Artists and writers of Great Britain and in the USA

Artists and writers

of Great Britain and America

Art is long, life is short. Proverb

Each country is known by the people which are bringing in the considerable contribution to its development. The art is the integral part of spiritual culture and spiritual heritage of the people living not only in this country, but also behind its limits. The present art is eternal: passes from centuries per one century, from generation to generation.

I want to tell about the spheres closest to me of art - literature and painting. More precisely, about the people which have glorified England and America by the achievement in these spheres.

The artists and them pictures.

Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). A very lyrical painter who succes­sfully connected man and nature. A very strong phsychologist, he painted mostly women on the background of a scenery.

He liked blue colours best of all. His portraits are optimistic and the light and shade of colour are in full harmony with the lines.

William Turner.

William Turner (1775-1851) began his activity in art as a watercolour master. Light and atmosphere were his characteristic feature. Turner is a su­per colourist. In 1805 he painted "The Shipwreck". He showed a terrible disas­ter at sea. Green was a colour that Turner particularly disliked.

In "Snow Storm" he reflected with the help of snow the idea of survival and even in our days it looks very prophetic. It is considered one of his most origi­nal paintings. He studies colour very seriously and is said to anticipate the art of Impressionists and abstract painters of the 20th century.

In his "Rain, Steam and Speed" (1844) he worked much on the colour in­terrelation.

John Constable

John Constable (1776-1837) was fond of the place where he was born and spent his childhood on the river Stour. He saw very beautiful woods, gre­ens in nature and, being very talented, reflected nature's colours in his sketches which he then composed into pictures. He painted the landscape without any changes and the trees or other objects were in his paintings very true to life. He is said to be the first landscape painter in England.

William Hogarth

William Hogarth (1697-1764) is one of the greatest English painters. In his pictures he reflected social life and in many of them the beauty of his pain­ting was accompanied by satire. The "Marriage-a-la-Mode", "The Election En­tertainment" were painted to show the life very satirically.

In 1742 Hogarth painted "The Graham Children" where he brilliantly used his delicate colours to show the charm of childhood.

The Writers.

William Shakespeare: 1564-1616

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, where he received an excellent classical education. At the age of eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, and they had three children. Shakespeare was playwright and poet. As he rose in popularity, he wrote plays for the famous Globe Theatre, a round, open-roofed building that housed approximately 2,000 spectators. Lat­er Shakespeare became one of the owners of the Globe Theatre.

Unlike many writers who never live to enjoy their fame, Shakespeare achieved great recog­nition during his lifetime.

He wrote three types of plays: comedies, tragedies and histories. He also wrote narrative poems, sonnets and lyric poetry. He is acknowledged as one of the greatest writers of all time, and has remained popular with readers around the world.

Charles Dickens: 1812-1870

Dickens used his novels to identify and ad­dress many problems of the nineteenth century, such as child abuse, unfair labour practices, unjustices in the legal system, and weaknesses in education, Dickens had experienced many of these problems in his own childhood, and so ! he dedicated his life to bringing about social reform. Some of his most popular j novels include, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations.

Charles Dickens was a novelist who provided Victorian England with one of its greatest champions of reform.

Rudyard Kipling: 1865-1936

Rudyard Kipling was an English novelist, short-story writer and poet. He is most widely known for his works for children, especially the "Jungle Book." I Kipling was born in Bombay, India, in 1865 but attended school in England. After completing his education, he returned to India where he worked as a newspaper reporter for several years. Many of Kipling's stories and novels reflect his experiences in India and convey the importance of duty and unself­ishness. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.

O'Henry: 1862-1910

O'Henry is a well-known American short-story writer. He had to jam his living from the age of fifteen and he educated himself with the help offriends.

O'Henry knew people very well, especially the ordinary people of New York. In his stories you can feel satirical criticism of the American way of life. Most of his short stories are full of warm sympathy for ordinary American people.

O'Henry was the penname used by author William Sydney Porter. Porter was a great admirer of another American writer, Edgar Allan Рое , and he was influenced by Poe's style.

O'Henry wrote many popular stories and earned a reputation as the master of surprise endings. He was especially talented at developing his characters, and at portraying city life accurately. He wrote over 600 stories.

Mark Twain: 1835-1910

Mark Twain left his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri at the age of eighteen. His real name was Samuel Clemens, but he took his penname from a term used by the men who operated the river boats. They would call, "By the mark, twain!" This meant that the river was two (twain) feet deep. Mark Twain began his career as a newspaper writer. Later in life he used memories from his child­hood to create some of his most popular novels, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain used humour to develop many serious themes in his novels and to help society see itself more clearly.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 1807-1882

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the most widely read American poets of the 19th century. From 1835 to 1854 he was Smith Professor of Mod­ern Languages at Harvard. In 1884, 2 years after his death, he became the I first American to be honoured with a bust in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, London. He is best remembered for poems such as "The Song of Hia­watha" and "Paul Revere's Ride."

Washington Irving: 1783-1859

The first American writer to gain international attention was Washington Irv­ing. He was born to a wealthy New York family and received an excellent edu­cation. He began his writing career by creating satires about New York society, j He later wrote about the Dutch influences upon the city in its early days. He j attempted to give America a sense of a romantic past like that found in Europe, I and he recorded some of the important developments in the exploration of the J western regions of the country. His most popular work by far was The Sketch Book, which contains two of his most beloved stories, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle."

The end