VI. Two portraits of sarah siddons

1. Study the text “Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse” in “In the World of Painting” ( p.P. 22-24). Summarize it. Use the following vocabulary:

- to create an impression by ...

- the pose and bearing of the central figure

- arrangement of figures

- monochromatic

- the dominant tone

- a much greater variety in the colour

- in deep contemplation

- the regal quality of the whole figure

- the effect of solemn grandeur

- to suggest sb. (e. g. Michelangelo)

- (the) heavy shadow effects

- a pastiche

- to emerge as a unit

- an air of grandeur and dignity

- a prime objective of art

2. Read the text of Ex. V in “Practical Course of English” (3d year) edited by Prof. Arakin, 1974, p. 145. Render it in English.

3. Pass your judgement on the opinion of an enthusiastic admirer who saw the “Mrs. Siddons” by Gainsborough in the Manchester exhibition of 1857.

The "Mrs. Siddons" by Gainsborough has the distinction of being not only a remarkable work of art, but a unique interpretation of a unique personality. It is not only one of the artist's finest portraits, but also one of the best of the many likenesses of the great tragic actress, who sat to most of the celebrated masters of her day. It was painted in 1784, when the queen of the tragic drama was in her twenty-ninth year and at the zenith of her fame. It was as Lady Macbeth that Mrs. Siddons achieved her greatest triumphs and her realization of the despair of the murderess has never been surpassed.

An enthusiastic admirer who saw it in the Manchester exhibition of 1857 wrote as follows: "The great tragic actress, who interpreted the passions with such energy and such feeling, and who felt them so strongly herself, is better portrayed in this simple half-length in her day dress, than in allegorical portraits as the Tragic Muse or in character parts. This portrait is so original, so individual, as a poetic expression of character, as a deliberate selection of pose, as bold colour and free handling, that it is like the work of no other painter. It is useless to search for parallels, for there are none. Veronese a little – but no, it is a quite personal creation. This is genius."

4. Work in pairs. Compare the two portraits. Landscape painting

I. Give a brief talk about the outstanding English landscape painters Constable and Turner.

II. Read the following text and speak on the similarities and differences between Constable’s and Turner’s painting.

The two geniuses usually placed head and shoulders above their contemporaries are Constable and Turner. They are so essentially different from each other that it is difficult to compare their stature. Such comparisons are in any case idle except when they shed light on the figures concerned.

If one wants to understand the essential difference between them, a comparison between their water-colours will perhaps show it best. Yet in noting the difference one is reminded too of the things they had in common. Both were acute observers of nature and both shared the romantic passion for light. Where they differed was not in fundamental principles, but in their way of looking at things. With Constable it is the sensation of the moment that counts supremely, and one feels, especially in the later water-colours, that he deliberately puts imagination aside in order that the subject he is painting may be freshly seen and the mind cleared of falsifying preconceptions. For him light is the means by which a tree or cloud may take on some particular significance in the ordinary scale of things. What he seeks to do is not to “improve” nature, not to rub off the bloom in the name of higher art, but to paint exactly what he sees in the clearest, freshest tones; so that even today the blues and greens on the pages of his later sketchbooks flash out like pure colour rays reflected in a prism.

In Turner’s art the vision tends to be more inward, more consciously distilled, so to speak, and even when he paints most closely to nature, one feels that imagination has at some point intervened and added an element of studied art. For him light is not so much a means of heightening reality as of diminishing it, of dissolving away the solid form and rendering it more mysterious and remote. And as he grew older he became - unlike Constable - a painter of a private world, a world of mists and nuances, like some vision of the earth itself before the primal vapours coalesced... Even in his later topographical drawings Turner gives his subjects the filmy quality of dreams, using sunshaft and rainbow to dissolve away reality and transform a view of town or river into a vision of engulfing light.