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Moscow
State Academy
of Industrial and Applied Arts
Essay
“Great Britain as it is seen by eyes of an artist ”
Student: 1 course, MDA & PA, MDP
Zadiranova Olga
Moscow 2011
A Great Painting Enriches
Our Experience of Life
Just as a Great Poem Does or a Great
Musical Piece
Painting in England in the 17-19th centuries is represented by a number of great artists and during that period it was greatly influenced by foreign painters.
The Flemish painter Van Dyck was really the father of English portrait school. The English king personally invited Van Dyck to London and during his first year in England the painter spent most of his time painting the King and the Queen. Van Dyck created the impressive, formal type of portrait and such masters as Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence and Raeburn owed much to their study of his works. He created a genre of aristocratic and intellectual portrait which influenced much the development of English painting. Van Dyck created the type of portrait which helped him to convey the sitter’s individual psychology.
Henry Fielding once said: “It has been a vast recommendation of a painter to say that figures seem to breath, but surely it is much greater and nobler applause, that they appear to think.”
And in this connection the portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds inevitably come to my mind. He is best known for the manner in which he married the Grand Style of the great Italian masters with portraits of the English aristocracy.
I seemed to comprehend the message Reynolds was trying to leave to the next generations. Grandeur and formality are minimized in his pictures. Human feelings and emotions are in the centre. For example in his portrait of “The Countess Spenser with her daughter Georgiana” the background elements of the column, drapery and brooding clouds are the last thing we pay our attention to. It is the loving face of the mother and the innocence of a five-year girl that really astonish. I seemed to understand that mothers will always be so anxious, caring and generous, no matter whether they wear an intricate lace and finest silk or a denim shirt or jeans. The ability to implement this message to the people really makes the master. That explains the fact why Reynolds is credited with having elevated portrait painting in Britain to a height equaling that of the great Italian masters. His status during the reign of George III was such that when the King formed the Royal Academy in 1768, Reynolds was appointed its fist President.
Miguel de Cervantes said: “Good painters imitate nature, bad ones vomit it” One can’t but think about English landscapists percepting the universal wisdom of the saying. I was deeply impressed by Thomas Gainsborough’s “Ms and Mrs Andrews”. A peaceful provincial couple is resting after an afternoon of shooting. To the right, their estate extends far into the distance. The sheaves of corn tell us it is autumn, and Mr Andrews’s dog and shotgun imply that he has been hunting. It was quite an experience when almost instinctively I started looking for a pheasant shot by this elegant English gentleman. I felt authentic pity that Gainsborough never completed the painting. His wife’s beautifully executed blue satin dress is unfinished – the outline of a bird is visible on her lap. Robert Andrews and Frances Carter were married in November 1748 and it is thought that this portrait was painted as a celebration of this event.
It’s fantastic how sensitive we become while dealing with a real masterpiece. I saw that both of them are not very young and the words from a Russian song, where autumn is compared to a person’s age came to my mind. The song persuaded us to treasure every season if our life, like the Andrews were enjoying the last sun of late autumn. The years made them wiser, happier and brought peace and stability into their hearts.
I seemed to understand that not only the intuitive sense of style and color and the superb handling of paint make him one of the artistic geniuses of eighteenth century Europe, but the ability to put verse and music into every single stroke of brush.
John Constable an English landscape painter painted many well-known works (“A Cottage in a Cornfield”, “The Loch”). He is the first landscape painter who considered that every painter should make his sketches direct from nature that is working in the open air. His technique and coloring are very close to the impressionists. Constable ignored the rules established by Reynolds. He insisted that art should be based on observation of nature and feeling. He was the herald of romanticism. But the realistic qualities of his art are sensed very strongly.
The furious apostle of the philosophy of romanticism was William Blake who was opposed to the rules of Reynolds proposing that the guiding force for creative spirit should come from imagination not reason.
A complete expression of romantic ideal can find itself in the pictures of Turner. Joseph Turner was an outstanding painter whose most favourite topic was to paint sea (“The Shipwreck”). He painted waves and storms, clouds and mists with a great skill. Although his talent was recognized immediately he deliberately turned his back to the glittering social world of London. Victorian England which found it more important that a man be a gentleman in the first place and only in the second a genius, never forgave him.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was an association of painters, formed in London in 1848. Its chief members were Holman Hunt, Jon Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. As a group, the Brotherhood lasted for little more than a decade, but it gave a new direction to Victorian art which lasted into the 20th century. They determined to paint direct from nature, with objective truthfulness, emulating the work of the great Italian artists before Raphael. They appreciated nothing but beauty and turned to the Bible and classical mythology for inspiration.