The Tretyakov Gallery

Moscow is replete with art galleries and museums. Yet there is one gallery that remains a symbol of Russian art. It is the world-famous Tretyakov Gallery.
The founder of the gallery was the entrepreneur Pavel Tretyakov (1832—1898), who was from the merchant class. Beginning in 1856, Tretyakov had a hobby of collecting works by the Russian artists of his time. He was a famous patron of the arts who helped to support the “peredvizhniki” (a movement consisting of realistic painters in the second half of the 19th century). Toward this goal, he intended to purchase a collection from a St. Petersburg collector, Fyodor Pryanishnikov, and, having added his own collection, created a museum. The government bought Pryanishnikov’s gallery in 1867, but Tretyakov gradually acquired an excellent collection, exceeding all other collections in Russia in its volume and quality.
In 1892, Pavel Tretyakov donated his entire collection to Moscow. His brother Sergey Tretyakov (1834—1892) was also a collector, but only of Western European paintings.
The brothers’ collections were at the core of the Moscow Municipal Art Gallery, which opened on August 15, 1893. At first, it contained 1,287 paintings and 518 pieces of graphic art by Russian artists, as well as 75 paintings by Western European artists.

Later, the Western European paintings in the Tretvakov Gallery were transferred to the Hermitage and the A. S. Push- kin Museum of Fine Arts, and the Tretyakov Gallery began to specialize exclusively in Russian art.

After 1918, the Tretyakov collection grew many times with the inclusion of the collection of Ilya Ostroukhov (1858—1929), an artist, paintings of the Russian school from the Moscow Rumyantsev Museum, and many private collections.

Presently, the gallery is being improved by carefully planned purchases. Already more than 55 thousand works are kept there. There is the rich collection of ancient Russian icon painting of the 12th — 17th centuries including Andrei Rubyov’s famous “Trinity”, as well as significant works of painting and sculpture of the 18th — 19th centuries — paintings by Dmitriy Levitskiy, Fyodor Rokotov, Karl Bryullov, Orest Kiprenskiy, Alexander Ivanov (including his well-known canvas “The Appearance of Christ Before the People”), Ivan Kramskoy, and sculptures by Fedot Shubin.

The gallery has an excellent selection of the best works by the “peredvizhniki”: Ilya Repin (including “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan”), Victor Vasnetsov, Ivan Shishkin, Vasiliy Surikov (“The Morning of the Strelets Execution”), Vasiliy Vereshchagin and others.

The blossoming of many areas of Russian art at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries is also well represented.

Suffice it to name such artists of the period as Mikhail Vrubel, Isaak Levitan, Nicholas Rerikh, Alexander Benua, Mikhail Nesterov, Konstantin Korovin, Mstislav Dobuzhinskiy, Konstantin Somov, Valentin Serov, Boris Kustodiev and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. After the relatively short period of the 19 10’s — 1920’s, new movements in art — futurism, cubism, etc. — were quickly developed.

Such an artistic movement as socialist realism also produced a number of talented and original artists. This trend is represented by works of Alexander Deineka, Arkadiy Plastov, Yuri Pimenov, Dmitriy Nalbandyan, and others.

The main building of the gallery includes the renovated Tretyakov home and several buildings that were attached to it at various times. The main facade of the building was erected in 1902 according to plans by the artist Victor Vasnetsov.

In 1994, the Tretyakov Gallery opened after 10 years of restoration. This was not just a facelift to the building; the interior and technical equipment were brought up to the highest standards of quality, which is as it should be, since it contains so many treasures of Russian art.

Vocabulary:
Pigeon- голубь
Painting - картина
Admission -вход
To maintain - содержать

Replete— наполненный
Entrepreneur — предприниматель
Patron — . покровитель
To intend — намереваться
To purchase — покупать
To acquire — приобретать
To exceed — превышать

Volume — обьем, оличество
To donate — передавать в дар
Entire — полный, целый

Inclusion- включение

Suffice it to name- достаточно назвать

Futurism- футуризм

Cubism-кубизм

Facade-фасад

Facelift-косметический ремонт

Vocabulary exercises:

Exercise1. Answer the following questions according the text:

1. Where is the London National Gallery situated? 2. What kind of pictures does the National Gallery contain? 3. When was the collection begun? 4. Why is the admission to the Gallery free? 5. What can a visitor see in the National Portrait Gallery? 6. Who gave the National Gallery of British Art to the nation? 7. What is there in the Wallace collection at Herdford House? 8. What does Kenwood House contain? 9. What gallery in Moscow is a symbol of Russian art? 10. Who was the founder of the gallery? 11. What did he make his hobby? 12. Whom did he support? 13. What did P. Tretyakov intend to do? 14. Who bought Pryanishnikov’s gallery in 1867? 15. What did P. Tretyakov do with his collection in 1892? 16. His brother Sergey Tretyakov was a collector of Western European paintings, wasn’t he? 17. When was the Moscow Municipal Art Gallery opened? 18. What did it contain at first? 19. Where were the Western European paintings transferred? 20. The Tretyakov collection grew many times after 1918, didn’t it? 21. How is the gallery being improved now? 22. How many works are kept there now? 23. What collections are extremely rich and beautiful in the gallery? 24. Are new art movements of the 1910’s — 1920’s represented in the gallery? 25. When was the main facade of the gallery erected? According to whose plans was it erected? 26. When was the Tretyakov Gallery opened after 10 years of restoration? 27.What does its interior look like after the restoration?

Exercise2. Translate the following into English:

1.Основателем галереи был предприниматель Павел Третьяков, который принадлежал к купеческому сословию. 2. Его брат тоже был коллекционером, но только западноевропейской живописи.3. Вначале она содержала 1287 картин и 518 произведений графического искусства русских художников. 4. Здесь имеется богатая коллекция древнерусской иконописи 12-17 веков, выдающиеся произведения искусства и скульптуры 18-19 веков. 5. С 1910 по 1920 год быстро развивались новые направления в искусстве – футуризм, кубизм.

Do you know that..?

The arts (plural) covers everything in the network. Art[singular, uncountable] usually means fine art, but can also refer to technique and creativity.
Danceusually refers to modern artistic dance forms: ballet usually has a more traditional feel, unless we say modern ballet.A novelis a long story, e.g. 200—300 pages; a piece of short prose fiction, e.g. 10 pages, is a short story.

Things which generally come under the heading of ‘the arts’
opera, concerts: classical/rock /country and western

LITERATURE poetry PERFORMING ARTS cinema

Biographies drama theatre
novels dance
short stories ballet

FINE ART(s)

sculpture ceramics (making pots, /. bowls, etc.)
painting architecture

Exercise1. Which branch of the arts do you think these people are talking about?
EXAMPLE It was a strong cast but the play itself is weak. Theatre

1. It’s called Peace. It stands in the main square.
2. Animation doesn’t have to be just Disney, you know.
3. It was just pure movement, with very exciting rhythms.
4. It doesn’t have to rhyme to be good.
5. Oils to me don’t have the delicacy of water-colours.
6. Her design for the new city hail won an award.
7. I like to read them and imagine what they’d be like on stage.
8. The first chapter was boring but it got better later.
9. I was falling asleep by the second act.
10. Overall, the performance was good, though the tenor wasn’t at his best.

Exercise2. Definite article or not? Fill the gap with the if necessary.
1. The government doesn’t give enough money to … arts.
2. She’s got a diploma in … dance from the Performing Arts Academy.
3. I’ve got some tickets for … ballet. Interested?
4. … art of writing a short story is to interest the reader from the very first line.
5.I can’t stand … modern poetry; it’s so pretentious.
6. I was no good at art at … school. What about you?

Exercise3. Each one of these sentences contains a mistake of usage of words connected with the arts. Find the mistake and correct it. You may need a dictionary.
EXAMPLE The scene at this theatre projects right out into the audience.
not ‘scene’ but ‘stage’ (the place where the actors perform )
1 What’s the name of the editorial of that book you recommended? Was it Cambridge University Press?
2 ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ is my favorite verse of English poetry.
3 He’s a very famous sculpture; he did that statue in the park, you know the one with the soldiers.
4 Most of the novels in this collection are only five or six pages long. They’re great for reading on short journeys.
5 There’s an exposition of ceramic at the museum next week.
6 The sceneries are excellent in that new production of Macbeth, so dark and mysterious.
7 What’s in the Opera House next week? Anything interesting?

PAINTING
Topical Vocabulary

Painters and their craft: a fashionable/self-taught/mature
John Constable artist, a portrait/landscape painter, to paint from nature/memory/
The Cornfield. -1826 imagination, to paint mythological/historical subjects, to specialize in portraiture/still life, to portray people/emotions with moving sincerity/with restraint, to depict a persoqa scene of common life/the mood of..., to render/interpret the personality of..., to reveal the person’s nature, to capture the sitter’s vitality/transienl. expression, to develop one’s own style of painting; to conform to the taste of the period, to break with the tradition, to be in advance of one’s time, to expose the dark sides of life, to become famous overnight, to die forgotten and penniless.

Paintings. Genres: an oil painting, a canvas, a water-color/ pastel picture; a sketch/study; a family group/ceremonial/intimate portrait, a self-portrait, a shoulder/length/half-length/knee length/full-length portrait; a landscape, a seascape, a genre/historical painting, a still life, a battle piece, a flower piece, a masterpiece.
Composition and drawing: in the foreground/background, in the top/bottom/left-hand corner; to arrange symmetrically/asymmetrically/in a pyramid/in a vertical format; to divide the picture space diagonally, to define the nearer figures more sharply, to emphasize contours purposely, to be scarcely discernible, to convey a sense of space, to place the figures against the landscape background, to merge into a single entity, to blend with the landscape, to indicate the sitter’s profession, to be represented standing.. ./sitting.. /talking..., to be posed/ silhouetted against an open sky/a classic pillar/the snow; to accentuate smth.

Colouring.Light and shade effects: subtle/gaudy colouring, to combine form and colour into harmonious unity; brilliant/low- keyed colour scheme, the colour scheme where ... predominate; muted in colour; the colours may be cool and restful/hot and agitated/soft and delicate/dull, oppressive, harsh; the delicacy of tones may be lost in a reproduction.

Impression. Judgement: the picture may be moving, lyrical, romantic, original, and poetic in tone and atmosphere, an exquisite piece of painting, an iinsurassed masterpiece, distinguished by a marvellous sense of colour and composition.
The picture may be dull, crude, chaotic, a colourless daub of paint, obscure and unintelligible, gaudy, depressing, disappointing, cheap and vulgar.

Read the following text for obtaining its information:

Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, in 1727, the son of John Gainsborough, a cloth merchant. He soon evinced a marked inclination for drawing and in 1740 his father sent him to London to study art. He stayed in London for eight years, working under the rococo portrait-engraver Gravelot; he also became familiar with the Flemish tradition of painting, which was highly prized by London art dealers at that time. “Road through Wood, with Boy Resting and Dog”, 1747 is a typical ‘genre painting’, obviously influenced by Ruisdael. In Many aspects this work recalls Constable’s Cornfield”.

In 1750 Gainsborough moved to Ipswich where his professional career began in earnest. He executed a great many small-sized portraits as well as landscapes of a decorative nature, In October 1759 Gainsborough moved to Bath. In Bath he became a much sought-after and fashionable artist, portraying the aristocracy, wealthy merchants, artists and men of letters. He no longer produced small paintings but, in the manner of Van Dyck, turned to full-length, life-size portraits. From 1774 to 1788 (the year of his death) Gainsborough lived in London where he divided his time between portraits and pictorial compositions, inspired by Geiorgione, which Reynolds defined as “fancy pictures” (“The Wood Gatherers”, 1787). As a self-taught artist, he did not make the traditional grand tour or the ritual journey to Italy, but relied on his own remarkable instinct in painting.

Gainsborough is famous for the elegance of his portraits and his pictures of women in particular have an extreme delicacy and refinement. As a colourist he has had few rivals among English painters. His best works have those delicate brush strokes which are found in Rubens and Renoir. They are painted in clear and transparent tone, in a colour scheme where blue and green predominate.

The particular discovery of Gainsborough was the creation of a form of art in which the sitters and the background merge into a single entity. The landscape is not kept in the background, but in most cases man and nature are fused in a single whole through the atmospheric harmony of mood; he emphasized that the natural background for his characters neither was, nor ought to be, the drawing-room or a reconstruction of historical events, but the changeable and harmOnious manifestations of nature, as revealed both in the fleeting moment and in the slowly evolving seasons. In the portrait of “Robert Andrews and Mary, His Wife”, for example, the beauty of the green English summer is communicated to the viewer through the sense of well-being and delight which the atmosphere visibly creates in the sitters. Gainsborough shows the pleasure of resting on a rustic bench in the cool shade of an oak tree, while all around the ripe harvest throbs in a hot atmosphere enveloped by a golden light.

Emphasis is nearly always placed on the season in both the landscapes and the portraits, from the time of Gainsborough’s early works until the years of his late maturity: from the burning summer sun in Robert Andrews and Mary, His Wife’ to the early autumn scene in The Market Cart”, painted in 1786—1787, a work penetrated throughout by the richness and warmth of colour of the season, by its scents of drenched earth and marshy undergrowth.

It is because his art does not easily fall within a well-defined theoretical system that it became a forerunner of the romantic movement, with its feeling for nature and the uncertainty and anxiety experienced by sensitive men when confronted with nature: Mary, Countess Howe” (1765), The Blue Boy” (1770), Elizabeth and Mary Linley” (1772), Mrs. Hamilton Nisbet” (1785).

The marriage portrait The Morning Walk”, painted in 1785 represents the perfection of Gainsborough’s later style and goes beyond portraiture to an ideal conception of dignity and grace in the harmony of landscape and figures.
Gainsborough neither had not desired pupils, but his art — ideologically and technically entirely different from that of his rival Reynolds — had a considerable influence on the artists of the English school who followed him. The landscapes, especially those of his late manner, anticipate Constable, the marine paintings, Turner. His output, includes about eight hundred portraits and more than two hundred landscapes.

Exercise1. Answer the following questions:

1. How did Gainsborough start his career? 2. What is known about the Ipswich period of his life? 3. What kind of practice did Gainsborough acquire in Bath? 4. What is a self-taught artist? 5. What do you know about the Flemish tradition (school) of painting? 6. What contribution did Van Dyck make to the English school of painting? 7. What are Rubens and Renoir famous for? 8. Why did Gainsborough place the sitter in direct contact with the landscape? 9. How is his conception of the relationship between man and nature reflected in the portrait of Robert Andrews and Mary, His Wife”? 10. What distinguishes ‘The Market Cart”? 11. What do you know about the portrait of Jonathar Buttall (The Blue Boy”)? 12. Who was Sir Joshua Reynolds? What role did he play in the history of English art? 13. How did Constable and Turner distinguish themselves?