Famous English Painters

Art is long, life is short.

 Hippocrates

Art plays an important role in upbringing our emotions, tastes and feelings, it changes our views and outlook and mood, enriches our inner world and cultivates love for people and nature. Great works of art enable man to look at the world as if through a magnificent glass, bringing into focus all that is most important and significant.
England didn't have its own school of painting up to the XVII century. In the XVII century art in Britain had been dominated mostly by the Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck. Though he lived in England for only nine years his influence on British painting was very strong. He is considered tо be the father of the English portrait school. The English king personally invited Van Dyck to London and during his first year in England the painter spent most of his time painting the king and the queen. Van Dyck created the impressive formal type of portrait and such masters as Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence and Hogarth owed much to their study of his works. He created a genre of aristocratic and intellectual portrait which influenced much the development of English painting. He created the type of a portrait which helped him to convey the sitter’s individual psychology.
William Hogarth
During the 18^th century the truly national school of painting was created. So, until William Hogarth (1697 - 1764) we can hardly find a painter truly English. William Hogarth was the first English painter who raised the British pictorial art to a high level of importance. Hogarth was the printers son, uneducated, but a curious observer of men and manners.  Hogarth wasn’t a success as a painter but his pictures of social life which he called “modern moral subjects” brought him fame and position in the society. Among his best works are «Captain Coram», «The Shrimp Girl», and «Mode Marriage». It consists of 6 pictures united under one title. “The Marriage Contract” is the first. Both fathers are sitting to the right. One of them an earl is proudly pointing his family tree. The other is reading the marriage contract. The Earl’s son is looking at himself with pleasure in a mirror. The daughter of the second man is playing with her wedding ring and listening to the complements of a young lawyer. The subject matter of the picture is the protest against marriage for money and vanity. Other pictures of this serial have the same subject matter.
Hogarth was sure that success came to him due to hard labour. He wrote “Genius is nothing, labour is diligence.”
Sir Joshua Reynolds
In the second half of the 18^th century narrative and satirical themes lost their leading role in the English art. The ruling classes tried to show the confirmation and glorification of their social position. The most important form of painting became ceremonial portraits of the ruling class representatives. Sir Joshua Reynolds was the most outstanding portraitist of the famous contemporaries of his. He usually painted his characters in a heroic style and showed them as the best people of the nation.
Joseph Turner
Joseph Turner, the greatest English romantic landscape painter, was born in Covent Garden, London, on the 23rd of April in 1775. He was the son of a fashionable barber. He started drawing and painting in an early age. His father used to sell the boy’s drawings to his customers. In such a way he earned money which his father paid for his lessons in art. At the age of 14 he entered the Royal Academy School. His water-colours were exhibited at the Royal Academy from the time he was fifteen. At the age of 18 he had set up his own studio. Turner worked at first in water-colours, then in oils.
Between 1802 and 1809 Turner painted a series of sea-pieces, «Sun Rising in Mist» is among them. The masterpieces of this period are «The Lake of Geneva», «Frosty Morning», «Crossing the Brook», etc. In 1819 Turner visited Italy for the first time. During the journey he made about 1500 drawings and the next few years he painted a series of pictures inspired by what he had seen. Turner was the master of the air and wind, rain and sunshine, horizon, ships and sea. He dissolved the forms of his landscape in the play of light and shade. During his life Turner painted some hundreds of paintings and some thousands of water-colours and drawings. On his death Turner’s own entire collection of paintings and drawings was willed to the nation and they are in the National and the Tate Galleries.
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was a master of the English school of painting. He was a portrait and a landscape painter. He was born in Sudbury in 1727 and was the son of a merchant. His father sent him to London to study arts. He spent 8 years working and studying in London. There he got acquainted with the Flemish traditional school of painting. Green and blue colours dominate in his portraits. He was the first British painter who painted British native countryside. He painted a stack of hay, a poor cottage, and poor peasants.
His works of landscape contain much poetry and music. His best works are «Blue Boy», «The Portrait of the Duchess of Beaufort», «Sara Siddons» and others. The particular discovery of Gainsborough was the creation of a form of art in which the characters and the background form a single unity. 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. Gainsborough emphasized that the natural background for his characters should be nature itself. His works are painted in clear and transparent tones, had a considerable influence on the artists of the English school. He was in advance of his time. His art became a forerunner of the Romantic Movement.
John Constable
John Constable, one of the greatest landscape painters, was born in Sufford, on June 11,1776. He was the son of a wealthy miller. He began to take interest in landscape painting while he was at grammar school. His father did not favour art as a profession. Being a child Constable worked almost secretly, painting in the cottage of an amateur painter. At last his father understood the son’s devotion to art and allowed him to visit London in 1795, where he began to study painting. In 1799 Constable entered the Royal Academy School in London. He was the first landscape painter who considered that every painter should make his sketches direct from nature that is, working in the open air. Constable’s art developed slowly.
He tried to earn his living by portraits but never liked doing that and he achieved no popularity. Constable was a realist. He depicted cattle, horses, and the people working there in his landscapes. He painted the smiling meadows, the sparkle of the sun on rain, or the stormy and uncertain clouds. The most notable works of Constable are «Flatford Mill», «The White Horse», «The Hay Wain», «Waterloo Bridge», «From Whitehall stairs» and others. In England Constable never received the recognition that he deserved. The French were the first to acclaim Constable publicly. His influence upon foreign painting schools has been powerful. Constable may truly be considered the father of the modern landscape painting.