The Tretyakov Gallery

My working day

I usually set my alarm clock to ring at 7 o’clock, but when it rings I turn it off and go to sleep again. Then my mother comes into the room and says: Get up! I say “OK” and go back to sleep. Then mother turns on the light and says “Get up!” again. I open my eyes and agree to get up. As usual I really get up at 7:30. I go to the bathroom and then to the kitchen to eat. Then I dress, make up and brush my hair. My morning routine takes me about 30 minutes. I don’t make my bed, it’s usually my grandmother who does it.

I study at the Orel Art College. I live quite far from my college and it usually takes me 40 minutes to get there. I am usually in time for the first lesson at 8:50, but sometimes I am late because of traffic jams. I leave my coat in the cloakroom and go to my classroom. We have both professional and general subjects and usually have from 3 to 5 double periods every day. My favourite subjects are drawing and composition.

At one o’clock we have a lunch break. I usually have lunch at the canteen, although the food is not very good. We usually have soup for the first course and meatballs or sausages with rice or pasta for the second. To drink there is usually tea or fruit drink.

After two or three more periods I go home. I don’t usually have time for my friends on my working days, but on weekends we usually go for a walk.

In the evening all the members of my family get together. We have supper and then I do my homework. Then if I have some time I read classic literature, listen to music or go online. I usually go to bed at about midnight.

My College

I study in Orel Art College. It is a small three-storeyed building in Matrosova St. There are four departments here: teaching, design, sculpture and applied arts. I am in my first year in the department of design.

The college is 40 years old (it was founded in 1971), so the building is not very modern. Most of the classrooms are situated on the first and second floor. On the first floor there are history and literature classrooms and studios for painting and design. On the second floor there are classrooms of plastic anatomy, draftsmanship, art history and foreign languages and some studios. The assembly hall, the library and the headmaster’s office are on the ground floor.

Sculpture and metalwork are practiced in specially equipped workshops which can only be accessed from the street. There’s no canteen or a gym in the college, so we use the canteen in the college next to us. Some of us buy snacks in a shop or have a pizza in a café for lunch. This is not very healthy, but safer than the food in the canteen.

My group is a very important part of my life, too. I cannot imagine my life without them, but when I first saw them, I was in a shock. We’re very creative in having fun together: we play m afia, twister or crocodile, celebrate our birthdays, travel together and so on. We are friends outside the classroom too and always help each other.

But the most important thing about any college is, of course, the teachers. Some of our art teachers are real stars whose names are well-known. As we have both professional and general subjects, the teachers are very different, but all of them try to make their subjects really interesting. My favourite subject is drawing because the teacher is optimistic and friendly, and also very strict.

I like my college, my teachers and my group, but after four double periods I always want to go home.

MY FLAT

I live in a nine-storey block of flats. My flat is on the ground floor and I don’t like it very much, because when I open the window I can hear every word that the grandmothers are saying in the street.

My flat has all modern conveniences such as running water and central heating. The flat consists of a hall, a kitchen, a bathroom, a toilet, a sitting room and two bedrooms. My flat faces a street with private houses.

Our sitting room is quite large and light. There is a sofa, a TV-set, a shelf, a bookcase and a table with a chair. When I paint I go to this room, because I don’t want to feel the terrible smell of varnish in my bedroom when I sleep.

My bedroom is not very big. There is a window with light brown curtains. Near the window there is a sofa. In the left corner of the room there is a table with my laptop. There are shelves with books and art albums near it. There is a cupboard in the right corner of the room. By the right wall of the room there is a big mirror with a black post under it. Near it there is a wardrobe. By the left wall of the room there is my bed. Near the bed there is a black bedside table. There is a lamp and alarm clock on it. On the floor there is a bright carpet and there are a lot of pictures on the walls.

I don’t enjoy cleaning my room so I do it very seldom, but I air my room every day. My room is not very light but it is pretty and comfortable.

Orel

I live in a small provincial city Orel. In 1566 Ivan the Terrible ordered a fortress to be built to protect the southern borders of the country. The fortress was built upon the ruins of the old one in just one year. However, the position of the fortress was not very strategic as it was built on a low bank of the Oka and was seasonally flooded.

The town was sacked by False Dmitry I, False Dmitry II and Polish intervention. In the mid- 18^th century Orel was an important centre for grain production. In the 19^th century Orel became more provincial. However, it was a period of literary fame, as many important writers of the time lived and worked there.

After the October Revolution, the city was in Communist hands.

During World War II Orel was occupied by the Germans in October 1941 and liberated on the 5^th of August 1943 after the Battle of Kursk. The city was almost completely destroyed and then rebuilt.

I live in the North district which is also called Mikroraion. I live in a street with a beautiful name Roschinskaya. In my district there are other streets with beautiful names, Privetnaya and Solnechnaya.

The most notable place in this district of the town is Medvedevsky forest. The locals go there with their children during the holidays, young couples go there in the summer. In winter, small children go tobogganing.

The symbol of the district is the monument to a steel-maker Alyosha. If people say that he is trying to kill a sausage – don’t believe it. Another monument is “The Great Wall of China” - a very long house with 16 entrances and an arch in the middle. The meeting place of the local population is the Palace of the culture SRP. There are concerts and there is also a café.

I like the district where my childhood and a part of adolescence passed but next year I am going to leave for Saint-Petersburg. I shall miss my home town very much.

Moscow

Moscow is the capital of Russia, its political, economic and cultural centre. It was founded by Prince Yury Dolgoruky 8 centuries ago. Officially its history starts in 1147. The city played a very important role in Russian history and became the capital of Russia in the 16^th century under Ivan the Terrible. Although Peter the Great moved the capital to St. Petersburg in 1712, Moscow remained the heart of Russia.

Now Moscow is one of the largest cities in Europe and also one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The heart of Moscow is Red Square. It has more historic associations than any other place in Moscow. The Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral are masterpieces of Russian ancient architecture. The main Kremlin Tower, The Spasskaya Tower, is the symbol of the country. On the territory of the Kremlin you can also see old cathedrals and the Tzar-Cannon and the Tzar-bell, the biggest cannon and bell in the world.

There are a lot of beautiful palaces, cathedrals, old mansions, churches and monuments in Moscow. There are also more than one hundred museums in Moscow, the largest of which are the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.

Moscow is also famous for its theatres, the best known of which is the Bolshoi Opera House. Drama theatres and studios are also very popular.

People from Russian provinces often travel to Moscow to find work and many young people come to Moscow to study in the famous universities.

I like the historical places and museums, but otherwise I don’t like the modern Moscow very much. It is a noisy and dirty city with probably more natives of Tadzhikistan as in the country itself. Besides, I don’t like crowds and Moscow always makes me feel very provincial, the way I never feel in St. Petersburg. Of course, there’s very much to see in Moscow, but it is a city to be visited, and not to live in permanently.

Russia

I live in Russia. Russia is my native country. The Russian Federation is the largest country in the world. The total area is about 17 million square kilometres and occupies one seventh of the Earth’s surface. There is no country in the world like Russia, with the steppes in the south, plains and forests in the midland, taiga and tundra in the north and highlands and deserts in the east. There are a great number of rivers and lakes in Russia. The Volga is the longest river in Europe and the Baikal is the deepest lake in the world. The water in the Baikal is so clear that you can see the stones at the bottom. The climate in Russia varies greatly in different regions, but if I had a choice I would like to live somewhere warmer by the Black Sea.

Russia is a parliamentary republic with the strong power of the President who is the head of state.

The capital of Russia is Moscow. It is the largest political, cultural and industrial centre. There are more than one hundred museums in Moscow as well as a lot of beautiful palaces, cathedrals, old mansions, churches and monuments. It is also famous for its theatres, the best known of which is the Bolshoi Opera House.

Russia has a unique culture and world famous literary traditions. Russian culture is closely connected with Russian Orthodox Church, although there are many other nationalities, languages and religions in the country. The national banner of Russia is a tricolor with white, blue and red stripes. I don’t like this flag because it is associated with Peter the Great who looked up to the west too much.

I love my country, but now her old traditions are easily forgotten. Russia is in the middle of demographic and national crisis now, and it is very dangerous.

The Tretyakov Gallery

The National Museum of Russian Fine Art, the State Tretyakov Gallery, is one of the largest museums in the world. The collection contains more than 130,000 exhibits from all schools of Russian painting.

Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov, a rich Moscow merchant and patron of arts started collecting Russian paintings in the 1850s. At about that time he moved to a new mansion that would later become a world famous museum. The Old Tretyakovka, as the old part of the gallery is sometimes called, has 62 rooms and 100,000 works of Russian painting from the 10^th to the end of the 19^th Century. It is home to such iconic works of Russian art as The Rooks Have Come Back by Alexei Savrasov, Girl With Peaches by Valentin Serov, Demon by Mikhail Vrubel and others.

Pavel Tretyakov was one of the first collectors of old Russian icons. He also systematically bought the works of the old masters and was greatly interested in contemporary art. He was such an authority that if a work of an unknown artist got in his collection, the artist instantly became famous.

He was a friend of the Itinerant Artists and gathered a large collection of Perov, Maksimov, Makovsky, Pryanishnikov, Kramskoy, Shishkin, Polenov, Repin, and Surikov. He also created a portrait gallery, for which he bought and commissioned portraits of the great figures of art and literature of that time such as Dostoevsky, Ostrovsky, Turgenev and Tolstoi. It is interesting that Tretyakov himself hated posing for a portrait and only did it twice - for artists Kramskoy and Repin, so the portrait collection contains only two paintings of the founder.

In August, 1892 Tretyakov presented the collection and the gallery to the city of Moscow. After his death 6 years later a new fairy tale facade was attached to the old mansion. It was designed by Vasnetsov and became the symbol of the Gallery.

I visited the Tretyakov gallery last year with my group. I saw all the famous pictures, but the one that impressed me most was Christ Before the Multitude by Ivanov. I’m sure I would like to visit the gallery again.

London

London is the capital of Great Britain, its political, economic and commercial centre. It is the largest city in Europe and one of the oldest and most interesting cities in the world.

Traditionally it’s divided into four parts: the City, Westminster, the East End and the West End. The heart of London is The City, its financial and business centre. Numerous banks and offices are situated here, including the Bank of England. Few people live here, but over a million people come to the City to work. Some famous ancient buildings, such as the Tower of London and St. Paul’s Cathedral, are also situated here.

Westminster is the historic, the governmental part of London. Westminster Abbey has more historic associations than any other building in Britain. Nearly all British kings have been crowned there. Some famous people are also buried there: Newton, Darwin, Dickens and others.

Across the road from Westminster Abbey is Westminster Palace, known as the Houses of Parliament. The clock tower of the Houses of Parliament is famous for its big hour bell, known as Big Ben.

Buckingham Palace is the official residence of the Queen.

The West End is the richest and the most beautiful part of London. It is home to expensive shops, clubs and restaurants.

The East End, traditionally the poorest part of London, was home to industries and working families. The district is changing very fast now and is becoming more beautiful and modern.

Of course London is a very interesting city and I would like to visit it very much. I would not only like to visit the tourist sights and pull faces at the Guard, I would also like to roam the streets away from the tourists, do a lot of shopping and feel a real Londoner.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14