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.

UNIT VII CONSTABLE (1776-1837)

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 ['könst{bl]; Turner ['týn@]; Ruisdael [PraizdÓl] Stour [stu@]; Suffolk [Psöf@k]; chords ['kýdz]; triumphantly [traiPömf@ntli]; varnish ['vÓniS]; palette [Pp{l@t]; plough [plau]; wain [wein]; flexible [Pfleks@bl]; culminated [Pkölmineitid]; plank [pl{nk]

NOTES

The Hay Wain - "Телега для сена"

Suffolk - Суффолк (графство)

Stour - р. Ст(а)ур

TASKS

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?

III. i. Give Russian equivalents of the following phrases:

the poetic landscape; the brown tonality; oil sketches made outdoors; a surrender to the forces of nature; self-identification with sunlight and wind; to make sketching tours; regions of sce­nic beauty; preliminary outdoor studies; patches of light; free brushwork; to set in motion; a flexible steel palette knife; a finished painting; a colour sketch.

ii. Give English equivalents of the following phrases:

законченная картина; цветной набросок; гибкий сталь­ной шпатель; подчиниться силам природы; пятна света; эски­зы маслом, написанные на пленэре; подвижные мазки; богат­ство цвета; олицетворение с солнечным светом и ветром; живо­писные места; романтический пейзаж; коричневый тон; ездить по стране и писать этюды.

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

iv. Arrange the following in the pairs of synonyms:

a) triumphant; dapple; preliminary; highlight; hue; ripple;

b) mark; preparatory; victorious; tone; accent; wave.

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

1. The painting shows the Stour with its trees, a mill, and dis­tant fields.

2. The distant church tower, the wagon, the horses, and the boy looking over the gate are instruments on which light plays.

A. Stroke-by-Nayland

B. The Hay Wain

V. Translate the text into English.

Новое отношение к природе воплотил в своем творчестве Джон Констебл. Констебл никогда не покидал Англию. Он изу­чал только ту живопись, которую мог видеть на родине. Кон­стебл один из первых стал писать этюды на пленэре, опередив в непосредственности впечатления художников французской шко­лы. Важным нововведением Констебля явились его большие эс­кизы маслом. Констебл писал смелыми подвижными мазками.

Картины Констебля на парижских выставках 1824 и 1825 гг. явились истинным откровением для французских романтиков. Новаторская живопись Констебля оказала большое влияние на развитие французского пейзажа XIX века.

VI. Summarize the text.

VII. Topics for discussion.

1. Constable's style and colour.

2. Constable's artistic influence.

UNIT VIII TURNER (1775-1851)

Joseph Mallord William Turner was a Londoner. He had no mystical attachment to nature. He made frequent trips throughout the Continent, especially Germany, Switzerland and Italy, revelling in mountain landscapes, gorgeous cities (especially Venice), and the most extreme effects of storms, fires and sunsets. Once he even had himself tied to a mast during a storm at sea so that he could experience the full force of the wind, waves, and clouds swirling about him. Turner made beautiful and accurate colour notes on the spot in water-colour, and painted his pictures in the studio, in secrecy, living under an assumed name and accept­ing no pupils. He was the first to abandon pale brown in favour of white, against which his brilliant colour effects could sing with perfect clarity.

Turner often painted historical subjects, usually those of Delacroix, involving violence as well as shipwrecks and conflagra­tions, in which the individual figures appear as scarcely more than spots in a seething tide of humanity. He liked to accompany the labels with quotations from poetry, often his own. Nonetheless, at his death a great many unfinished canvases were found that had no identifiable subject or representation at all. Turner really en­joyed and painted the pure movement of masses of colour - a kind of colour music, strikingly relevant to Abstract Expression­ism of the 1950s. Shortly before the opening of an exhibition at the Royal Academy, the ageing Turner, would send unfinished works, and on varnishing day paint in the details to make the pictures exhibitable to a nineteenth-century public.

The Slave Ship, of 1840, represents an incident common in the days of slavery, when entire human cargoes were thrown into the sea, either because of epidemics or to avoid arrest. The ship itself, the occasional figures, and the fish feasting on the corpses in the foreground were obviously painted at great speed only after the real work, the movement of fiery waves of red, brown, gold, and cream, had been brought into completion.

Rain, Stream and Speed, of 1844, is one of the first paintings of a railway train, and its Romantic idealisation of "progress" - man conquering nature by utilising its force. The train with its light carriages moving across the high bridge is enough of a sub­ject already, but Turner lifts it to an almost unearthly realm in which insubstantial forces play through endless space. The veils of blue and gold are real subjects of the picture. Turner's heightened and liberated colour sense provided a revelation to those Impres­sionists (especially Monet) who took refuge in London in 1870.

Make sure you know how to pronounce the following words:

Joseph Mallord William Turner [PdÆozif Pm{l@d Pwilj@m Ptýn@]; attachment [@Pt{tSm@nt]; gorgeous [PgýdÆ@s]; quotation [kwu@teiSn]; revelling [Prevlin]; revelation [rev@PleiSn]; violence [Pvai@l@ns]; especially [isPp@Sli]; reveries [Prev@riz]; Monet [mouPne]

NOTES

Rain, Stream and Speed - "Дождь, пар и скорость"

The Slave Ship - "Корабль с рабами"

TASKS

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

1. Turner had mystical attachment to nature.

2. Turner liked to accompany the labels with quotations from poetry.

3. Turner often painted landscapes which he constructed in the studio.

4. Turner always sent finished works to the Royal Academy.

5. Turner painted the pure movement of masses of colour - a kind of colour music, strikingly relevant to Abstract Expression­ism of the 1950s.

6. Turner's heightened and liberated colour sense provided a revelation to the Impressionists.