Painting in the life of people

Outline
1. English school of painting and its representatives
2. Classicism as my favorite style of painting.

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” ― Pablo Picasso.
These words show the importance of art in our life. Nowadays we have a great
variety of art genres: Renaissance, Classicism, Fauvism, Cubism, Impressionism,
Futurism, Conceptual art. And all of them are represented by different schools of
painting, exciting all over the world, for example: The Dutch school of painting,
Flemish school, French school. But I would like to draw your attention to English
painting school which is dominant in the UK since 18 century. William Hogarth, a
London painter and engraver, was an early representative of the English school
and the first modern English master. Hogarth worked in the playful, elegant
Rococo style of contemporary French art. English full-scale portraiture was
revitalized by two painters, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.
Reynolds introduced the “Grand Manner” into English portraiture, using an
extensive repertory of poses derived from Italian art in his strongly characterized
portraits. The 18th-century Scottish-born painter Gavin Hamilton was an early
practitioner of historical painting, but that genre was seldom successfully
attempted by English artists in the 18th century. Classical principles of clarity and
order to the depiction of the English countryside was applied by the Wilson , who
contributed a delicate sense of light and distance and a grandeur of design to the
English tradition. English romantic art was popular in 19 c., and was represented
by the works of Turner. This style was especially suited to capturing the effects of
light on the landscape, with which he was particularly concerned.
In general there are over 715 art galleries containing pictures of different
genres. Some of them are narrow specialized, others are of wide variety. But as
for me I like to look at the works of classic painters, so my favorite genre is
classicism. Classicism, as an artistic influence, typically presents its classic ideals in
art, literature, architecture, and music. During the eighteenth century and its Age
of Enlightenment, classicism was an essential component of a formal education.
The period’s major ideals such as freedom and democracy were rooted in
antiquity, particularly the democratic governance of classical Athens, Greece.
While works of classicism present the characteristics of order and balance, they
also often embody classical subject matter. Many works of classicism depict
classical scenes of antiquity such as the School of Athens (1509-1510) by Raphael
or the Death of Socrates (1787) by Jacques Louis-David. Many works of classicism
depicted scenes from mythology as well as ancient history. I like the works
created by Raphael, who is celebrated for the perfection and grace of his
paintings and drawings. According to a near-contemporary, when beginning to
plan a composition, he would lay out a large number of stock drawings of his on
the floor, and begin to draw "rapidly", borrowing figures from here and there. His
most famous works are “Sixtine Madonne” and “School of Athens”.