Practice Comprehension Check

Activity 1. Scan the texts about the greatest artists of the United States of America and complete the profile of each painter:

The most important dates in the artist's life and career

The most important events in the artist's life and career

The most famous and spectacular works of art

Epithets and terms to characterize the peculiarities of the artist's style and manner of painting, his artistic achievements

Phonetic transcription of the most important proper nouns

Activity 2. How carefully have you read the texts? Answer the questions and provide your commentaries if necessary:

1. What can you say about the historical background against which American art developed?

2. Try to enumerate all the characteristics of American art mentioned in the texts. What are the most vivid innovations fostered by the American artists? Don't forget to provide your ideas with illustrations from the texts.

3. Do you agree with the statement that ‘a buoyant, optimistic spirit is often present in American pictures’? Why?

4. Dwell on the characteristic subjects and technical peculiarities of the American painting at the end of the 18^th – the beginning of the 19^th centuries. What significant innovations were facilitated by the representatives of the period?

5. What are the most characteristic features of the Hudson River School painting? What are the names of its major artists? Don't forget to provide your commentaries with illustrations from the text.

6. Why did landscape painting attract the majority of American artists?

7. The end of the 19^th century in American art is often referred to as the American Renaissance. How can it be explained? Comment on the peculiarities of the period.

8. What can you say about a famous American woman-painter Mary Cassatt? In what way was her art influenced by her expatriatism and by the ideas of European Impressionists?

9. Robert Henri is one of the leading figures in painting at the beginning of the 20^th century. What artistic achievements make Henri's paintings look so naturalistic, informal and throbbing with vitality?

10. Can the terms «The Eight» and the «Ashcan school» be used synonymously? Dwell on the characteristics and technical peculiarities of the art of these groups. What significant innovations were facilitated by its representatives?

Activity 3. Here are the descriptions of some famous works of art created by the artists of the USA. Match them to the titles given below:

1. Soon after the artist settled in New York City, he painted a certain picture – a superb specimen of masterly brushwork. A splendid colorist, he sets the beautiful, cool, silvery tones of the model’s dress against the warm, ruddy hue of her face – and a marvelous face it is in its animation and personality. The woman, comfortably engaged in sewing, seems to look up to take note of our presence. The detail of the hand keeping the thread taut is a brilliant passage. Such likenesses soon brought this painter all the work he could handle.

2. This painting is a magnificent requiem of a landscape of northeastern America. A panoramic, sweeping vista, with a glorious sunset and many-hued cloud formations, the scene depicts the American landscape clad in its unique autumnal colors – a phenomenon of nature that pleased American eyes and fascinated Europeans. The artist provided a wealth of naturalistic detail in the foreground, where the viewer is confronted with the wild tangle and chaos of nature, contrasted with the serenity of the village of the middle ground.

3. This painting reveals the artist’s indulgence in visual fantasy, and the love of his age for different historic architectural styles. The picture was commissioned by the architect, who is shown reclining atop a great capital, a few volumes from his celebrated architectural library scattered around him. He is represented thinking – and we have an opportunity to see a kind of realization of this thought – of all the great building styles of the past assembled before his eyes – Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Gothic. The picture demonstrates that the painter indulged himself in his penchant for grand extravaganza.

4. The picture shows an unconscious woman being transported from an unseen foundering ship to another vessel, she and her rescuer tenuously supported by a tautly stretched rope. The monumental figures, swinging precariously amid violent swells that crash upon treacherous rocks, are suspended between the unseen wreck (flapping sails are visible in the upper corner) at the left and the safety of the rescue ship at the right, also out of view. In such pictures the painter began to explore psychological drama, with undertones of death and masked sexual themes.

5. This small picture is probably in some way related to Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name, which deals with man’s combat against the powerful and awesome forces of the sea, with major scenes set at night. The painter had already begun to impose a grand simplification on natural form that led naturally to abstraction. The straight line of the horizon, the circle of the moon, the triangular shape of the sail, all these geometric forms suggest a consideration of abstract elements. But the picture is far more than an arrangement of geometric forms. Paintings such as this are romantic evocations of a world seen in a dream and filled with mystery. The shadowy characters contribute greatly to this, as does the somber, low-keyed palette.

1. Thomas Cole’s The Architect’s Dream

2. Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Toilers of the Sea

3. Gilbert Stuart’s Mrs. Richard Yates

4. Winslow Homer’s The Life Line

5. Jasper Francis Cropsey’s Autumn – On the Hudson River