Questions:

1. What do you know about the National Gallery in London? Where is it situated? What schools of painting are represented there? Can you name any famous pictures? What other world famous picture galleries do you know?

2. What did Dora think about the Italian pictures? How are Botticelli’s angels described?

3. How do you understand the phrase “glorious carnal presence of Susanna Fourment”?

4. In what new way was Dora moved by the pictures? What sudden desire did Dora feel looking at the radiant, somber, tender, powerful canvas of Gainsborough?

5. What are guide books for? Do you need a guide book in a picture gallery? Do you enjoy visiting exhibitions and galleries? What pictures appeal to you most? Have you ever been moved by a painting in a special way?

VIII. Soames Forsyte (one of the main characters of the “The Forsyte Saga” by J. Galsworthy) is one of the best representatives of those who are collectors and connoisseurs of art. What traits of character should such people possess? How experienced should they be? What is the main for them in such an activity (their hobby, interest or money, profit, etc.)? What is the author’s view point on it?

Analyze the extract from the novel by J. Galsworthy “The Forsyte Saga”- “To Let”.

GOYA

LUNCH was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his house near Mapledurham. He had what Annette called “a grief”. Fleur was not yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday; had wired that it would be Friday; and again on Friday that it would be Sunday afternoon; and here were her aunt, and her cousins the Cardigans, and this fellow Profond, and everything flat as a pancake for the want of her. He stood before his Gauguin – sorest point of his collection. He had bought the ugly great thing with two early Matisses before the War, because there was such a fuss about those Post-Impressionist chaps.

Soames passed into the corner where side by side, hung his real Goya and the copy of the fresco “La Vendimia”. His acquisition of the real Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. The real Goya’s noble owner’s ancestor had come into possession of it during some Spanish war – it was in a word, loot. The noble owner had remained in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a Spanish painter named Goya was a genius. It was only a fair Goya, but almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a marked man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder principle that one must know everything and be fearfully interested in life, he had fully intended to keep an article which contributed to his reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to the nation after he was dead. Fortunately for Soames, the House of Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the noble owner became alarmed and angry. “If” he said to himself, “they think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken. So long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some of my pictures at my death. But if the nation is going to bait me, and rob me like this, I’m damned if I won’t sell the – lot. They can’t have my private property and my public spirit – both.” He brooded in this fashion for several months till one morning, after reading the speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On going over the collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values none was more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to America, Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a lot more money could be made than by selling in England. The noble owner’s public spirit – he said – was well known but the pictures were unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a year. At the end of that time he read another speech by the same statesman, and telegraphed to his agents: “Give Bodkin a free hand.” It was at this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which saved the Goya and two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner. With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market, with the other he formed a list of private British collectors. Having obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from across the seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private British collectors, and invited them, of their public spirit, to outbid. In three instances (including the Goya) out of twenty-one he was successful. And why? One of the private collectors made buttons – he had made so many that he desired that his wife should be called Lady “Buttons.” He therefore bought a unique picture at great cost, and gave it to the nation. It was “part”, his friends said, “ of his general game.” The second of the private collectors was an Americophobe, and bought a unique picture “to spite the damned Yanks.” The third of the private collectors was Soames, who – more sober than either of the others – bought after a visit to Madrid, because he was certain that Goya was still on the up- grade. Goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come again; and, looking at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error, heavy though the price had been –heaviest he had ever paid. And next to it was hanging the copy of “La Vendimia.” There she was – the little wretch – looking back at him in her dreamy mood, the mood he loved best because he felt so much safer when she looked like that.

He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his nostrils, and a voice said:

“Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin’ to do with this small lot?”

That Belgian chap, whose mother – as if Flemish blood were not enough – had been Armenian! Subduing a natural irritation, he said:

“Are you a judge of pictures?”

“Well, I’ve got a few myself.”

“Any Post-Impressionists?”

“Ye-es, I rather like them.”

“What do you think of this ?” said Soames, pointing to the Gauguin.

Monsieur Profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard.

“Rather fine, I think,” he said; “do you want to sell it?”

Soames checked his instinctive “Not particularly” – he would not chaffer with this alien.

“Yes,” he said.

(From “The Forsyte Saga” – “To Let” by J. Galsworthy)

IX. It is well known that Impressionism turned out to be a new page in the history of art, connected with the names of brilliant artists. Read the following article devoted to the Impressionist technique, Impressionist colour and palette and answer the questions after it. What is your personal attitude towards Impressionism and Impressionists? Do you have any favourite Impressionist artist and any Impressionist work?

WHAT IS IMPRESSIONISM?

If we look at the bottles in “A Bar at the Follies-Bergere” by Manet, we shall notice that the treatment of detail here is totally different from the treatment of detail by the painters of the Academy who looked at each leaf, flower and branch separately and set them down separately on canvas like a sum in addition. But all the bottles in Manet’s picture are seen simultaneously in relation to each other: it is a synthesis, not an addition. Impressionism then, in the first place , is the result of simultaneous vision that sees a scene as a whole, as opposed to consecutive vision that sees nature piece by piece. Let us suppose, for a moment, that we are staying at a house on the banks of the Seine opposite the church at Vernon. Let us suppose that, having arrived there in darkness the previous evening, we jump out of bed in the morning, open the window, and put out head to see the view. Monet’s picture “The Church at Vernon” shows us what we should see at the first glance; “the glance, that is to say, when we see the scene as a whole, before any detail in it has riveted our attention and caused us unconsciously to alter the focus of our eye in order to see that detail more sharply. Another way of putting the matter is to say that in an impressionist picture there is only one focus throughout, while in an academic picture there is a different focus for every detail. These two methods of painting represent different ways of looking at the world, and neither way is wrong, only whereas the academician looks particularly at a series of objects, the impressionist looks generally at the whole.