8. Painting as a sort of art. The most prominent painters of Ukraine and the English-speaking countries

There are many different forms of art, among them: music, cinema, theatre, literature and others. However, most widespread form of art is painting. I love visiting art galleries and museums to look at exquisite paintings. In my opinion, paintings can say a lot about the artist and his views on life. All artists try to express their feelings and emotions in their paintings. The most common definition of painting is the art of portraying and representing objects with line and colour. The first ones were the depictions of animals. The oldest knowing paintings can be found in France. Some historians claim that they are about 32, 000 years old. No one can live without art. Somebody can express his feelings and emotions,while painting a picture. Others can watch these pictures and enjoy the beauty and the intensity of feelings. It's very important to visit art galleries, to keep in touch with the greatest works of art. Picasso, da Vinchi, van Gogh and others tried to impress their feelings in paintings, which are well-known now.Painting is just not a waste of time, it's a process, which can almost change your life. We can see the world from the other point of view, in other colours. I think, art plays a great role in our life. Anf though I have no talant in painting, I visit art galleries and enjoy the presentations of a great talant - talant in painting. 

   William Hogarth (1697-1764) was the first man to raise (1) British pictorial art (2) to a level of importance. is success he attributed to hard labour.  Hogarth painted many pictures. The Marriage Contract is the first of the series of his pictures forming the famous ‘marriage a la mode’. The subject of the picture is a protest against marriage for money and vanity (9). Hogarth was the first great English artist.

 Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the first President of the Royal Academy, was not only a painter but the founder of the academic principles of a British School.

The third great figure, of the 18th century painting — Thomas Gainsborough, a master of English school of painting. He was a portraitist and a landscape painter. Perhaps the best known to-day of all Gainsborough’s portraits is the famous Blue Boy. His art became a forerunner of the Romantic Movement.

John Constable, is one of the greatest landscape painters too. The most notable works of Constable are «Flatford Mill», «The White Horse», «The Hay Wain», «Waterloo Bridge», «From Whitehall stairs» and others. In England Constable never received the recognition that he felt he was due. The French were the first to acclaim Constable publicly. His influence upon foreign painting schools has been powerful. Constable may truly be considered the father of modern landscape painting.

Artistic traditions of Ukraine have a very ancient history. The oldest surviving paintings are frescoes and murals found on the northern Black sea coast, where they were preserved on the walls of tombs fragments of frescoes from the medieval Rus period have been found in the Cathedral of Transfiguration in Chernihiv (11th century) and the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv (early 11the century Many Ukrainian painters were attracted to the newly established Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg (1757). The emigration of the Ukrainian artists to St. Petersburg deprived Ukrainian painting of its most creative talents. The exception was T.Shevchenko, who devoted most of his painting (like his writing) to Ukrainian interests. In the last few decades of the 19th century Ukrainian painters studying art in Russia were influenced by the Peredvizhniki society, formed in 1870 is St.Petersburg. Artists of Ukrainian origin who became active in the society were I.Repin, I.Kramskoi, A.Kuindzhi, R.Kuznetsov, K.Kostandi and many others.  During the brief period of Ukrainian independence the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts (1917-22) was established in Kyiv. In 1920s in Soviet Ukraine a variety of styles flourished. Cubo-futurist painting were produced by V.Yermilov in Kharkiv and O.Romazov, V.Pavlov and A.Petrystsky in Kyiv. In the 1930s all avant-garde activities in Soviet Ukraine came to a halt with the introduction of socialist realism as the only literary and artistic method permitted by the communist regime.  Changes brought about in the second half of 1980-s resulted in greater creative freedom and a proliferation of styles and manners of depiction. Many painters showed great inventiveness, including H.Romanyshyn from Lviv, R.Popov from Kharkiv, O.Tkachenko from Dnipropetrovsk andR.Tetianych, V.Budnykov, H.Heiko and O.Babak from Kyiv. After decades of restraint and isolation artists in Ukraine are now free to continue the development of various artistic traditions.