Западноевропейское искусство от Хогарта до Сальвадора Дали

iii. Make up sentences of your own with the given phrases.

iv. Arrange the following in the pairs of synonyms:

a) solitary; emotional; to admire; derive; conflagration

b) lonely; obtain; to praise; fire; passionate.

IV. Here are descriptions of some of Delacroix's works of art. Match them up to the titles given below.

1. This picture is a phantasmagoria with no real cruelty.

2. Delacroix illustrates a moment in which the poet is steered across the dark tides of the lake.

3. These fantasies point directly toward the twentieth century.

4. The subject was an incident from the Greek wars of libe-ration against the Turks.

5. This picture had a great influence on the Impressionists.

a) Massacre at Chios

b) Tiger Hunt

c) Women of Algiers

d) Bark of Dante

e) Death of Sardanapalus

V. Translate the text into English.

Выставленная в Салоне в 1824 г. картина «Резня в Хиосе» сделала Делакруа вождем романтизма. Картина получила неоднозначную оценку. Одни ею восхищались, другие называли картину резней живописи. Делакруа не признавал данное ему звание романтика. Романтизм противопоставлялся классицизму и имел расплывчатое определение. Однако, несмотря на отсутствие программы, стал мощным художественным движением XIX в.

В Салоне в 1827 г. Делакруа выставил большое полотно «Смерть Сарданапала», которое стало манифестом романтизма. Картину оценили должным образом только в 1921 г., когда она была куплена Лувром.

Эжен Делакруа жил интенсивной духовной жизнью. Его кумирами были: в живописи – Гойя и Рубенс, в музыке – Моцарт. Первая работа Делакруа «Ладья Данте», вдохновленная «Божественной комедией» Данте, подверглась сильной критике.

Поездки Делакруа в конце 1831 – 1832 г. в мусульманские страны вдохновили художника на создание прекрасных картин, одной из которых является «Алжирские женщины в своих покоях» 1834).

VI. Summarize the text.

VII. Topics for discussion.

1. Romanticism in art.

2. Delacroix's style and characters.

3. Delacroix's artistic heritage.

The mainstream of English painting in the first half of the nineteenth century was landscape. Constable and Turner, the greatest of the landscapists, approached nature with excitement. At that time nature was beginning to be swallowed up by the expanding cities of the Industrial Revolution.

John Constable, the son of a miller on the River Stour in Suffolk, honoured all that was natural and traditional, including the age-old occupation of farmer, miller, and carpenter, close to the land whose fruits and forces they turned to human use. He loved the poetic landscapes of Gainsborough, he studied the constructed compositions of the Baroque, he admired Ruisdael's skies. Rebelling against the brown tonality then fashionable in landscape painting – actually the result of discoloured varnish darkening the Old Masters – he supplemented his observations of nature with a study of the vivacity of Rubens's colour and brushwork.

As early as 1802, Constable started to record the fleeing aspects of the sky in the rapid oil sketches made outdoors. «It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which sky is not the keynote, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment," he wrote. Constable systematically studied cloud formation in 1821-22. These studies show his surrender to the forces of nature, a passionate self-identification with sunlight, wind, and moisture.

Constable never left England and made dutiful sketching tours through regions of acknowledged scenic beauty. His superb The Hay Wain , of 1821, sums up his ideals and his achievements. Composed as if accidentally – though on the basis of many preliminary outdoor studies – the picture, painted in the studio, shows Constable's beloved Stour with its trees, a mill, and distant fields. In his orchestra of natural colour the solo instrument and conductor at once is the sky. The clouds sweep by, full of light and colour, and their shadows and the sunlight spot the field with green and gold. As the stream ripples, it mirrors now the trees, now the sky. The trees are made up of many shades of green and patches of light reflect from their foliage. These white highlights were called «Constable's snow». The Hay Wain was triumphantly exhibited at the Salon of 1824, where Constable's broken colour and free brushwork set in motion a new current in French landscape art, which later culminated in the Impressionist movement.

In 1829 Constable became member of the Royal Academy.

In later life, after the death of his wife, Constable entered a period of depression in which his passionate communion with nature reached a pitch of semi-mystical intensity. One of his late pictures is Stroke-by-Nayland , of 1836-37, a large canvas in which the distant church tower, the wagon, the plough, the horses, and the boy looking over the gate are instruments on which light plays. The symphonic breadth, of the picture, and its crushing chords of colour painted in a rapid technique, bring to the finished painting the immediacy of the colour sketch. Such pictures are equalled in earlier art only by certain landscape backgrounds in Titian or by the mythical reveries of the late Rembrandt.

Make sure you know how to pronounce the following words:

Constable; Turner; Ruisdael Stour; Suffolk; chords; triumphantly; varnish; palette; plough; wain; flexible; culminated; plank

The Hay Wain – «Телега для сена»

Suffolk – Суффолк (графство)

Stour – р. Ст(а)ур

I. Read the text. Make sure you understand it. Mark the following statements true or false.

1. Constable was the greatest English portraitist.

2. In the first half of the eighteenth century nature was beginning to be swallowed up by the expanding cities of the Industrial Revolution.

3. Discoloured varnish darkened the Old Masters.

4. Constable often visited Italy, Belgium, Holland and Spain.

5. The Hay Wain was highly praised at the Salon of 1834.

6. In 1829 Constable became member of the Royal Academy.

II. How well have you read? Can you answer the following questions?

1. What was the mainstream of English painting in the first half of the nineteenth century? What was the attitude of Constable and Turner to nature?

2. What did Constable honour? What did he love and admire?

3. What did Constable start to record as early as 1802? Why? What do Constable's studies show? What tours did Constable make?

4. What does The Hay Wain sum up? What does this picture show? What is the major element of the picture? How has Constable depicted the clouds, the stream and the trees? How were the white highlights called? What did Constable set in motion?

5. Was Constable happy in later life? Why?

6. What was one of Constable's late pictures? What is represented in this work of art? What brings to the finished painting the immediacy of the colour sketch?