III. Reading

Read the text “William Hogarth” and answer the following questions

William Hogarth

William Hogarth (1697-1764) was the first man to raise British pictorial art to a level of importance. He was born in London. His father was a schoolmaster. His early taste for drawing was remarkable and after schooling normal for his day he was apprenticed to a silver-platen graver.
His success he attributed to hard labour, ‘I know of no such thing as genius’, he wrote — ’genius is nothing but labour and diligence’.
Hogarth painted many pictures. The Marriage Contract is the first of the series of his pictures forming the famous ‘marriage a la mode’. Both fathers in the picture are seated to the right. One, an Earl, with points pride to his family tree; the other, probably an alderman of the City of London, examines the marriage settlement. The Earl’s son admires himself in the looking-glass; the alderman’s daughter trifles with her wedding ring and listens to the pleasantries of a young lawyer.
The subject of the picture is a protest against marriage for money and vanity. Hogarth was the first great English artist.
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the first President of the Royal Academy, was not only a 236 painter but the founder of the academic principles of a British School.
His own work was influenced by the Venetians, Titian and Veronese. His passion for rich depth of shadows was fortunate; to obtain it he used bitumen.
The third great figure, of the 18th century painting — Thomas Gainsborough (1727- 1788) — was bom in 1727 in the small market town of Sudbury in Suffolk.
Gainsborough had little academic training, he learned to paint not by plodding in the studio, but by observing the actual world. Van Dyck’s graceful poses and silvery tones fascinated him and played a large part in determining the development of his skill. Perhaps the best known to-day of all Gainsborough’s portraits is the famous Blue Boy.
But curiously enough it was little known in Gainsborough’s day and there is no definite information, about the date of the painting. It is a portrait in a Van Dyck habit. There is an opinion that Gainsborough painted The Blue Boy in order to establish the point which he had made in a dispute with Reynolds and other painters, when he maintained that the predominant colour in a picture should be blue. His picture The Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher attracted general attention. The picture representing a small country girl was first exhibited in 1814; the easy pose of the girl, the natural turn of her head and the expression of her face make a true to life picture.
Gainsborough always thought of himself as a landscape painter, but torn away from his real love by the necessity to paint portraits in order to earn his living.
He was the first to introduce lyrical freedom into British painting. His achievement lay in the discovery of the beauty of his native landscape.

1. Who was the first English artist of the 17th—18lh centuries?
2. What is the subject of Hogarth’s picture “The Marriage Contract”?
3. Who was the first President of the Royal Academy?
4. What pictures by Gainsborough do you know?
5. Did Gainsborough paint only portraits?

6. What is the predominant colour in his pictures?

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