Part 3

3.3. Look through the extract and fill in the missing parts in the following sentences.

1) The narrator looked about the studio with a feeling of curiosity.

2) Strickland showed him about thirty canvases.

3) It was the result of the six years during which he had been painting.

4) The pictures were of different genres. The smaller were pictures of still-life and the largest were landscapes. There were about half-a-dozen portraits.

5) At first sight the narrator was bitterly disappointed.

6) Most of Strickland’s canvases have found their way into museums, and the rest are the treasured possessions of wealthy amateurs.

7) The narrator had always found descriptions of pictures dull.

8) First of all he was taken aback by what seemed to him the clumsiness of Strickland’s technique.

9) The plate in the still-life was not round and the oranges were lop-sided.

10) The final impression the narrator received was of Strickland’s effort to express some state of the soul.

3.9. Suggest the Russian for the following:

Easel	Мольберт	At first sight	На первый взгляд
Amateur	Любитель, поклонник	The last word in painting	Последнее слово в живописи
Still-life	Натюрморт	Incomprehensible	Малопонятный, необъяснимый, непостижимый
Landscape	Пейзаж	Lop-sided	Кривобокий, искривленный
An ungainly look	Нескладный, неловкий, неуклюжий вид	Now that	Теперь, когда
To be taken aback	Быть ошеломленным, захваченным врасплох, неприятно пораженным

3.10. Suggest words or phrases which mean roughly the same as:

A glance	Look, gleam, flash (it depends on the context)	To open	To reveal
Greatly	Very, important, significant; enormously (it depends on the context)	Boring	Dull, unexciting
To stir smb. deeply	To excite smb.	Ordinary	Commonplace
To get used to	To get into the way(of doing smth.); to get accustomed (to)	Important	Significant
To hide	to conceal

3.11. Give the opposites:

Mature	Immature	Cheerful	Sad
Wealthy	Poor	Unconscious	Awake, conscious
To accept	To deny, to refuse	Incomprehensible	Understandable, comprehensible
Commonplace	Extraordinary	Indifferent	Concerned, anxious, eager
Powerless	Powerful	To reveal	To hide, to conceal

3.14. Several genres of painting are mentioned in the above text. They are:

Landscape

Portrait

Still-life

Continue the list.

Seascape

Domestic scenery

Battle-painting

Icon (art)^{^[1]}

Historical scene (it may be action-filled or epic)[2]

3.15. Write the three forms of the verbs:

To seek	Sought – sought – seeking	To hold	Held – held – holding
To shoe	Shod – shod – shoeing	To sell	Sold – sold – selling
To accept	Accepted – accepted – accepting	To found	Founded – founded – founding
To convey	Conveyed – conveyed – conveying	To find	Found- found – finding
To become	Became – become – becoming	To increase	Increased – increased – increasing
To conceal	Concealed – concealed – concealing	To reject	Rejected – rejected – rejecting
To feel	Felt – felt – feeling	To hide	Hid – hidden – hiding

3.16. Write the corresponding nouns:

Curious	Curiosity	Peculiar	Peculiarity
Wealthy	Wealth	To excuse	Excuse
Significant	Significant (and significance, signification for another meanings)	To recognize	Recognition
Clumsy	Clumsiness	To possess	Possession

Part 5

5.6. Answer these questions:

1) Why did the doctor suggest that Mr. Ellsworth should take up art?

The doctor suggested that Mr. Ellsworth should take up art because he wanted to draw Mr. Ellsworth’s attention away from buying things or enterprises of doubtful solvency, for Mr. Ellsworth’s health sake. Mr. Ellsworth suffered from buying things and his purchases were the reasons for his heart attacks.

2) What proves that Mr. Ellsworth had no talent at all?

Mr. Ellsworth’s drawings had only a slight resemblance to their originals. They were lop-sided and their colour accordance left much to be desired.

3) How did Frank Swain teach him?

Frank asked Mr. Ellsworth to draw objects from nature.

4) Did he see that the old man had no talent? Why didn’t he stop teaching him?

Frank saw Mr. Ellsworth had no talent, but he didn’t stop to teach him because he needed money badly.

5) Did the old man show an interest in his art lessons? Was he making any progress?

Mr. Ellsworth showed an interest in his art lessons. He asked Frank to come more frequently to teach him. Mr. Ellsworth was making some progress in drawing. He began to paint in watercolours instead of crayon.

6) What kind of picture did he paint?

Mr. Ellsworth painted still-lifes and landscapes. One of his pictures was “Trees Dressed in White”

7) Did Frank Swain think highly of it?

Frank thought that “Trees Dressed in White” was some kind of a god-awful smudge and resembled a gob of salad dressing thrown violently up against the side of a house. When he saw it in the gallery, he blushed to the top of his ears.

8) Why was the painting accepted for the Lathrop Show and why was Mr. Ellsworth awarded the First Landscape Prize for it?

Mr. Ellsworth had bought the Lathrop gallery a month before and it allowed him to exhibit his picture and to win the First Landscape Prize for it.

5.9. Find in the text the synonyms for:

At an incredible price	At a fabulous price	Sharp	Acute
Wealth of colours	Rich variety of colour	To show	To display
Very greedy	Insatiable	To gain	To get
To choose	To select	To suit	To match
Great surprise	Utter astonishment	To be similar to	To resemble smth.
Rude lines	Crude lines	To be in smb.’s way	To encourage
Crooked	Straight

5.10. Suggest to opposites for:

Conspicuous	Inconspicuous	Efflorescence	Decadence; decay
Graceful (lines)	Crude (lines)	To obey	To disobey
Straight	Crooked, curved	To connect	To disconnect
Gloomy	Bright	To reject	To accept
Rudely	Politely, respectively	To differ	To coincide (with)
Safe	Insecure, at risk, dangerous, harmful, unsafe (it depends on the context)	To fail	To succeed (in)
Rare	Ordinary, frequent (it depends on the meaning of this word in the context)

5.11. Continue the list of the artist’s paraphernalia from the text and your memory:

Удержать от покупки	To keep from buying	Грациозные линии	Graceful lines
Заняться живописью	To take up art	Богатство красок	Rich variety of colour, wealth of colours
Многообещающий художник	A promising artist	Проявить неустанный интерес	To display an insatiable curiosity
Заплатить за обучение	To pay tuition	Руководить галереей	To run the gallery
Иметь слабое сходство с …	To have a slight resemblance to smth.	Представить на выставку	To exhibit smth. in the show (art exhibition)
Часто посещать	To visit frequently	Зрелый художник	Mature artist
Баснословные цены	Fabulous prices	Быть принятым на выставку	To be accepted for the show (art exhibition)
Художественная школа	Art school	В незаметном месте	In an inconspicuous place
Цветные мелки	Crayons	Комментировать что-либо	To comment (on, upon)
Коробка с акварельными красками	A box of water-colours	Присудить приз	To award the prize (to…)
Тюбики с масляными красками	Tubes of oils	Покраснеть до кончиков ушей	To blush to the top of one’s ears
Грубые линии	Crude lines

5.21. (a). Act as Frank Swain. Say about Mr. Ellsworth as your art student. Describe your drawing lessons.

What can I say about my student Mr. Ellsworth? I think, he is too old to take up painting, though studying painting is never late (better late than never). I teach him for two reasons: I need money to pay tuition and Mr. Ellsworth shows an interest in my art lessons. He has no talent but he has interest. Moreover, his doctor supposed that taking up art may be a good treatment for Mr. Ellsworth’s bad heart.

When I began teaching him, I asked him to draw a vase and he could only make some scrawls and connect them with a couple of crude lines. I was patient. I taught him to draw objects from nature. And some later his drawings began to resemble originals. At first, they were a bit lop-sided, but it was a great step forward. I taught him to crayon and to paint in watercolours.

We visited the Metropolitan, the Museum of Modern Art and other exhibits. Mr. Ellsworth displayed an insatiable curiosity about the galleries and the painters who exhibited in them. Our visits brought him to an idea to exhibit his own painting in the Summer Show at the Lathrop Gallery. But I think, it is a bad idea. Prepared for an exhibition Mr. Ellsworth’s painting “Trees Dressed in White” resembles a gob of salad dressing thrown violently up against the side of a house. I didn’t teach him this “ultra-modern” style, he could see such pictures only in galleries, but, as I told, he has NO talent of ultra-modern artists. I’m afraid that he will become a laughingstock, but nobody can stop him from exhibiting his painting.

2) I never studied at all when I was at school. I wish I hadn’t been so carefree then.

3) I’m sorry I’ve mentioned it to him. I wish I had never told him about it.

4) We went to the opera but I didn’t like it at all. Now I wish I had stayed at home that evening.

6) Helen is sorry she didn’t invite the Christophers to dinner. She wishes she had invited them last Sunday.

7) Simon is sorry Ann didn’t phone him on Sunday. He wishes she had phoned him then.

8) I thought you’d come to the party yesterday, but you didn’t. I wish you had been there.

9) I didn’t have enough money on me when I saw the book on sale. I wish I had had enough money on me then.

10) It’s a pity I didn’t see that play. It’s not on any longer. How I wish I had found some spare time to see that play.

11) Why didn’t you come in time? I wish you hadn’t been late for the concert.

Aivazovsky was born on 17 July 1817 in an Armenian family in the ancient Crimean town of Theodosia, and as a young man travelled to study at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts.

While still a student, Aivazovsky had been attracted by the romance of sea battles and the proud beauty of sailing ships. One of Aivazovsky's early canvases is The Great Roads, Kronstadt. Although the foreground of the picture with its naively drawn human figures recalls the Old Dutch masters, the perspective has breadth and depth, with spray-soaked clouds receding into the distance. The waves seem fixed and motion less, but Aivazovsky has somehow captured the specific character of the cold Baltic Sea.

In October 1837, Aivazovsky completed his studies at the Academy and got the great gold medal, which gave him the right to a prolonged course of study abroad at the expense of the Academy. Bearing in mind the peculiar nature of Aivazovsky's gift, the Council of the Academy took an unusual decision. To begin with, the artist was to be sent to the Crimea for two summers; there he had to perfect his skills in his chosen genre by painting views of the coastal towns while sending his pictures each year to the Academy. Only after this, he could leave for Italy. In the Crimea, Aivazovsky now had the chance to return to his favourite themes. He went to sea many times, painted a great deal from nature.

Aivazovsky was not just a professional marine painter. He knew the sea and loved it sincerely. His love of his native landscape was manifested in each picture. Although he turned occasionally to other art forms such as landscape and portraiture, these were only brief departures from his chosen genre to which he remained faithful all his life.

When Aivazovsky began his career, Russian art was still dominated by Romanticism and it was the romantic mood, which set the terms for Russian landscape painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is scarcely surprising then to discover romantic elements both in Aivazovsky's early works, and in the majority of his later ones. One reflection of this is his choice of subjects—repeatedly we find him depicting shipwrecks, raging sea battles and storms.

By the 1850s, the romantic element in Aivazovsky's work had become even more apparent. This is clearly seen in one of Aivazovsky's best and most famous pictures, “The Tenth Wave”. A group of shipwrecked survivors is about to be engulfed by an enormous wave. The merciless pounding of the elements is brilliantly conveyed as the waves roll, rise up and crash down with full force, having revealed for a moment the deep chasm below. The restless movement of clouds and sprays of foam strengthen the impression of a raging hurricane. Despite this, the people clinging to a broken mast still struggle for life—the sun has just risen and its rays pierce the watery chaos, emphasizing just a little their chance of survival. The essential tragedy of the picture is outweighed by the vividness of the impression it makes: the spectator understands the horror of the storm but his feelings are won over by its beauty. This duality is typical of Aivazovsky.

Aivazovsky created a new tradition, a new school of painting, thus making his mark on the marine painting of his own and subsequent generations.

A picture might be accurate and exact, but it would be vain and soulless without the pulse of life within it. The viewer would see familiar places and painstakingly reproduced details, but would remain indifferent to what he saw. Instead of copying directly from nature, then, Aivazovsky tried to create a picture of the shimmering, leaping sea from his memory in his studio. A miracle occurred—it was as if the sea had really begun to sparkle and shimmer, filled with incessant movement. The artist had discovered his own method of depicting nature from memory, even without preliminary studies, limiting himself to hurried pencil sketches. Justifying his method theoretically, the artist observed: "The movement of the elements cannot be directly captured by the brush — it is impossible to paint lightning, a gust of wind, or the splash of a wave, direct from nature. For that the artist must remember them..."

Aivazovsky's phenomenal power of recall and his romantic imagination enabled him to employ this method with unsurpassed brilliance. At the same time, the speed and ease with which he painted caused him to repeat himself occasionally allowing elements of cliché and salon prettiness to creep in.

Apart from his work as an artist, Aivazovsky was a tireless and versatile public figure: he took an eager interest in world events and sympathized deeply with small nations struggling for their independence. At the same time, he worked selflessly for the good of his native town Theodosia and did much to assist young artists.

Aivazovsky died on 19 April 1900, on the verge of the twentieth century, leaving unfinished a picture he had begun that same day. There is no doubt that the creative legacy of Aivazovsky will always be a treasured part of Russian art history.

[1] A painted image of a religious figure or event, especially a painted panel that is characteristic of the Eastern Christian church. The term icon is derived from the Greek “eikenai”, ”to resemble,” and refers to an image believed to be sacred in itself that can aid in contacting the represented figure.

[2] A painted image based on or describing people who lived in the past or events that happened in the past

Aivazovsky Ivan Constantinovich