intensity яркость, глубина (красок); pastel пастель; saturation насыщенность цвета в light and shade свет и тени; живописи; pastel пастель colourful прил. красочный, яркий; • pastel shades пастельные тона, colourless прил. бесцветный, бледный; оттенки; colourlessness сущ. тусклость; • to paint in pastel рисовать пастелью;

Some useful words and word combinations: brushstroke мазок; to touch up класть painterly живописный, stroke штрих, мазок, последние штрихи, относящийся к черта; мазки; живописи; dab n мазок, пятно line линия, черта, impression впечатление; краски; штрих; • to produce an v покрывать краской, patch пятно impression (on) делать легкие мазки неправильной формы; производить кистью; blob, speck of paint впечатление; to dab off снимать капля, пятно краски; pictorial живописный, легкими мазками; coat of paint слой изобразительный; smear мазок; краски; picturesque • a smear of paint will to apply a second coat of живописный, put it right надо paint наносить второй колоритный; немного подмазать слой краски; picturesqueness краской, и все будет splash of paint пятно живописность; в порядке; краски; subject (genre, historical, touch штрих, черта, to break the paint marine, pastoral etc.) мазок; слегка размешивать краску; тема, сюжет в живописи окрашивать, paint spattered (жанровый, придавать оттенок; забрызганный краской; исторический, морской, finishing touches naked (жив.) фон, пасторальный и т.п.); последние штрихи, грунт; тот, кого изображают; мазки; artisic художественный;

life – натура; • the picture is nothing out of the way true to life – реалистический, жизненно – в этой картине нет ничего правдивый, точно воспроизведенный; особенного; nude – n обнаженное тело (особ. в to pose for a painter – позировать живописи ), attr обнаженный (особ. о художнику; натурщике); to sit – позировать художнику; pose – n поза; v позировать художнику; to stand for – позировать художнику ( в to pose naked – позировать в более узком значении); обнаженном виде; • to stand for one’s portrait; to stand to to pose sitting (standing) – позировать (for) an artist; сидя (стоя); sitting –сеанс; out of the way – необыкновенный, sitter – тот, кто позирует художнику; необычный, незаурядный; натурщик; profile – профиль, очертание, контур; рисовать в профиль; model – модель, образец, шаблон, слепок; натурщик, натурщица.

Some useful adjectives:

second-rate – crude – сырой, remarkable – второсортный, неотработанный, замечательный, посредственный; черновой, удивительный, overrated – предварительный; выдающийся; переоцененный, sketchy – эскизный superb – великолепный, перехваленный; (недоработанный, грандиозный, revolting – носящий роскошный, отвратительный; незаконченный превосходный; unremarkable - характер); brilliant – блестящий, невыдающийся, poor – жалкий, выдающийся; обыкновенный, ничем ничтожный, низкого great – замечательный, не примечательный; качества; великолепный; pathetic – жалкий, astonishing – outstanding – убогий, ничтожный; удивительный, выдающийся. изумительный;

Vocabulary Exercises

Exercise 1. Find English equivalents for the following words and word combinations: Холст; мольберт; репродукция; зодчество; живопись; разводить краску; сделать набросок; набросок (3); чертеж от руки; пленэр; портрет по колено; шедевр; автопортрет; любитель искусства; изостудия; выставка (3); кисть; график; натюрморт; натюрморт с цветами; плохой художник; натягивать холст; персональная выставка; вернисаж; набор красок; мастихин; великолепное владение цветом; отточенное мастерство; плохая картина, мазня; вид, пейзаж; масляные краски; палитра (2); соотношение цвета и тона; оттенок; акварель; приемы дивизионизма; натурщик; позировать художнику; живописный; тема, сюжет в живописи; штрих, мазок; основные цвета; рисунок и краска; профиль; свет и тени; картинная галерея; мастерская художника; альбом (2); укрепить мольберт; олифа; подрамник; рама; размешивать краску; морской пейзаж, марина; фреска; на фоне; на переднем плане; на заднем плане; прототип; карикатура; панно; миниатюра; маршан; изобразительных искусства; устанавливать подлинность картины; соскабливать краску; краска облетает; писать с натуры; предварительный набросок; приблизительный набросок; эскиз, этюд; делать поправки; передавать, выражать идею; правдиво изображать.

Exercise 2. Find English equivalents for the following definitions: 1. A strong, coarse cloth used by artists for oil -painting. 2. An upright frame or tripod to hold an artist’s canvas, a picture on display, etc. 3. A public show or display of art. 4. A thin, flexible steel blade with a blunt edge and a wooden handle, used by artists to mix colours and clean the palette, and, sometimes, to apply paint. 5. A thin board or tablet of wood, plastic, etc., often with a hole for the thumb at one end, on which an artist arranges and mixes paints; or the colours used by a particular artist or for a particular painting. 6. A picture representing small inanimate objects, as fruit, bottles, flowers, books, etc. 7. A simple, rough drawing or design, done rapidly and without much detail. 8. To undercoat, size, etc. (a surface) in preparation as for painting. 9. The art or technique of painting with watercolours on wet plaster; or a painting or design so made. 10. A copy of a work of art. 11. A picture of a person, in which certain features are exaggerated for satirical effect. 12. A person engaged in trading of works of art. 13. A room or rooms where an artist works. 14. A small stick of chalk, charcoal, or coloured wax, used for drawing, colouring or writing.

Exercise 3. Study the difference between the following words and use these words in the sentences of your own:

Colour – is the general term. 1.The sensation resulting from stimulation of the retina of the eye by light waves of certain lengths. 2. The property of reflecting light of a particular wavelength. 3. Any colouring matter; dye; pigment; paint. The primary colours of paints, pigments, etc., are red, yellow and blue,which, when mixed in various ways, produce the secondary colours (green, orange, purple, etc.

Shade – refers to any of the gradation of a colour with reference to its degree of darkness /a light shade of green/. Hue – often equivalent to colour, is used specifically to indicate a modification of a basic colour /orange or a reddish hue; the dark hue of the ocean/. Tint – refers to a gradation of a colour with reference to its degree of whiteness and suggests a paleness or delicacy of colour /pastel tints/. Tinge – suggests the presence of a small amount of colour, usually diffused throughout /white with a tinge of blue/. Tone – 1. a quality or value of colour, shade. 2. Any of the slight modifications of a particular colour, hue /three tones of green/. Paint – a mixture of a pigment with oil, water, etc., in liquid or paste form, applied as with a brush, roller, or spray gun, and used for protecting covering or colouring of a surface or for making pictures on canvas, paper, etc.

Exercise 4. Read and translate the following texts in writing:

A. I will not describe the pictures that Strickland showed me. Descriptions of pictures are always dull, and these, besides, are familiar to all who take an interest in such things. Now that his influence has so enormously affected modern painting, now that others have charted the country which he was among the first to explore, Strickland's pictures, seen for the first time, would find the mind more prepared for them; but it must be remembered that I had never seen anything of the sort. First of all I was taken aback by what seemed to me the clumsiness of his technique. Accustomed to the drawing of the old masters, and convinced that Ingres was the greatest draughtsman of recent times, I thought that Strickland drew very badly. I knew nothing of the simplification at which he aimed. I remembered a still-life of oranges on a plate, and I was bothered because the plate was not round and the oranges were lop-sided. The portraits were a little larger than life-size, and this gave them an ungainly look. To my eyes the faces looked like caricatures. They were painted in a way that was entirely new to me. The landscape puzzled me even more. There were two or three pictures of the forest at Fontainebleau* and several of streets in Paris; my first feeling was that they might have been painted by a drunken cab-driver. I was perfectly bewildered. The colour seemed to me extraordinarily crude. It passed through my mind that the whole thing was a stupendous, incomprehensible farce. Now that I look back I am more than ever impressed by Stroeve's acuteness. He saw from the first that here was a revolution in art, and he recognized in its beginnings the genius which now all the world allows.

*Fontainebleau - Фонтенбло, в прошлом королевская рециденция, расположенная в королевском лесу недалеко от Парижа.

B. 'What was the subject?" I asked. ‘I scarcely know. It was strange and fantastic. It was a vision of the beginnings of the world, the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve—que sais-je?—it was a hymn to the beauty of the human form, male and female, and the praise of Nature, sublime, indifferent, lovely, and cruel. It gave you an awful sense of the infinity of space and of the endlessness of time. Because he painted the trees I see about me every day, the coconuts, the banyans, the flamboyants, the alligator pears, I have seen them ever since differently, as though there were in them a spirit and a mystery which I am ever on the point of seizing and which for ever escapes me. The colours were the colours familiar to me, and yet they were different. They had a significance which was all their own. And those nude men and women. They were of the earth, the clay of which they were created, and at the same time something divine. You saw man in the nakedness of his primeval instincts, and you were afraid, for you saw yourself.'

C. We entered the room, and my eyes fell at once on the picture. I looked at it for a long time. It was a pile of mangoes, bananas, oranges, and I know not what; and at first sight it was an innocent picture enough. It would have been passed in an exhibition of the Post- Impressionists by a careless person as an excellent but not very remarkable example of the school; but perhaps afterwards it would come back to his recollection, and he would wonder why. I do not think then he could ever entirely forget it. The colours were so strange that words can hardly tell what a troubling emotion they gave. There were sombre blues, opaque like a delicately carved bowl in lapis lazuli, and yet with a quivering lustre that suggested the palpitation of mysterious life; there were purples, horrible like raw and putrid flesh, and yet with a glowing, sensual passion that called up vague memories of the Roman Empire of Heliogabalus;* there were reds, shrill like the berries of holly—one thought of Christmas in England, and the snow, the good cheer, and the pleasure of children—and yet by some magic softened till they had the swooning tenderness of a dove's breast; there were deep yellows that died with an unnatural passion into a green as fragrant as the spring and as pure as the sparkling water of a mountain brook. Who can tell what anguished fancy made these fruits? They belonged to a Polynesian garden of the Hesperides.** There was something strangely alive in them, as though they were created in a stage of the earth's dark history when things were not irrevocably fixed to their forms. They were extravagantly luxurious. They were heavy with tropical odours. They seemed to possess a sombre passion of their own. It was enchanted fruit, to taste which might open the gateway to God knows what secrets of the soul and to mysterious palaces of the imagination. They were sullen with unawaited dangers, and to eat them might turn a man to beast or god. All that was healthy and natural, all that clung to happy relationships and the simple joys of simple men, shrunk from them in dismay; and yet a fearful attraction was in them, and, like the fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,*** they were terrible with the possibilities of the Unknown.

* Heliogabalus - Элагабал, прозвище Бассиана, жреца в храме бога солнца Гелия, подростком провозглашенного римским императором. (218-222 н.э.) Став императором, Элагабал вел распутную жизнь, и оргии были его обычным времяпрепровождением; удержался у власти только четыре года и был убит заговорщиками.

** a Polynesian garden of the Hesperides - Согласно древнегреческому мифу Геспериды, дочери титана Атласа, охраняли в саду золотые яблоки, которык Земля подарила богине Гере в день ее свадьбы со всемогущим Зевсом.

*** the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (библ.) - древо познания добра и зла.

(S.Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence)

Exercise 5. Choose the right word: to draw - to paint 1.She placed the paper and pencil before me and told me I could … anything I liked. 2. The picture was … so that the eyes seem to follow you no matter you are. 3. It was in Italy that Bryullov ... his immense canvas «The Last Day of Pompei». 4. He would have been a great artist, if he had only learned how to ... . 5. Only skilled artists should ... from live models. 6. In order to ... life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. 7. As he had to ... a historical subject, he spent much time studying the literature of that period. 8. He ... portraits, genre paintings and still life alike. colour - paint 1.This possible picture she painted in glowing … , until the child’s pathetic dark eyes glistened with pleasure. 2. If you want cornflower blue you’d better mix these two … . 3. The warm … are red, yellow and orange. 4. In his work the still life objects seem to glow with a new intensity achieved through the blinding effects of light and ... . 5. His dark yet sumptuous … seems to disappear as … to dissolve into light, with infinite gradations of tones. 6. But these dark tones give even more power and force to the contrast of a new bright and brilliant … .

to picture – to portray – to represent 1. Roerich’s paintings for the Kazan railway station in Moscow … combats between Russians and Tatars. 2. I could hardly … Charlie in this role. 3. The great tragic actress is … in her day dress. 4. The artist was concerned more with re-creating the radiance of Venice than with … the solid structure of its monuments. 5. The artist is ... in the Museum by four canvases, all of them painted in the 1780’s.

Exercise 6. Explain meanings of the following words, give your own examples with these words:

a panel, a mural, a fresco, a mosaic.

Exercise 7. Translate the following groups of words into Russian:

to paint – painter – painterly – painting; to depict – pictorial – picture – picturesque; to master – master – mastery – masterpiece; to portray – portrayal – portrait – portralist –portraiture; to sit for – sitter – a sitting; to express – expression – expressive – expressiveness.

Exercice 8. Do the matching: 1. pictorial art 1. рисовать с натуры 2. dip painting 2. доска для смешивания красок, палитра 3. to dilute paint 3. изобилие, богатство красок 4. to draw up an outline 4. неровные тона 5. a line drawing 5. разводить краску 6. to load 6. живопись 7. battle painting 7. выставка картин, временно 8. “plain-air” предоставленных владельцами для 9. a piece of art экспозиции 10. to prime 8. рисовальщик 11. a conversation piece 9. окрашивание окунанием 12. to draw from life 10. насыщенность цвета в живописи 13. an enduring masterpiece 11. вернисаж 14. an equestrian portrait 12. батальная живопись 15. prior art 13. густо класть краску 16. a draughtsman 14. грунтовать холст 17. an art dealer 15. морской пейзаж 18. a varnishing day 16. маршан, торговец произведениями 19. a colour pan искусства 20. broken tones 17. конный портрет 21. riot of colours 18. художественное произведение 22. a loan exhibition 19. пленэр 23. saturation 20. день накануне выставки, вернисаж 24. an opening day 21. бессмертный шедевр 25. a sea-scape 22. жанровая картина 23. чертеж, рисунок пером или карандашом 24. сделать эскиз, набросок 25. прототип

Exercise 9. Read and translate the text: The painting—one might almost say panorama—was designed to portray a typical Western scene, interest culminating in a central animal figure, that of a stampeding steer, life-size, wild-eyed, fiery, breaking away in a mad rush from the herd that, close-ridden by a typical cowpuncher, occupied a position somewhat in the right background of the picture. The landscape presented fitting and faithful accessories. Chaparral, rnesquite, and pear were distributed in just proportions. A Spanish dagger-plant,* with its waxen blossoms in a creamy aggregation as large as a water-bucket contributed floral beauty and variety. The distance was undulating prairie, bisected by stretches of the intermittent streams peculiar to the region lined with the rich green of live-oak and water-elm. A richly mottled rattlesnake lay coiled beneath a pale green clump of prickly pear in the foreground. A third of the canvas was ultramarine and lake white—the typical Western sky and the flying clouds, rainless and feathery.

* Spanish dagger-plant – деревянистое вечнозеленое растение из семейства лилейных (юкка).

(O.Henry, Art and the Bronco)

Exercise 10. Explain or express in other words and use the following words in sentences of your own: to transcribe on one’s canvas; a sitter; to sit for one’s portrait; to take likeness; to paint out of doors; accessories; panorama; a vision; a mature artist; to execute a painter.

Exercise 11. Choose a reproduction of a portrait painting and discuss it according to the following outline:

1. The general effect. (The title and name of the artist. The period or trend represented. Does it appear natural and spontaneous or contrived and artificial ?) 2. The contents of the picture. (Place, time and setting. The age and physical appearance of the sitter. The accessories, the dress and environment. Any attempt to render the personality and emotions of the model. What does the artist accentuate in his subject?) 3. The composition and colouring. (How is the sitter represented? Against what background? Any prevailing format? Is the postuie bold or rigid? Do the hands (head, body) look natural and informal? How do the eyes gaze? Does the painter concentrate on the analysis of details? What tints predominate in the colour scheme? Do the colours blend imperceptibly? Are the brushstrokes left visible ?) 4. Interpretation and evaluation. (Does it exemplify a high degree of artistic skill? What feelings, moods or ideas does it evoke in the viewer?)

Look at the pictures below. Describe the dramatic tension depected in both paintings. Say how the figures are represented in the paintings? embrandt’s brush-

Read and translate the texts paying special attention to the highlighted words:

IN THE PAINTER'S STUDIO a) One side of the rectangular room was entirely of glass, and faced west. In summer it was flooded with sunlight, in spite of the heavy cloth curtains which were meant to screen it. The walls were covered with a pale grey paper, and a few unframed pictures hung on them; against them were stacked heaps of used and unused canvases, of which only the backs were ever visible. The only other furniture was two easels, a few cane chairs of the most commonplace type, two old easy chairs covered with some very shabby flowered material, a worn divan upholstered in an indeterminate colour, and a table heaped with tubes of paint, brushes, bottles of oil or turpentine, and paintstained rags. (F. Fosca, Renoir)

b) Not only were the walls of the studio covered with paintings, chiefly unframed, but canvases of all sizes and descriptions, with designs on them, from merest sketch to the most finished portrait, were piled against them, leaning one upon the other, until but a very small space was left in the centre of the floor. Several large easels bore full-length portraits of sitters who had probably never paid for them when completed; charming glimpses of female loveliness peeped out from behind copies of dark Rembrandts or uninteresting Teniers; the portraiture of children's rosy forms were commingling with fauns or monks or scenes of war, or anything most unakin to them; whilst sunny landscapes and tranquil seas were lying almost hidden beneath the thick dust which had to be removed for the purpose of examination, and which lay heaviest upon once white busts and groups of figures which were disposed on rough brackets about the walls.

THE RUDIMENTS OF PAINTING As soon as Winslow* returned to New York, he looked up a genre and landscape painter by the name of Frederic Rondel, who gave lessons in his studio. While he was not a great painter, he had just been elected an Associate of the National Academy, which indicated that he had some reputation; yet he was not enough of a master to expect his pupils to be his disciples. There were several other students taking lessons in the big untidy studio, and Rondel, a Frenchman, who had immigrated to Boston, where he had lived before coming to New York, was showing them how to handle a brush when Winslow joined the group. From the large canvas on the outsized easel Winslow saw that Rondel had an honest approach toward his work in spite of the fact that he painted in the current sentimental style. He was satisfied that this Frenchman could help him with practical instruction. For four Saturdays in one month Winslow walked over to Rondel's studio, where he learned the rudiments of painting—how to hold the brush in different ways for different strokes: how to set his palette, using the primary colours with white, and raw sienna—a formula he hardly changed throughout his career; how to adjust an easel, how to stretch a canvas. He had watched his mother**—and recently his fellow artists— but he had never performed the simplest procedure of painting. His observation stood him in good stead***, however; after four or five lessons with Rondel he was ready to start out on his own.****

* Winslow Homer (1836-1910) – an American painter; ** Homer’s mother was a paintress; *** to stand smb in good stead – пригодиться, оказаться полезным кому-либо; **** on his own – самостоятельно.

(Jean Gould, Winslow Homer)

Exercise 12. Translate the following sentences into English: 1. На стенах мастерской висели наброски и картины без рам, главным образом, копии с картин старых мастеров. 2. На мольберте возле стола стоял портрет молодой женщины. Это был портрет во весь рост. 3. К стене был прислонен холст, а на полу лежали кисти, тюбики с краской и палитра. 4. Он был мастером портрета и завоевал большую известность. 5. Он натянул холст, укрепил молберт и приготовил краски и палитру. 6. Художник считал целью своей жизни изображение человека и его характера. 7. Мальчик не знал, как трудно рисовать живую модель. 8. Если бы он хотел стать художником, он бы учился рисовать. 9. Сочетание света и тени в картине замечательно. 10. Микельанджело был изумительный мастер рисунка. 11. В XVII веке портрет был рапространен во всей Европе. 12. Этот автопортрет написан художником в последние годы жизни. 13. Художник написал целую серию поясных портретов и портретов во весь рост. 14 . Жанровая живопись была особенно популярна в Голландии в XVII веке. Голландские живописцы писали жанровые сценки, архитектурные интрьеры, натюрморты из цветов, а также фруктов и утвари.

Exercise 13. Compare the descriptions in the texts below, comment on the content of each of the three texts. Many of the artist's works of the last few years could form a cycle entitled "In the Painter's Studio". He paints still lifes and models in his studio, and he makes no secret of it: he paints a nude against a background of frames and empty canvases, and this motif becomes an indepedent plastic problem for him. His portraits are also done in the same interior. The studio is the scene of his creative work, it is the witness of his art and the subject of it. The artist keeps returning to the same objects. Very often he paints drapery thrown on a table, hung on his easel, or the stretcher. The same objects—flower pots, palette, stretchers, empty canvases—move from one picture to another. But the artist does not repeat himself. And to do this, he must keep discovering new aspects of the long- familiar common objects. (Klara Garas, Italian Renaissance Portraits)

…in many of his most notable paintings – ‘Tying a Dance Drum’,say, or ‘After a Bath’ – the woman is seenfrom the back in classic Utamaro Fashion. Various other such classic features recur in hes work: the woman holding a towel to her face, the woman combing out her long hair. And Mori-son made extensive sue of the traditional device of expressing emotion through the textiles which the woman holds or wears rather than through the look on her face. But at the same time, his work was full of European influences, which the more staunch admirers of Utamaro would have regarded as iconoclassic; he had, for instance, long abandoned the use of the traditional dark outline to define his shapes, preferring instead the Western use of blocks of colour, with light and shade to create a three- dimension appearance. And no doubt, he had taken his cue from the Europeans in what was his most central concern: the use of subdued colours. Mori-son’s wish was to evoke a certain meloncholy, nocturnal atmosphere around his women, and throughout the years I studied under him, he experimented extensively with coulours in an attempt to capture the feel of lantern light. Because of this, it was something of hallmark of Mori-son’s work that a lantern would always figure somewhere in the picture, by implication if not in actuality. (Ishiguro K. An artist of the floating world.)

I have said that I was ‘desperate’ to get to work. It is hard to explain the quality of this desperation, the total, consuming power of the need to get on with the job that has nothing to do with the greatness or littleness of your talent, the importance of the final achievement. Habit comes into it, and the desire for some unifying simplicity; better a single absorbing task than messy odds and ends like rubbish comapctors. …The longer you do a thing, the less certain you are how you do it. One mooment it seems impossible; the next you can see that with a bit of lick you might manage it, or something quite close to it, near enough to begin on and, with a little more luck, start to move in the right direction for a long enough to stop thinking about it and simply to do it. It isn’t a smooth advance; long, flat stretches and then little jumps and jerks forward that usually come about unexpectedly. (Bauden N. Circles of Deceit)

Exercise 14. Translate the text paying special attention to the highlighted words and phrases:

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE PORTRAITS

The beginning of the 16th century brought about a decisive change in the evolution of Italian portrait art. The great masters of the Cinquecento placed the portrait in the focus of their artistic activities; opportunities became numerous, and the style of expression became enriched. Although the secondary application of portraits did not cease, the portrayal of donors on altar-pieces and frescoes lost its importance as the genre evolved. The number of commissions for independent portraits grew considerably, and in accordance with the more varied demands of a wider clientele, the appearance of the portraits also became more varied and richer. In the place of the shoulder-length representations of the Quattrocento, the half-length portrait and later the knee-length portrait became fashionable, and from the second quarter of the century, the full-length portrait. The hands, so important for characterization, were also carefully drawn into the picture and the environment and background were presented in a more varied and telling way. The decisive change, the most important new element as against earlier portrayal, was a more profound psychology, the rendering of the personality and emotions of the model beyond his outward features, as first practised by Leonardo. The posture became bolder, less rigid; the strict, motionless conception was replaced by a freer construction, and in a resting position the figure suggested dynamism, the body, head and hands looked natural and informal. The painters no longer concentrated on the analysis of details, on suggesting the textures of various materials; they concentrated on the essential and neglected secondary elements. The accessories, the dress, the presentation of the environment all served to portray the person depicted more fully and richly, suggesting his entire personality, his station in the world, his way of thinking and acting. In 16th century portraits, man figured, as a sensitive spiritual and social being in his full complexity. (Klara Garas, Italian Renaissance Portraits)

Exercise 15. Read the following text and render it in English. The following expressions from the text may come in handy: to penetrate, to share the vision of the artist, to gain better understanding and greater enjoyment of art; to be on the surface; to lie deep; at the first view; to have a just perception of; by degrees.

Для того чтобы проникнуть в замысел художника , воспринять смысл и содержание его образов, надо научиться видеть и понимать искусство. Знакомство с изобразительным искусством начинается обычно в музее или на выставке. Во всяком большом творении есть простое и сложное: то, что лежит на поверхности, воспринимается сразу, а огромная глубина, которая постигается постепенно, требует большого напряжения душевных сил. Можно мельком взглянуть на портрет и, уяснив, кого он изображает, пойти дальше. Но это будет значить, что вы посмотрели картину, но не увидели ее. Подойдите еще и еще раз, всмотритесь внимательнее. Постепенно истинный смысл откротся вам.

Exercise 16. Read the following text and translate it into English: Остроумные сатирические картины и графические листы Хогарта пользовались огромной популярностью в народе. Для того чтобы как можно больше людей увидело эти картины, Хогарт гравирует их и печатает. Живописные драмы Хогарта охватывают различные события общественной жизни. Внимательно и критически наблюдал он жизнь как высшего общества, так и простого народа. В некоторых его картинах содержится элемент сатиры и карикатуры. Серия «Модный брак» - морализирующая сатира, нравоучительный рассказ в картинах. Вторым его шедевром по праву считается серия «Выборы» (Elections).

Part II IMPRESSIONISM Exercise 17. Before you start reading the texts say what you know about impressionism, what artists of this trend you can recall. Now read the texts about impressionism and do exercises that follow.

IMPRESSIONIST'S STYLE OF PAINTING

The Impressionists are said to have adopted their new style of painting after having read works by the physicists Chevreul, Helmholtz and Rood, or at least having heard about their contents. Actually, there is no evidence to support this opinion; on the contrary, everything we know about the Impressionists proves them to be not in the slightest degree theorists; they did not elaborate theories which they proceeded to put into practice in their paintings. They were essentially empiricists; the style of painting which they adopted in the beginning was modified little by little as a result of experiments made in the actual process of painting. They abandoned the method of their predecessors, such as Corot and Courbet, who corrected and finished in the studio works which had been painted from nature; they undertook to work as much as possible out-of-doors, to execute their landscapes entirely from nature, and not to retouch them in the studio. Thev also wanted to render as truthfully as possible effects of sunlight. They realized that current practice led them to set very dark shadows, obtained with browns and blacks, against very pale light areas with hardly any colour; the results were hard and heavy, and in no way conveyed the brilliance of a fine day. It began to dawn on them* that they would have to use cool colours—bluish-greens, blues and violets—for the shadows, and warm colours (i.e. those in which yellows predominate) for the fully-lit areas. The contrast between the cool and warm colours made it possible to diminish the value contrasts—that is to say, the range of tones from dark to light. In this way they produced canvases whose lightness and intensity of colour expressed perfectly the luminosity and brilliance of nature bathed in sunlight. It has also been said (and is still repeated) that to enrich the colour of their canvases the Impressionists made use of what is known as division of colour and optical blending. For example, to represent a green meadow they are said to have put little dabs of blue and yellow on the canvas, which were supposed to combine to form green in the eye of the spectator; a far more intense green, so it is said, than one taken straight from the artist's palette. This ingenious theory has only two flaws, but they completely invalidate it. In the first place, it is impossible to find any picture in which Monet, Renoir, Pissarro or Sisley put it into practice; in the second place, the reason they did not have recourse to this device is because in painting (as can be proved by experiment) it does not have the desired effect. Multiple dabs of blue and yellow do not combine to form green on the retina of the spectator's eye. The Impressionists, especially Monet, devoted themselves to capturing in paint the fugitive effects of light falling on objects, and the play of reflections. They tended therefore (especially Monet and Sisley) to attribute greater importance to colour than to form. They allowed themselves a very free style of execution; they did not blend the colours together imperceptibly, but left the brushstrokes clearly visible all over their canvases. We know Renoir to be an Impressionist roughly from 1869—to 1881—for nearly fourteen years. But he was not wholly lrnpressionist, as were Monet, Pissarro and Sisley. During some nine years) he often covered his canvas with little hastily brushstrokes; but he used this procedure chiefly in landscapes, where this method of working was justified, since it suited the rendering of masses of foliage, of bushes and blades of grass, of the thousand and one reflections on water and the vibrant sunlight falling on objects; for example, in such pictures as "The Grand Boulevards", "The Garden" and "The Greenhouse". When he was painting figures, however, he abandoned this method in favour of using larger areas of colour. The "Nude in the Sunlight" and "The Swing" (both in the Louvre), which were painted out-of-doors, are not done with little separate brushstrokes. On the other hand, in some of his studio pictures such as "The Seamstress" and "In the Studio" (done in 1876, right in the middle of his Impressionist period), Renoir covered the canvas with shimmering little "commas" of paint which make the coloured areas positively vibrate. It is important to stress that Renoir never felt obliged to adhere strictly to one particular method; we know him to change his technique whenever he felt like it. As a result, it is sometimes not at all easy to date some of his canvases; after painting several pictures in one fashion, he would paint another in which he went back to an earlier way of working, just when one would have been justified in thinking that he has abandoned it for good.

* It began to dawn on them – им стало ясно (их осенило). (F. Fosca, Renoir. His Life and Work)

Explain the meaning of the highlighted words and phrases in the text above, explain their meaning in English and say how they are used in the context.

DEGAS

Though he is known to be the painter of ballet subjects, Edgar-Hilaire-Germain Degas (1834-1917) was far more than that. He was a portraitist of subtlety and distinction, a draftsman of infinite resource and one of the most exciting sculptors of his century. Though he first tried to paint historical subjects in the approved manner, giving them what he called a touch of "modern feeling" by choosing more realistic models and arranging them in less formal poses, he soon gave up this idea and began to concentrate on portraits. Degas was a superb portrait painter; in his early canvases he immediately showed his skill in capturing the inner life of his sitters. A born psychologist, he enjoyed the play of one personality upon another. We see also his dependence on the clear structure and incisive drawing of earlier masters, combined with a feeling for discreet colour and delicate effects of light. For all his portraits Degas made many drawings from life, then recreated his sitters from sketches and memory. As he progressed, his touch became lighter and he grew more able to catch the fleeting pose and transient expression. He never accepted a commission and never finished a portrait when he grew bored. After the war of 1870, in which Degas served, he returned to find that the old society which he had loved was breaking apart. He looked around for new subjects and discovered them in the opera-house and ballet. Here was the fluid movement, the flash of colour and arresting play of light that he loved. At the same time, Degas became friendly with a group of young painters, among them Manet, Renoir, Ваzillе, Monet and Pissarro. He took part in their discussions centering round painting modern life rather than literary subjects and stressing more and more daring effects of colour. Degas disagreed, however, with these men who were to join with him in founding the group of Impressionists when they insisted on painting out-of-doors. There was more to art than surrendering oneself to nature, he said; one built a work of art mentally; through patient observation and style one carried it out. When he first visited the ballet, he recorded it in precise detail; soon he was changing and heightening his effects and substituting pastel for oil. Pastel allowed him to draw as he painted, and satisfied his desire for brilliant, more vaporous colour. At the same time, Degas sought new and surprising angles of composition. He tilted the floor of a rehearsal room; he peered down from opera boxes; he stood in the wings and glimpsed fresh, unforseen slices of life. Part of this originality came from his study of Japanese art which was then the rage of Paris. From Japanese prints Degas learned to cut his figures abruptly, to overlap one by another—such devices being used to increase the apparent spontaneity of his vision, which actually was calculated down to the last millimeter. From photography, which he ardently practised, Degas further discovered the close-up, the blurred background, and the sudden sharp detail, all of which he used for artistic purposes. And in his studies of dancers he re-created not only glamorous moments on the stage but also the hours of strain and ennui of the young girls exercising or waiting in the wings... (Daniel Catton Rich, Degas)

Exercise 18. Answer the following questions: 1. What were the aims of the Impressionist painters? 2. Why is it essential to view an Impressionist painting from a distance? 3. Can you explain why both their theories of colour and their technique of painting have made this necessary? 4. What is division of colour? 5. The most evident, and the most recognized quality of the Impressionists was that their paintings were brighter than all other paintings since the sixteenth century. Due to what?

Exercise 19. Give Russian equivalents of the following: out-of-doors; value contrasts; the range of tones; intensity of colour; division of colour; pure or primary colours; complementary tints; the flash of colour; the play of light; to heighten the effects; spontaneity of vision.

Exercise 20. Give English equivalents of the Russian words and expressions. Use them in sentences of your own: Эффекты солнечного света, самые сильные контрасты света и тени, самые яркие краски, работать на пленэре, передача света на воде, холодный (теплый) колорит, разложение цвета, мазки, массы света и тени, движение красок, вибрация света, делать поправки.

Exercise 21. Translate the following into English: Художника Доменико ди Томмазо дель Гирландайо знала вся Флоренция. И не только как крупного живописца. Главным делом жизни Гирландайо была фреска.Он украсил фресками многие из церквей Флоренции и окрестных городков. Есть они в знаменитой Сикстинской капелле в Риме. Сам художник выше всего ставил свою работу в церкви Санта-Мария Новелла во Флоренции (1486 – 1490). В монументальном искусстве Гирландайо придерживался тех же принципов: многие библейские эпизоды трактованы им в чисто бытовом плане. Художник так говорил о своей работе: «Теперь, после того как я проник в сущность и постиг приемы сего искусства, я жалею только о том, что мне не дают заказа покрыть изображениями все стены вокруг Флоренции».

Exercise 22. Describe a one-man show. Copy from the texts given above all the expressions which you may want to use. Try to make use of the following expressions as well:

an exhibition bearing the title ... ; it was opened on April 1st in the ... museum and remained on show for a period of three months till June 27th; to arrange an exhibition; on the opening day of the exhibition; the impressive collection; you'll have to be something of an expert (+infinitive) ... ; a delight to the eye; a collection of some note; the lay public; an exhibition not to be missed; you're in for a surprise at this exhibition; because it's a riot of colour; plenty of interest.

SUPPLEMENTARY

Jay Davis at Stefan Stux Author/s: Stephanie Cash. Issue: Jan, 2001 Young painter Jay Davis depicts scenes that seem to come from a parallel universe, disconnected from our reality yet still closely allied with it. His acrylic-on-vinyl paintings, most measuring 4 by 5 feet, have stylistic affinities with Inka Essenhigh's canvases as well as with the whimsical sculptures of Rob de Mar.

Davis's execution is precise, and his works have a surreal quality, though he borrows more from Dr. Seuss or Tim Burton films than from Dali. The paintings are typically large fields of color ranging from a bubbly grayish blue, which suggests a stormy sky, to a solid black that is both bleak and richly serene. The imagery often runs across the bottom of the field, further emphasizing the expanse above.

Davis downplays narrative in the works by minimizing his use of figures and giving them matter-of-fact descriptive titles, such as Untitled (Brick House, Interior, Snow, Squares) or Untitled (Plywood House, Inerior, Brown Object Going Through Colored Object). His imaginary landscapes are often cold and desolate, although in certain scenes a reassuring warmth is lent by improbable dwellings cobbled into the treacherous-looking rocky cliffs, jagged icy terrain or presumably precarious treetops. Other architecturally incredible structures snake across vast chasms with no visible means of support. In some works, impossibly slender and tall brick structures-each brick crisp and discrete-meander upward from the bottom. The windows in these dwellings reveal warmly lit, homey interiors with tables, bookshelves and armchairs. Outside, on lollipop-shaped trees, snow accumulates in piles like Dairy Queen cones.

Some works have a tropical feel. In one, painted with a light blue ground, some palm trees on rocky outcroppings are bent by a strong wind. A mostly yellow piece shows a peculiar structure with speakers, people and trees that rises on toothpick-thin stilts from some unseen point below. The title tells us that this is an outdoor stage. Here, as in most of Davis's works, the scene seems to be a world unto itself.

These fledgling outposts of humanity, however tenuous they may be, also seem to speak to the ability of humans to adapt to a variety of unforgiving environments. Not only is Davis able to make a frigid scene cozy, his works reveal that what may be quirky or threatening on the outside is wholly ordinary and safe on the inside.

Samia Halaby at Skoto Author/s: Jonathan Goodman. Issue: Dec, 2000 In an article on abstract painting, Palestinian-born artist Samia Halaby wrote, "I believe that Abstraction is the creative art and reflection of our time." Halaby brings a strong sense of color to her ongoing search for an abstract language capable of reflecting contemporary experience. The hustle and bustle of urban life-she has been a New York City resident for many years-makes its way into the complex spatial relations of her overlapping color squares and other forms. Halaby also showed landscapes inspired by a visit to the Middle East; the title of her show, "Places and Spaces: Olives of Palestine," identifies her two interests in this exhibition. The show also included brightly colored paper sculptures.

In a few paintings, abstract and representative imagery meet. The mural-sized acrylic on canvas titled Olive Orchard in My Studio (2000; 75 by 175 inches) is a mostly black- and-white scroll-like painting recalling the beauty of olive orchards on the West Bank. Small patches and dabs of black compete with larger aggregations. In several areas the shapes conglomerate to form a nexus of interest; one of these, toward the right, is composed of thinnish stripes, while another, toward the left, includes dabs of different colors. One of Halaby's fragile paper sculptures was hung in front of the canvas. All twisted forms and brilliant hues, the smallish sculpture picked up on the hints of color in the painting. Its placement accentuated the spatial illusion of the canvas, which is part lyric landscape, part energetic abstraction.

Quiet Fire in Blue Sky (1999), a moderately sized oil on canvas, is an abstraction with subtle references to the visible world. The canvas is covered with squarish patches of paint, a lot of them light blue but also greens, yellows, oranges and reds. The juxtaposed hues make for a lively sense of motion, and the preponderance of blues gently evokes the sky. There is something musical about the composition; the relations of colors-their alignment and spacing-result in subtle, eye-catching modulations of tone. Halaby's art is joyously expressive.

Jerome Boutterin at Bernard Jordan Author/s: Joe Fyfe. Issue: Dec, 2000 Jerome Boutterin permits the viewer to experience painting as a kind of transitional site. Using stretched canvases that measure about 4 by 5 feet, he allows two distinct layers of oil paint to emerge. The under-layer is a crisscross pattern, reminiscent of yarn pot holders, that the artist paints with an unsteady hand. He repeatedly moves a loaded brush across and down the canvas, changing colors as he goes. A hue might appear for two or three lines in succession or change in midline. Squares of white canvas regularly peep through the multicolored pattern. While the painting is still wet, Boutterin, using wider brushes, adds the top layer. Here, the brushstrokes come in great variety: meandering or bunched up, splayed across the surface or curling like meat sizzling on a grill, transparent or opaque, overlaying each other or darting across open areas. Although reminiscent of de Kooning and Per Kirkeby, the brio of this brushwork is domesticated in Boutterin's work by being laminated to the homely grids.

Stylistically, the paintings unite Minimalist structure with Abstract-Expressionist gesture, but aspects of Boutterin's work reminded me more strongly of the prevalence of semitransparency and layering in much recent French architecture. I thought of how buildings such as Jean Nouvel's Cartier Foundation in Paris negotiate the space between the street and their interiors by using layers of glass, mesh screens and exposed steel. As the body passes through these sequential wafers of light and material, its mass seems to be sliced up. Something similar happens on Boutterin's canvases, where the paint is suspended on a screen, and the layers are meant to be looked through as much as looked at.

In addition to the large paintings, there were six drawings roughly the same size as the paintings and a beautiful little oddball canvas executed with oil and crayon. Three of the drawings were done in black conte crayon, which the artist used to create a continuous yet hesitant line that goes up and down, back and forth, running over itself in places, other times making long, petal-like loops. Although there were debts here, in particular to Albert Oehlen and Bernard Frize, Boutterin is free of those painters' sometimes chilly irony. His refreshing, oddly ruminative work strikes a perfect balance between intellect and materiality.

Stephen Mueller at Bill Maynes Author/s: Sarah Schemerier. Issue: Nov, 2000 Stephen Mueller has always been something of a protean abstract painter, but this solo show marks an important watershed in his work. Gone is the atmospheric mix of Color Field painting and geometric abstraction that he has practiced for some 20 years. Replacing it are crisper, grid-oriented compositions, no less exuberant and mysterious despite their somewhat systematic format. In every piece Mueller pits foreground against background, as though the two were created with totally different logic. But that's part of what gives the work its charge. The backgrounds consist of wide grids of color, brushy, often transparent, like wet checkered cloths. In the foreground are squares of bright, opaque color (think of greatly enlarged pixels on a computer screen) composed into oddly shaped, enigmatic silhouettes. Mueller doesn't deviate from this stylistic formula; instead, he varies the colors and the shapes in a kind of meditation on contrast. What results can be so optically challenging that at times the painting itself seems to be floating Off the wall. Hot Seat 2, a square canvas with a background grid of vibrant red and blue, features a vaguely towerlike shape (a bit like those Day-Glo castles you find inside fish tanks). We know the tower is in front of the grid - but just barely. That hot red background asserts itself aggressively and plunges our eye into a netherworld where positive and negative space constantly flicker back and forth. In Walls Can Fall, an irregular form that looks something like a pelvis bone hovers just off-center before a pale blue grid. Walls is a tamer canvas than most in terms of hue-this time the grid looks a bit like gingham-but still full of odd contrasts (metallic bronze near pink and green, for instance). Perhaps, with all these interwoven bands of color, Mueller is making reference to the warp and woof of the canvas itself. If that is indeed the case, viewers might well feel they've passed through this magnified weave into a shallow "Flatland" (referring to the 1884 book by Edwin Abbott) type of universe, where color and light are subject to an intuitive, dreamlike logic.

The artist, long interested in Eastern philosophy, bases those odd shapes of pixilated color on the attributes carried or worn by Buddha and bodhisattva figures (thunderbolts, mirrors, prayer beads); but he alters and abstracts them so thoroughly that even an expert familiar with this imagery would be hard-pressed to puzzle them out. Since these symbols obviously carry some weight for the artist, it's funny seems to render them weightless and immaterial. He prefers to keep their messages of transcendence a secret, dissolving them instead into the sensuous play of surface tension and optical illusion.

Sandeep Mukherjee at Margo Leavin Author/s: Michael Duncan. Issue: March, 2001

In his first solo exhibition-and one of the best of the season-L.A. artist Sandeep Mukherjee used startlingly subtle means to evoke a sensuousness worthy of his show's title, "Redolence." The drawings, all untitled, depict multiple versions of the artist's nude body, torso and bald head, floating or tumbling through space or pools of water. Creating a delicate surface tension, he augments the lightly colored pencil drawings by scoring and embossing the paper or vellum supports. These lines create tattoolike effects that seem to displace the drawings' fields into a kind of abstract space. The multiple-view self-portraits suggest a fantastical, airy interior realm where rarefied self-consciousness manifests itself in pure physicality. In one work, repeated incised whirlpools seem to propel waist-up depictions of the artist through a flat blue acrylic field. In another, dusky rose nudes dive and fall against a cream-colored background. A smaller work depicts a daisy chain of round heads on a fleshy orange field.

The showstopper, a nearly 8-foot nude self-portrait, is overlaid with a sparse array of embossed, lozenge-shaped leaves impressed from both the front and back of the paper. Occasionally overlapping as if they were raining over the figure, the variously textured leaves create a shallow depth of field. The serene, gorgeously articulated nude stands with arms relaxed at his sides, his mouth open as if exhaling in a slow yoga breathing exercise that is in sync with the falling leaves. The lightly applied pencil shadings and crisp embossings make even the large-scale drawings intimate works that demand close-up viewing, and all are so delicately drawn that they defy photographic representation. On their lightweight supports, the drawings seem to present a kind of struggle into being, as if registering an unsettled quality of self- portraiture. While consummately self-involved, they appear to be products less of narcissism than of a rarefied self-revelation. They suggest a bare-bones spirituality made manifest in depicted flesh. For Mukherjee, the act of drawing regenerates and reaffirms the self.

Daniel Richter at Contemporary Fine Arts Author/s: Robert Rigney. Issue: Feb, 2001 Daniel Richter has recently been waging a private battle against painting. His earlier canvases brought together a kind of clumsy Abstract with a brazen, eye- popping psychedelia, grotesque figural fragments and haphazard scrawls, daubs, scumblings, splashes, scribbles, dribbles and stains of paint. He was particularly interested in the controlled accident and the willful blunder. In a startling change of direction, Richter has renounced depthless abstract space in favor of spatial illusion and has started painting more or less realistic tableaux. This recent show featured six large canvases (ranging from about 9 to 12 feet in width) completed within the last year. The images are based on figural groupings lifted from press photographs which, one suspects, were selected mainly for their apt compositions, although they are not without allusive power. Each painting is disturbing in its own way. Each is rendered in a garish expressionist style at odds with the subject matter, as if the artist were completely oblivious to the drama at hand. Tuanus depicts a drug bust in a Frankfurt park. Zurberes presents a street-performance scene in Berlin's Alexanderplatz, a place that conjures up a host of sociopolitical and literary connotations. Junas depicts a soldier silhouetted against a black tree in a forest.

In Phienox, the most remarkable and unsettling painting in the show, a throng of brutish figures with spooky, masklike visages is storming the Berlin Wall under a blood-red sky. In the middle of the painting, in an arrangement recalling the Deposition, a figure rendered in a patchwork of glaring yellows and pinks suggestive of heat-sensitive photography is being lowered into a group of brightly painted figures below. The onlookers are painted in muddy greens and browns, facial features exaggerated into primitive masks, mouths agape or obliterated altogether. As with most of Richter's rather bizarre new paintings, exactly what is transpiring is unclear. Whereas the fall of the Wall was popularly presented as a joyful triumph of the human spirit and the forces of freedom, an atmosphere of violence and apocalypse hangs over this painting.

Richter's stylistic transformation is in many ways a capitulation to traditional painting. He has stopped playing postmodern games with painterly modes and has finally allowed meaning, however ambiguous, to triumph.

HIDDEN TREASURE

Works from the Russian avant-garde make for a stunning show in London

By BRIGID O'HARA-FORSTER

For fifty years they lay hidden beneath the cultural permafrost of the Soviet Union. But now the works of a group of Russian artists who erupted at the century's turn are on view for the first time outside Russia at London's Barbican Gallery in "New Art for a New Era, Malevich's Vision of the Russian Avant-Garde." In the aftermath of the Revolution, the leaders of the modern movement — including Pavel Filonov, Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin — put aside their differing interpretations of modernity to create the Museum of Artistic Culture in Petrograd (St. Petersburg). "We, as witnesses to and creators of the New Art movement,” wrote Kazimir Malevich, “must also document it so that its history need not be dug out of the ruins of posterity." In this unique institution the artists themselves selected those paintings that would most clearly show the path that art had taken from the traditions of the 19th century to abstract art's deconstruction of the figurative. They chose works illustrating the effect that exposure to the Impressionists and their successors had had on Russian art, the ways in which a rekindled awareness of traditional folk art — the vivid house colors, the lively design of toys, shop signs, spinning tools — had later brought a distinctive national tone to painting, and finally led to the avant-garde. At the turn of the 19th century Russia woke from its lingering slumber to an explosion of new ideas. Industrialization surged, along with attendant upheavals in social relationships. As the country's vast spaces were transformed by the train and the telegraph, the works of Freud and Einstein were about to alter the country's inner landscape. Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh and Matisse were well known to Russian artists, whose works reflected the revolutions of those foreigners. But, as Dmitri Sarabi- anov, a leading Russian art historian, has argued, "The artistic ‘superpowers’ long ago agreed upon a hierarchy of excellence in which 19th century Russian art appears to have no place." That hierarchy was to be overturned by the men — and many notable women, as well — who engaged in their own artistic revolution. United in rejecting the past, the artists were rarely in agreement on what the future would be, but they did manage to coalesce around the Museum of Artistic Culture. The Barbican show, which runs until June 27, mirrors the original collection by thematically displaying 84 key paintings and assorted posters, drawings, icons and artifacts. In the earliest paintings, those of Larionov and Goncharova, for example, the debt to the artists of Western Europe is clear. The seven paintings by Goncharova demonstrate her journey from old to new. An early still life, redolent of Cézanne in the tonality of its greens, is followed in 1911 by Peasants, in which the painter's work is enriched by an infusion of Russian folk styles. Two massive figures, constructed within bold, sweeping outlines that enclose blocks of rich Fauvist colors, bring to vivid life the pungent individuality within Russia's vast reservoir of people. Two years later, in Cyclist, Goncharova embraced by imbuing her painting with that movement's passion for machinery and speed. The momentum of the rider across the somber palette mimics Goneharova's own artistic journey from the conventions of the past to the stark abstraction of Male- vich's Suprematist movement. Malevich and Kandinsky, twin peaks of abstract art, are well represented at the Barbican show. By the time of the Revolution, the former was an acknowledged leader of the avant- garde. Malevich was a driving force behind the conception of the Museum of Artistic Culture and in 1923 became its first director. His career had embraced many of the century’s burgeoning isms before his most radical Suprematist paintings were first shown to the public in 1915. These pure and subtle images, confined to basic geometric shapes within a narrow but striking range of colors, seemed to fulfill the prediction Tolstoy made in 1898 that the art of the future will "call for clarity, simplicity and brevity." Their power to hold the attention is akin to the spiritual stillness of the icon. Malevich ultimately moved to the elemental form of the square, after which he declared that was over. Malevich, despite his travels abroad, always returned to his Russian roots. Kandinsky, though, spent most of his life in Germany, eventually becoming a citizen. He had studied law and was 29 before he moved to Munich to study art. His flowing, almost musical arrangement of colors, marks and lines contrast with the geometric austerity of Malevich. Although Kandinsky is best known for his oils, four of which are at the Barbican, London's Royal Academy of Art is coincidentally staging an intriguing show of Kandinsky's watercolors and other works on paper until July 4. Three early Chagalls serve as a reminder that this sometimes self-consciously fey artist was capable of the most trenchant statements on the pain of Jewish life. The Red Jew confronts the viewer: a massive, brooding figure, with a glowing wine-red beard set off by one luminous green hand. One of the greatest delights of the exhibition is the chance to encounter less familiar artists. Some, like Larionov and Goncharova, contributed to the movements that eventually became the building blocks of abstract art. Others so thoroughly defy categorization that their works hang in a section called "Separate Individual Systems." Two canvases display the unique style and sensibility of Pavel Filonov. In Flowers of a Universal Blooming and The German War, Filonov seeks to convey, through works of haunting delicacy and disquiet, his concept of the lost harmony of existence. Arrangements of attenuated, tightly packed fragments, through which flowers and faces appear in a dazed, dreamlike fashion, compellingly express the vulnerability of the spiritual. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, who kept his distance from the avant-garde, was inspired more by the Italian masters of the Renaissance and Russia's own icon makers. In Midday, from the astringent citrus color of the apples that loom disproportionately in the foreground, Petrov- Vodkin takes a lofty view, as if God Himself were looking down on His creation. Across a lush blue-green landscape, the basic activities of life are depicted in sudden brushes of brilliant reds and blues. The view tilts alarmingly rightward following the earth's spin as the painting reenacts the cycle from birth to burial. The Museum of Artistic Culture, which first opened in 1921, eventually amassed more than 500 paintings, sculptures and drawings. Through exhibitions and lectures, it contributed to the artistic ferment that was afoot in the Revolution's infancy. But as Stalin's deadening hand fell over the culture, the collection was transferred in 1926 to the State Russian Museum. There the treasures now on view in London were lost to the world until they were "dug out of the ruins of posterity" to delight visitors to the Barbican.

TIME, MAY 31,1999

HIGHEST SOCIETY

Three Van Dyck exhibits display his full range, from a faithful record of nature to publicity shots of the rich

By JAMES LOADER LONDON

The man and woman turn toward each other. The light gleams on her pearls and sparkles on the silvery lace trimming her dress. She's twenty-something, pretty, demure, with soft brown curls; she's passing him a laurel wreath. As he holds out his palm to receive it the fingers of his other hand rest lightly on the hilt of his sword. She glances sideways out of the picture, while his eyes remain fixed lovingly on her face. Placed in a corner, disregarded by either of them, are an orb, a scepter and a royal crown. Anthony Van Dyck's painting of King Charles I of England with his Queen, Henrietta Maria, was revolutionary. English royal portraits of the previous century had shown stiff, iconic figures, impressive but distant; Van Dyck's achievement was to show the humanity within the royal image, fuse the man with the majesty, and in so doing he changed forever the way that the English monarchy would be portrayed and perceived. The paintings of Charles I and his court from the climax to the Royal Academy’s comprehensive show marking the 400th anniversary of Van Dyck’s birth, which runs until Dec.10. It is one of three Van Dyck exhibitions currently in London, and it displays the full range of the artist’s work from his apprenticeship in Antwerp in Rubens’ studio to the court portraits he produced in the last years of his life as an internationally famous artist in the hire of the King of England. They knew how to strut their stuff, the Stuart aristocracy, and Van Dyck captures them in all their gorgeous swagger. Looking at the portraits of these exquisite and confident people one recalls their grim history. The brothers-in-law Lords Digby and Russell, for example, depicted in resplendent black and scarlet, ended up on opposing sides in the Civil War; Tomas Wentworth, First Earl of Strafford, went to the scaffold. Lord John Stuart and Lord Bernard Stuart, quintessential cavalier dandies in satin breeches, kid gloves and lace- trimmed leather boots, were both to die on battlefields within seven years the painting of their portrait. King Charles I also is immortalized with particular poignancy, not just in the double portrait with Henrietta Maria, but in others which show him variously controlling a powerful horse, in armor or en famille. All served the valuable propagandist purpose of suggesting a King who united the best qualities of authority, temperance and sensitivity to serve as a model for his subjects: a hero, a ruler and a devoted family man. The propaganda only worked for a while; three centuries later, the most poignant of these royalist images may now be the famous Triple Portrait Charles I, on loan from Queen Elizabeth II, which was prepared as a model for the Italian sculptor Bernini. It shows the King's head from three angles, and as well as displaying the different facets of his personality, it has come to suggest — since Charles I was executed only 14 years after this painting — a police mug-shot of a convicted criminal. There is much more than the famous Stuart images in the Royal Academy’s exhibition, which gives a wide-ranging chronological summary of Van Dyck's career. The seven years the artist spent in Italy in his 20s are represented by some wonderful, brooding portraits of the grand families of Genoa, a contrast to the more intimate studies of the prosperous middle classes of his native Antwerp. Among Van Dyck's great religious paintings on display are the massive altarpiece St. Augustine in Ecstasy and the Lamentation over the Dead Christ — described by Robin Blake in his excellent biography Van Dyck: a Life (Constable, 1999) as "one of the greatest of all baroque Catholic paintings." Here the dead Christ, slumped against the Virgin as she flings her arms open in grief, conveys the tenderness between mother and son while poignantly suggesting the posture of his body on the cross. Perhaps most appealing of the works on view here are the masterly child portraits. You can't fail to be charmed, for example, by The Balbi Children, or tiny Maddalena Cattaneo, hardly able to stand on her own (a cushion has been carefully placed behind her in case she topples over). The delicacy with which Van Dyck has captured the little girl's gauzy apron is a fine example of his consummate skill in depicting fabric. The display of paintings at the Royal Academy is complemented by an excellent small exhibition, running until Dec. 15, at the nearby Wallace Collection, whose four Van Dycks have been hung in a special display with explanatory wall panels. These include the two greatest examples of Van Dyck's Antwerp period, the nuptial portraits of Philippe Le Roy and his 16-year-old wife-to-be Marie de Raet. Le Roy seems the quintessential aristocrat, as finely bred as the elegant hunting dog at his side. In fact he was the illegitimate scion of an arms-dealing dynasty who made his vast fortune during the wars in the Spanish Netherlands and was aiming to establish his credentials as a gentleman with this glamorous image. The millionaire's young bride is decked out in the sort of jewelry normally seen only in a royal portrait, but her hesitant demeanour suggests a demure bourgeois virgin, with none of the confident swank of Van Dyck's British ladies. At the British Museum, a smaller but highly impressive exhibition — The Light of Nature: Landscape Drawings of Van Dyck and His Contemporaries"— will run until Nov. 28. These include an exquisite view of Rye, with a beautiful attention to detail –a tiny ladder leaning against the cottage roof, nets hanging out to dry. Van Dyck's works comprise some of the first English water colors and are displayed here along with great European artists like Poussin and Rembrandt. They show an ability to summarize the scene before the eyes of the artist with an extraordinary accuracy and mark the beginning of a great English tradition of landscape art. Says exhibition curator Martin Royalton-Kisch: "They're far more atmospheric, more evocative of the English landscape than anything that was produced until the time of Constable or Turner." "The light of Nature" confirms that Van Dyck's success in opening the eyes of the English to their landscapes was as important as his depiction of their ruling class. Along with the exhibitions at the Royal Academy and the Wallace Collection, this gives an essential insight into the huge talents of this fascinating artist

TIME, OCTOBER 25,19

Turner at Tate Britain.

Self Portrait about 1799/Tate

JMW Turner is one of the major figures in the history of art. His prolific output, his wide range of subject matter and technique and his restless creativity have been a continuing source of inspiration. Credited with the re-invention of landscape painting, as anticipating impressionist and even abstract art and as a visionary pioneer of modernism, Turner is an artist who fully justifies the special presentation of his art as it can be seen, uniquely, at Tate Britain. The Turner Bequest, left to the nation by the artist in 1851, comprises hundreds of oils and tens of thousands of watercolours and other works on paper. The Clore Galleries at Tate Britain are the home of this extraordinary collection and thus the world centre for the study and appreciation of Turner's life and work. Tate Britain presents Turner's art to visitors as a distinctly rich and varied body of work which was also made during one of the great periods in British and European art. Turner's work is displayed as both a remarkable individual achievement and as a dynamic contribution to a complex and transformative moment in history. There are therefore rooms which focus on Turner alone and others which include works by contemporaries - be they friendly rivals such as John Constable or followers such as Augustus Wall Callcott. In this way Turner's artistic depth and breadth can be seen in the invigorating context in which it was achieved. Turner's art is also a living presence for artists today. In the rooms on the upper floor of the Clore galleries, Tate Britain will regularly display works by contemporary artists for whom Turner is a constant inspiration. Along with the historical rooms on the main floor, the Study Room upstairs, and Turner Online and the Reading Point downstairs in the Clore Foyer, Tate Britain aims to provide the visitor with the complete introduction to one of the world's greatest painters.

Introducing Turner. The first room in the Clore galleries provides an overview of Turner's work and its historical context. Paintings from throughout his career are shown chronologically, running clockwise around the room. They demonstrate not only the changes in his style and colouring, but also his ambitious range of subject matter, from Old Testament scenes such as The Destruction of Sodom, and elaborate mythological tales of Dido and Aeneas, to dramatic contemporary events such as the battle of Trafalgar, an evocation of the natural effects of a Frosty Morning, and the tragic vision of the vanity of human effort in The Angel Standing in the Sun. The historical context in which Turner worked is suggested by the timeline, also given on the previous two pages. Turner's youth saw two of the most dramatic events of the eighteenth century: the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the French Revolution in 1789. Towards the end of his life, in 1848, revolutionary uprisings again swept across Europe. The timeline also shows some of the technological developments which fascinated Turner, including the one which many feared would sound the death knell for painting: photography. The development of Turner's reputation, both during and after his lifetime, is demonstrated by quotations from artists, writers and critics, some of which are reproduced on the back cover. It is important to remember, however, that different people would have been able to see different aspects of Turner's work at different times. For example Nor ham Castle, the last work in this room and now the most popular of Turner's paintings at Tate Britain, was never seen in public in Turner's lifetime. The computer in the corner of the room presents an interactive reconstruction of Turner's Gallery, which gives some idea of the way Turner himself wanted his work to be seen in public. Downstairs, in the Clore Foyer, is a reading point providing more information about Turner, and further computer terminals providing access to details about Turner's works in the Tate Collection, as well as a new section of the website focusing on Turner's life and work.

Turner and Myth. As a student at the Royal Academy Schools, Turner was taught that the highest form of art was history painting: subjects from myth, literature or the Bible dealing with moral issues that should be universal in their appeal. Unlike today, in Turner's lifetime the history and legends of ancient Greece or Rome were widely known among educated people. Turner painted subjects from classical mythology throughout his career. They enabled him to demonstrate his knowledge of the art and architecture of the past, and the breadth of his reading. However, these pictures are of more than academic interest. Since he was above all a landscape painter, Turner preferred to treat mythical subjects in a landscape setting. The 'historic landscape' was a recognised category of painting. But Turner did not paint the natural drama of the elements and the cycles of time and seasons as mere background. Instead he showed them to be as powerful and inspiring as the deeds of gods and heroes. Turner saw classical myths as interpretations of the forces of nature. The interplay of light and dark in his work reflected their accounts of the oppositional processes of good and evil in the natural and material world.

Sublime Landscape. 'What are the scenes of nature that elevate the mind ... and produce the sublime sensation? Not the gay landscape, the flowery field, or the flourishing city; but the hoary mountain, and the solitary lake; the aged forest, and the torrent falling over the rock.' (Hugh Blair, Lectures, 1783) This room shows Turner's paintings in the context of work by other, contemporary artists who, like him, were influenced by the idea that landscape can be a source of awe, mystery or even terror. These responses were associated in Turner's lifetime with an aesthetic category known as the Sublime. In his influential Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Edmund Burke distinguished between the Beautiful - things that are smooth, unthreatening and pleasurable - and the Sublime -things that are huge, obscure or terrible and arouse feelings that invigorate and elevate the mind. The idea spread widely, informing popular literature as well as aesthetic debate. In an age of change and uncertainty, the Sublime offered a kind of shock-tactic that affirmed the significance of an individual's innate response to nature. In the visual arts, it led artists to create a dramatic new vision of the natural world. But it was Turner who explored the potential of Sublime landscape imagery most comprehensively.

Pastoral Landscape. Like the room opposite (Sublime Landscape), this room examines an aesthetic category which had a vital influence on landscape painting: in this case, the gentler associations of the pastoral tradition. Also like the room opposite, Turner's paintings are here shown alongside the work of other artists, such as Thomas Gainsborough and, in particular, Richard Wilson, whom Turner admired and whose influence can be seen in his early works. Throughout the eighteenth century the most admired landscape painters were those working a century earlier, in particular the classical landscape painter, Claude Lorrain. British patrons were attracted by nostalgic images of idealised rural life, and the landscape of Italy was seen as the living embodiment of the Claudean tradition. However, most patrons assumed that British artists were not capable of painting such elevated images. Richard Wilson sought to prove them wrong. Wilson and other late eighteenth-century painters fused images of Britain with the mood and composition of classical landscapes. This was slow to gain acceptance. Both Wilson and Gainsborough met with limited acclaim and financial success. However, Turner took up both the classical and British pastoral traditions. He developed them in a way that satisfied his immediate audience as well as laying the groundwork for the more radical compositions of his later career.

England: Richmond Hill, on the Prince Regent's Birthday exhibited 1819. Tate

Turner and Tourism in Britain. Turner's early career coincided with the long wars between Britain and France (1793-1815). Travel to the Continent became almost impossible, so attention was turned to the British landscape and architectural heritage. As this room shows, watercolourists such as Thomas Hearne and Paul Sandby had already begun to paint the national landscape in more inventive and imaginative ways. But with the war, art and literature concerned with travel in Britain gained unprecedented significance, providing a focus for patriotic feeling. This was a complex phenomenon. Artists drew on newly-developed aesthetic theories: the Sublime, with its revaluation of natural grandeur, and the Picturesque, which emphasised the pleasure of roughness and variety in nature or old buildings. Popular publications by antiquarians led to a greater appreciation of Gothic architecture and ruins, while guidebooks and magazines made new ideas about art and the landscape more widely known. Turner toured Britain frequently. During the 1790s, he and fellow-artists Thomas Girtin and John Sell Cotman painted watercolours which presented buildings and places in Britain in powerful new ways. In the following two decades, Turner's oil paintings built on these innovations and created a richly evocative imagery of the nation.

Turner and Tourism in Europe. This room complements the one opposite. It shows how, unlike Constable who never left England, Turner travelled widely in Europe, especially in France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. The room contains finished works, as well as oil sketches, sketchbooks and tour albums, all of which were either made while Turner was travelling, or produced later from sketches. Turner first visited the Continent in 1802, taking advantage of the temporary break in the Napoleonic Wars, and travelled through France and Switzerland, returning home via Paris. Hostilities were soon resumed and it was not until 1817 that he travelled again. In 1819 Turner first toured Italy, which had been a cultural focus for British artists and tourists since the early- eighteenth century. Here, as with all his Continental trips, Turner sketched incessantly. He made drawings and occasional watercolours, building up an enormous 'reference library' of images, mostly contained in sketchbooks. Although Turner travelled primarily for his own artistic inspiration, he did occasionally involve himself in commercial projects. At the end of 1832 the first volume of his series called Turner's Annual Tour was issued. These were travel books of French rivers, containing engravings by Turner and a descriptive narrative by the journalist Leitch Ritchie. They were produced primarily for the burgeoning tourist market.

Exhibiting Turner. This room is intended to evoke the exhibitions in which Turner and his contemporaries showed their work. The Royal Academy's annual exhibition was the arena in which reputations were made and maintained. For most of Turner's career, the Academy's principal exhibition space was the Great Room at Somerset House. Here, the 'hanging committee' arranged the pictures densely, above and below a wooden moulding some eight feet from the floor, which became known as 'the line'. Prime positions were much sought after. The proportions of this room do not allow us to recreate ‘the line’ precisely, but we have followed the convention of hanging larger works above it. Most of the other artists whose work is shown in this room were close friends of Turner. Most, too, were colleagues throughout his life, though Eastlake, Landseer and Bonington were younger and emerged when he was already well established. Some, like Callcott, were thought at the time to present serious competition, while Constable - despite his standing today -was less highly regarded. Despite their dominance at the Academy exhibitions, we have excluded portraits and instead concentrated on those kinds of painting which Turner practised himself: landscape, history and genre.

Finished or Unfinished? From the late 1820s, Turner regularly submitted incomplete canvases to the Royal Academy exhibitions. These were finished off during the three days allowed to Academicians before the exhibition opened to the public. The amazing transformations that Turner effected were legendary even in his own lifetime. They far exceeded the original purpose of these 'Varnishing Days', which had really been set aside for more minor adjustments to recently completed pictures. The paintings in this room provide an idea of what Turner's unfinished canvases looked like before he began the transformation process. Those shown here remained unfinished for different reasons. Some were begun as specific commissions but were never completed. Others are more personal, and may have evolved purely for Turner's own contemplation. The practice of leaving much of his work open-ended until its public resolution lies at the heart of the much less detailed finish of Turner's later canvases. It can also be understood as a development parallel to the processes he used for preparing images in watercolour. After his death, his studio was found to contain numerous 'beginnings', both in oil and watercolour. Not surprisingly, the Victorian recipients of Turner's bequest considered such works incomprehensible. It was only around 1900 that examples were first accessioned and displayed as part of the national collection. We have tried to show all the unfinished canvases without their frames; two of them could not be unframed, for conservation reasons.

Turner and the Modern World. Britain changed enormously in Turner's lifetime. The paintings and prints in this room show how Turner and some of his contemporaries represented the most visible of those changes: in the landscape, transport and the economy. When Turner was born in 1775, most people in Britain still worked on farms and lived in the countryside. By the time of his death in 1851 the economy had been transformed. More and more people lived in the cities, and industrial labour and international commerce were increasingly important. London had become the capital of a world-wide empire, while industrial regions thrived. Traditional ideas about morality, beauty and social hierarchy had been created in an aristocratic and agricultural society. Now they were challenged by the arrival of modern capitalism and political democracy. The new industrial and commercial environment could not be accommodated easily within the conventions of landscape painting. These had been designed to suit idealised and rustic subjects which were meant to be timeless. But Turner found ways of representing the speed, scale and novelty of modern life. He showed manufacturing industries within landscapes of Sublime grandeur and explored the extremes of light and movement in his representations of modern commerce and transport.

Turner Watercolours. The displays in the two rooms on the upper floors of the Clore galleries bring together highlights from the watercolours and drawings in the Turner Bequest. This celebrated collection was bequeathed to the nation in 1856 and has been housed in the Clore galleries since 1986. It includes everything left in the artist's studio when he died in 1851, aged seventy-six. As well as finished oils and watercolours, it contains a wealth of unfinished, preparatory works. These document Turner's working methods and techniques and allow us an insight into his astonishingly prolific career and extensive travels. The selection shown in these rooms combines some well known treasures of the Bequest with some works never before exhibited. The first room contains examples of Turner's output from his early training at the Royal Academy to his important first Italian tour of 1819. These years saw Turner's emergence as a leading exponent of watercolour and landscape art. The second room concentrates on Turner's later career and includes works on which his reputation as one of the most important British artists is founded.