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МЕНЮ
| British painting in the 17-18th centuries (Британская живопись 17-18 вв.)British painting in the 17-18th centuries (Британская живопись 17-18 вв.)1) Some Famous Illuminated Manuscripts. It is usual to regard English painting as beginning with the Tudor
period and for this are several reasons. Yet the fact remains that
painting was practised in England for many hundred years before the first The development of the linear design in which English artists have
always excelled can be traced back to the earliest illuminations
brilliantly evolved in irish monastic centres and brought to Northumbria in
the seventh century. Its principal feature is that wonderful elaboration
of interlaced ornament derived from the patterns of metal-work in the The greatest achievement in Irish manuscript illumination, the Book of Kells is now generally assigned to the late eighth or early ninth century. The Book of Kells is a manuscrept of the gospes of rather large size(33*24 cm)written on thick glazed vellum. Its pages were originally still larger; but a binder, a century or so ago, clipped away their margins, cutting even into edges of the illuminations. Otherwise the manuscript is in relatively good condition, in spite of another earlier misadventure. The great gospel, on account of its wrought shrine, was wickedly stolen in the night from the sacresty of the church and was found a few months later stripped of its gold, under a sod. Finally the manuscript passed to trinity college, where it is today. No manuscript approaches the book of kells for elaborate
ornamentation. A continuous chain of ornamentation runs through the text. The thirteenth century had been the century of the great cathedrals,
in which nearly all branches of art had their share. Work on these immense
enterprises contunued into the fourteenth century and even beyond, but they
were no longer the main focus of art. We must remember that the world had
changed a great deal during that peiod. In the middle of the twelfth
century Europe was still a thinly populated continent of peasants with
moasteries and baron's castles as the main centres of power and learning. The love of fourteenth-century painters for graceful and delicate
details is seen in such famous illustrated manuscripts as the English 2) 16th and 17th Centuries. When Henry VII abolished Papal authority in England in 1534 and ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 he automatically brought to an end the tradition of religious art as it had been practised in the middle ages and in monastic centres. The break was so complete that painting before and after seem entirely different thing, in subject, style and medium. The local centres of culture having vanished, the tendency of painting to be centralized in London and in the service of the court was affirmed. Secular patronage now insisted on portraiture, and the habit grew up of useng foreign painters--an artificial replacement of the old, international interchange of artists and craftsmen. Yet the sixteenth century was the age of Humanism which had created a new interest in the human personality. 3) Painting In The 16th --17th Centuries. In the sixteenth century Holbein came to England, bringing with him a much more highly developed pictorial tradition with a much fuller sense of plastic relief. Holbein himself was a supreme master of linear design; he could draw patterns for embroidery and jewellery as no one else, but he never entirely sacrificed the plastic feeling for form to that, and in his early work he modelled in full light and shade. Still, it was not difficult for him to adapt himself somewhat to the English fondness for flat linear pattern. Particularly in hes royal portraits, e.g. the portrait of Henry VIII, we find and insistence on the details of the embroidered patterns of the clothes and the jewellery, which is out of key with the careful modelling of hands and face. Finally, by Elizabeth's reign almost all trace of Holbein's plastic feeling was swept away and the English instinct for linear description had triumphed completely. But the English were not left long in peace with their linear style. Kneller of the next generation caried on the same tradition. What of native English talent? The approach of the Civil war stripped
away the polish and brought out a sterner strain of character no less in
the aristocratic opponents. In the realism with which he depicted the
militant Cavalier, William Dobson(1610-46) marks a breakaway from Van The painting of Endymion Porter, thefriend and agent of Charles I in
the purchase of works of art, is generally accounted Dobson's masterpiece. The solemnity of the times is also reflected in the portraiture produced during the Commonwealth period and one would naturally expect an even greater refection of elegance than that of Dobson during the Puritan dominance. Indeed a prospect of unsparing realism is set out in Cromwell's admonition--to "remark all these ruffness, pimples, warts" and paint " everything as you see in me". The corresponding painter to Dobson on the Parliamentary side, however, Robert Walker, was a much less original artist and still closely imitated Van Dyck's graceful style. A number of other portrait painters are of interest by reason of their subjects. John Greenhill (c. 1644--76) is of some note as one of the first artists to depict English actors in costume. John Riley (1646--91) was an artist whose work is distinguished by a grave reticence. In succession to Lely he painted many eminent people, including Dryden, and some minor folk, as for example the aged housemaid Bridget Holmes. He was described by Horace Walpole as "one of the best native painters who have flourished in England". 4) Painting In The 18th Century. The eighteenth century was the great age of British painting. It was
in this period that British art attained a distinct national character. Hogarth was followed by a row of illustrious painters: Thomas 5) Satirical Genre Painting 5.1) William Hogarth(1697--1764) William Hogarth was unquestionably one of the greatest of English artists and a man of remarkably individual character and thought. It was his achievement to give a comprehensive view of social life within the framework of moralistic and dramatic narrative. He produced portraits which brought a fresh vitality and truth into the jaded profession of what he called "phizmongering". He observed both high life and low with a keen and critical eye and his range of observation was accompanied by an exceptional capacity for dramatic composition, and in painting by a technical quality which adds beauty to pictures containing an element of satire of caricature. A small stocky man with blunt pugnacious features and alert blue eyes, he had all the sharp-wittedness of the born Cockney and an insular pride which led to his vigorous attacks on the exaggerated respect for fereign artists and the taste of would-be connoisseurs who brought over (as he said) "shiploads of dead Christs, Madonnas and Holy Families" by inferior hands. Thereis no reason to suppose he had anything but respect for the great Italian masters, though he deliberately took a provocative attitude. What he objected to as much as anything was the absurd veneration of the darkness produced by time and varnish as well as the assumption that English painters were necessarily inferior to others. A forthrightness of statement may perhaps be related to hes North-country inheritance, for his father came to London from West-morland, but was in any case the expression of a democratic outlook and unswervingly honest intelligence. The fact that he was apprenticed as a boy to a silver-plate engraver
has a considerable bearing on Hogarth's development. It instilled a
decorative sense which is never absent from his most realistic productions. As a painter Hogarth may be assumed to have learned the craft in As a painter of social life, Hogarth shows the benefit of the system
of memory training which he made a self-discipine. London was his universe
and he displayed his mastery in painting every aspect of its people and
architecture, from the mansion in Arlington Street, the interior of which
provided the setting for the disillusioned couple in the second scene of
the "Marriage а la Mode", to the dreadful aspect of Bedlam. Yet he was not
content with one line of development only and the work of his mature years
takes a varied course. He could not resist the temptation to attempt a
revalry with the history painters, though with little successs. The The genius of Hogarth is such that he is often regarded as a solitary rebel against a decaying artificiality, and yet though he had no pupils, he had contemporaries who, while of lesser stature in one way and another, tended in the same direction. William Hogarth expressed in his art the new mood of national
elation, the critical spirit of the self-confident bourgeoisie and the
liberal humanitarianism of his age. He was the first native-born English
painter to become a hero of the Enlightenment. One reason for his
popularity was that the genius of the age found its highest expression in
wit. From Moliиre to Votaire, from Congreve through Swift and Pope to It was the great and single-handed achievement of Hogarth to establish comedy as a category in art to be rated as highly as comedy in literature. According to the hierarchy of artistic categories that was inherited from the Renaissance, istoria, --the narrative description of elevated themes, especially from the Bible and antiquity --was the highest branch of art measured by a scale which placed low-life genre at the bottom. Hogarth was actually sensitive to the categorical deprecation of comic art, and with his friend Henry Fielding set about a campaign to raise its standing. In a number of works and statements Hogarth identified his cause with
comic literature. In his self -portrait of 1745 the oval canvas rests on
the works of Shakespeare, Milton and Swift. Because his reasons for
invoking literature were misunderstood, Hogarth exposed himself to the
charge of being a "literary" artist. The legend of the literary painter
can be traced back to his own age. "Other pictures we look at, "wrote If his statements are examined carefully, it becomes apparent that he
did not attack foreign art as such, that he passionately admired the Old What manner of man was he who executed thse portraits--so various, so
faithful, and so admirable? In the London National Gallery most of us have
seen the best and most carefully finished series of his comic paintings,
and the portrait of his own honest face, of which the bright blue eyes
shine out from the canvas and give you an idea of that keen and brave look
with which William Hogarth regarded the world. No man was ever less of a
hero; you see him before you, and can fancy what he was --a jovial, honest Hogarth's "Portraits of Captain Coram" Hogarth painted his portrait of Capitain Coram in 1740, and donated it the same year to the Foundling Hospital. It was painted on Hogarth's own initiative, without having been
commissioned, and was presented to a charitable institution in the making,
one of whose founder members Hogarth was, and it depicts a friend of his,
the prime mover of the whole undertaking. The very format of the picture
shows that Hogarth was exerting all his powers to produce a masterpiece. In producing a work like this, of monumental proportions, where there was no purchaser to sistort the artist's intentions, Hogarth mst have had a definite aim or aims, and it is probable that he desired his work to express something of significance to him at this period of time. The portrait is conceived in the great style, with foreground plus repoussoir, middle-ground, background, classical column and drapery. Coram is depicted sitting on a chair, which is placed on a platform with two steps leading up to it. Hogarth makes use of the conventional scheme, traditional in portraits of rulers and noblemen, with its column, drapery and platform as laudatory symbols to stress the subject's dignity, a composition, which in the England of that time, was usually associated with Van Dyck's much admired but old-fashioned protraits of kings and noblemen. Hogarth's painting, with its attributes and symbols is not far removed form history painting. But the subject is a sea-captain, whose social position did not, by the fixed conventions for this category of picture, entitle him to this kind of portrayal. His relatively modest position in society is emphasized by his simple dress, a broad-coat of cloth, by the absence of the wig obligatory for every parson of standing, and by the intimace and realism with which the artist has depicted this figure with his broad, stocky body, shose short, bent legs do not reach the floor. Страницы: 1, 2 |
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