Developing Conversation Skills

Activity 1. Let's visit an art gallery! Read the descriptions of the paintings given below and say more about the artists' life, style and manner of painting.

Benjamin West (1738-1820)

Colonel Guy Johnson

Although this picture was painted in Britain, the subject is of special interest to us. Colonel Guy Johnson was the English Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the American Colonies. Probably to flatter the natives, he affected certain articles of Indian dress – moccasins, beaded garters, and the feathered cap that he holds in his hand. When Johnson returned to England in 1775, he took with him a few faithful Indians. Among them was his secretary, a Mohawk chief named Joseph Brandt, who is probably the Indian shown here, beside the superintendent.

West's subject is related to America, but his interpretation is European. Like Copley in ‘The Red Cross Knight’, he has painted an idealized composition. Colonel Johnson is posed with dignity and elegance, his head self-consciously turned and his hand authoritatively clasping his gun. The somewhat artificial manner in which his cloak is draped adds further impressiveness to his figure, while his broadly modeled face only hints at his individual character. Joseph Brandt, too, is a generalized figure, represented as a "noble savage," mild in expression, and benignly pointing to his peace pipe. West poses him, indeed, in the role of a classical muse: the Mohawk chief inspires Johnson's felicitous handling of Indian affairs.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)

The White Girl

This picture created a sensation in Paris in the 1863 exhibition of paintings which had been refused that year at the official Salon. Though Whistler's experiment with a harmony in varying tones of white shocked his contemporaries, the painting seems conventional enough today. The young woman represented is Jo Heffernan, Whistler's favorite model. Her beautiful dark eyes and auburn hair are used as foils to the white in the composition. Whistler wished neither to express emotion nor to paint a realistic portrait. He believed that "art should stand alone and appeal to the artistic sense of eye." He would not have it confounded with "emotions entirely foreign to it, such as devotion, love, patriotism, and the like."

To make this painting appeal to the eye as music does to the ear, Whistler thought in abstract terms of design and color. By minimizing the contrasts of light and shade he flattened forms, and emphasized pattern. The skillfulness of his design is perhaps most apparent in the lower part of the picture, where the perspective is such that we seem to be looking sharply downward from above. This type of perspective, as well as the emphasis on pattern, may be traced to the influence of Japanese prints, which were becoming popular at this time in Paris. A French critic, realizing the abstract aim of Whistler's design, referred to this composition as a "symphony in white."

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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Mary Cassatt (1845-1926)

The Boating Party

This picture was painted in the bright sunlight of the Mediterranean at Antibes, on the French Riviera. Its subject, a variation on the artist's favorite theme of motherhood, is the boating excursion of a woman and her little boy. As the boat drifts from shore, the hired skipper gently pulls on the oars and the mother sits a little tensely, trying to restrain the wriggling child.

The artist shows less interest in the sentiment, however, than in the design of the painting. Like Whistler, she minimizes the roundness of forms, treats them more like flat shapes. It is the man's silhouette that she emphasizes, the crisp outline of the mother and child, and the swelling profile of the boat, repeated in the curved edge of the sail. Like Whistler again, she follows Japanese influence in composing the scene as if viewed from above. But her choice of colors is very different from that of her older contemporary. She uses the bright hues that her friends the Impressionists had introduced. The dominating blues of the sea and of the boatman's clothes contrast strikingly with the yellow-green boat and the mauve and pink dresses. The colors seem all the more vivid because shadows do not dull them and because strong lines separate one color from another.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

Repose

The elegance which regularly distinguishes Sargent's formal portraits is scarcely less emphasized in this casual study of a young lady resting. The sitter is Rose Marie Ormond, the artist's niece, whom he painted many times. Here he is not describing her personality, but is using her merely as a model for a delightful presentation of languid, luxuriant femininity.

Both the posture of the model and the arrangement of the composition suggest repose. The room's furnishings hardly count as actual objects since only a part of each is shown and that but sketchily. They function in the picture as abstract planes, arranged in restful horizontals to complement the relaxed pose of the girl. There is one threat to the reposeful mood of the picture. That is the heap of glittering golden drapery on the sofa. The brilliance of Sargent's technique here competes for attention. Sargent was not so much interested in showing the characteristic textures of the stuffs as in exhibiting the beauty of his flashing brushwork. Using a flattened brush loaded with paint, he worked without any preliminary drawing. He designed, modeled, and finished his picture as a single process. His glistening pigment and sparkling high lights, flattering to the sitter, added much to his popularity.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Activity 2. Give a talk on a reproduction of any famous work of art created by the American artist. Describe its technical aspect and comment on its subject.

Activity 3. Give a talk on

• the history of American art, its major centres, stages and distinctive features;

• the most important movements, trends and schools in American art;

• the most representative artists of American art.

It is art that makes life, makes interest …

and I know of no substitute whatever

for the force and beauty of its process.

Henry James. Letter to H.G. Wells (1915)

And when it comes to water – he’s the Raphael of water.

He knows all its movements, whether deep or shallow, at every time of day.

… That’s what people don’t fully understand yet,

that one doesn’t paint a landscape, a seascape, a figure;

one paints the effect of a time of day on a landscape,

a seascape, or a figure.

Edouard Manet. To Jean Beraud, on Monet (1870s)