1. Read the article about the development of art in the usa. Say whether the following statements are true (t) or false (f):

1. The 1st genres of American painting since its colonization were portraits and still lives.__

2. Benjamin West was America’s 1st well-trained artist.__

3. Ch. Willson Peale was a Neoclassical painter.__

4. Gilbert Stuart and Joan Copley painted emblematic portraits.__

5. Tomas Cole is known as the artist of the American Revolution.__

6. The Hudson River School was the first school of portrait painting.__

7. Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt were central figures of the Hudson River School.__

8. In the late 1880s Primitivism appeared in America.__

9. Mary Cassatt and James Abbot Mc Neil Whistler are famous American abstract impressionists.__

10. The Ashcan School of painting portrayed the common people and their daily lives.__

11. The purpose of New Deal artists program was to give work to artists and to decorate public buildings with flower pieces and seascapes.__

12. Abstract expressionists were influenced by Cubism, Surrealism and the works by P. Picasso and H. Matisse.__

13. Pop artists displayed everyday objects and images of American popular culture.__

14. Edward Hopper used photos, newsprint and discarded objects in his compositions.__

2. Choose the sentences from the text to illustrate the main stages of the development of the American pictorial art (make up the outline of the text).

3. Finish the sentences:

1. The first forms of painting in the USA were…

2. … made portraits of the newly elected government officials.

3. John Trumbull is known as the artist who was making…

4. The first painting school of landscape painting was…

5. … depicted rural America—the sea, the mountains, and the people who lived near them.

6. In the late …, Impressionism appeared in America.

7. During his lifetime, … painted over 200 historical and military paintings.

8. … was the leader of what critics called the Ashcan school of painting, after the group's portrayals of the squalid aspects of city life.

9. The purpose of the president Roosevelt’s New Deal programs was…

10. Often … decided to try instinctual, intuitive, spontaneous arrangements of space, line, shape and color.

11. …’s creative process, incorporated thrown and dripped paint from a stick or poured directly from the can.

12. Members of the next artistic generation favored a different form of abstraction: …

4. Summarize the text, using the outline from task b. Part II. Legends of american painting Benjamin West (1738-1820)

Young Benjamin West never saw an artist’s painting, but he learned how to make one. He never had a drawing lesson, yet he became America’s first important artist.

Benjamin West lived over two hundred years ago, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His family was poor, and Benjamin did not have much chance to go to school. One day a wonderful thing happened. A gentleman gave him a box of paints, some brushes and some canvas. With these fine materials, he soon was painting beautiful pictures. His pictures attracted much attention. A few years later one of his friends sent him to Europe. There he saw some of the greatest pictures in the world. He worked hard and did so well as an artist that King of England made him a knight. That was the highest honor the king could pay him. He was called Sir Benjamin West.

All artists before Benjamin West had painted pictures of people dressed in robes. Benjamin West was the first to paint pictures of people dressed in their own clothes. This attracted a great deal of attention wherever his pictures were exhibited.

Benjamin had many Indian friends. Perhaps his friendship with the Indians caused him to paint one of his most famous pictures. It is called Penn’s Treaty with the Indians.