Ayers museum in Adelaide

Ayers Museum. My impressions.

I decided to go to this museum because I was bored and because I have already seen almost all other attractions of Adelaide. I didn’t consider this museum to be something extraordinary, but I was wrong.

First of all, as it is not very popular among the tourists, the groups are vey small(2-6people) .It makes the excursion so much more pleasant and relaxed. One doesn’t have any problems in hearing the guide plus can see everything very well.

Our guide was excellent, very knowledgeable, passionate about the museum and tried to present the information in an interesting way. I was not bored at all during this hour and a half excursion.

I learned a lot about this extraordinary man who was the prime minister of Australia several times. He became extraordinary reach because of his intellect, willingness to risk and lots of opportunities for newcomers that Australia was giving .

I am thankful to this museum for ability to present the life of a rich person in 19^th century. We saw all the premises starting from the dining room to the kitchens. The life of people in the context of this or that period has always been very interesting to me.

For example, I found out that :

· One of the reasons why rich people rarely smiled was that they had very poor teeth as they could afford to buy sugar unlike common people.

· We were shown nice little boxes for tea as it was very expensive. I pound of it costed like a year salary of a servant. To stop servants from stealing the owners kept their tea in beautifully inlayed locked boxes.

· It is easy to define the chair for a woman from the chair or the man as the one for a man has handles. Women couladn’t relax their body on the back of the chair because otherwise parts of their dress would hurt their abdomen area. So women always were sitting in an upright position.

· This museum possesses quite a nice collection of dolls. They had human hair on the head. Dolls were the ways to move the fashion from country to country. There is also a nice little collection of miniature porcelain sets that were carried by the traveling vendors .They showed people what they could purchase from them.

· We were also shown the nursery with different cradles and toys. Cradles were not very high enough that resulted in frequent traumas and deaths .

· I was impressed by the face screens that protected the face covered in wax-based make-up(so that it won’t melt) from the heat coming from the fireplace.

· We were shown multiple tiny nice little things that belonged to the women (special cases for the coins for tipping(women didn’t carry banknotes)and men(I liked pipes ,especially the ones for opium)

· I got a lot of pleasure from observing the kitchen utensils, like irons and the first manual washing mashines.

Thanks to this museum for the exciting recreation of the past.

Frederic Lord Leighton” Cymon and Iphigenia” 1884, Art gallery of NSW.

Lord Leighton was a president of Royal Academy of Arts, his art was very popular. For example, Queen Victoria once visited him and purchased 3 paintings. He was the first painter in England to become a peer. He died the next day of angina. As he was unmarried, after his death his barony was extinguished after existing for only a day; this is an all-time record in the Peerage.

At this time it was very fashionable to make historical paintings with subjects from ancient myths or novels. This picture tells the viewer the story, written by Boccaccio , about Cymon and Iphigenia. Cymon was handsome but ignorant and crude nobleman. Once he met beautiful Iphigenia with her slaves and fell in love with her .This feeling completely changed him, he became more cultured and refined.

The artist applied soft and warm paint on this canvas. The main colours are peach, yellow, almost golden, red and brown. They help to create an impression of warm summer evening .Hues ,depicting Iphigenia are tender, light, almost pastel, whereas the tones used for represent Cymon are bright and definite ,range of colours is narrow. This is likely to draw attention to the girl’s relaxation and calmness as opposite to young man’s passion and not very cultured behaviour. There is a strong contrast between light and dark colours in this canvas which creates an illusion of three dimentionality as well as draws viewers attention to the main characters.

Leighton pays a very big attention to depiction of fabrics and draperies. For this purpose he uses big long strokes of a brush .

There are two sources of light on this canvas: one is the sun and another one is as if “hidden”. The painter makes an effect of light coming as if from the sleeping Iphiginia . Possibly it was the way to emphasize her importance and , probably, to compare her with sun. It’s like the metaphore: Iphiginia is a ray of light in Cymon’s life.

For portraying of the faces of the protagonists the artist applied small, almost invisible strokes of a brush. It made the faces look very natural and true to life.

Pose of Iphigenia is very graceful :it allows the painter to show her body from all the angles. This posture is not natural ,people don’t sleep like that,only if they want to pretend they do.

Sleeping slaves don’t look like servants: their clothes are nice and died in different colours. In Greece people used to wear much simpler outfits. The tone of Cymon’s “toga” is crimson red. This dye was extremely expensive and only very well-off people could afford it.(The pigment was extracted from the sea shells).

The picture itself is very big (163x328 cm) and very elaborate. It took a lot of time for the painter to finish it.

Behind Iphigenia there are two huge trees, whereas behind Cymon-young bushes. Possibly, the painter is trying to say that influence of Iphigenia will make Cymon grow in understanding of life like a tree. Tree is a symbol of life and virtue, it is likely that in such a way the painter showed his attitude towards the heroine.

The whole atmosphere in this painting is very romantic and poetic. It is created by the colour scheme, poses and composition itself.

The costumes the people are wearing are imaginary: people didn’t wear such clothing neither in Italy in Boccacio’s time nor in ancient Greece. There is one peculiar detail about this work: the dress of a sleeping slave girl is contemporary for the beginning of 19^th century, she also wears a pony tail. Nobody in Greece or Italy wore ponytales . They became fashionable in 20^th century. Even women of 19^thcentury never wore this very informal hairstyle outside of boudoir. It’s possible to assume that thus the painter tried to emphasize the common origin of the girl.

There is a dog next to Cymon, symbolizing the purity of the young man’s love, his adoration of the girl.

One of Iphigenia’s pillows is red. Perhaps Leigton thus pointed out the main heroes of the painting. Another reason is the desire to show that the girl is rich .Possibly, the painter tried to show the redness of Iphigenia’s lips in such a way. It’s interesting to notice that the other pillow is orange-transitional hue between the red pillow and the yellow dress of Iphigenia. So the painter showed his talent of colorist as well as made the painting more balanced (red outfit of Cymon in the right –red pillow in the lift ; Yellow dress of Iphigenia-yellow yellow cloth over the vessel next to the sleeping servant.

The painting is one of the most beautiful ones ever created. It made me want to read Boccaccio’s novels.

The pre-raphaelite book by Andre Rose.

The pre-raphaelites book by Andre Rose.

My opinion about this book will be very subjective and will be based on my conception of this sort of books.

The book is for the people who already know something about pre-raphaelites,it doesn't give general information.I would recommend it for further studies of this trend of art.

Pluses of the book:

First of all ,this book is very interesting and tells the reader a lot of information about the Victorian period itself (i.e. ideas, problems, trends).This gives the reader an opportunity to understand the reasons why the artists were interested in certain plots and purports.

The most interesting part of the book to my mind is second(which is almost 2/3 of the volume). In it Andrea Rose describes in a dtailed way paintings.This can be compared with exciting walk along the halls of the art galleries in opposite to lecture about the art of pre-raphaelites in general.I learned that even rather boring paintings like portrait of Ruskin by Millais can be very interesting.It turned out that while making this picture John Everett was falling in love with wife of the famous journalist. After this painting was finished Ruskin divorced with his wife who married Millais.

Another dascribtion of the painting amazed me a lot.The work was made by William Holman Hunt and it is called ''The awakening conscience''.From the first sight the painting seem to depict just twbo lovers,but the book advises us to pay attention to simbols like threads on the floor.All those details reveal the main idea of this moralistic painting -prostitution and attempts of the heroine to start a new life.Andrea Rose tells the reader that the choice of this topic wasn't accidental-William Hollman Hunt fell in love with a prostitute and was trying to improve her,as he found out later -in vain.Hunt even used this woman as a model for this picture.Background information about the paintings in this book is everything but boring.

I didn't like that there are a lot of quotations from the memoirs of painters and bits of poems.I am not a fan of poetry and as I am not a native speaker it was really boring and hard for me to understand these texts.I undestand the intentions of the author to illustrate and to prove his ideas, to help the readers understand what inspired the painters,what they tried to depict in their pictures.Poetry of the previous centu y is a hard reading ,so I just skipped these parts of the book.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and ,to my mind,it is worth reading as it helps to understand mysterious pre-raphaelites.

Art gallery of Soth Australia

My impressions about pre-raphaelite collection in the Art gallery of South Australia.

The collection of paintings,created by pre-raphaelites is divided into two parts :pictures by members of pre-rapaelite brotherhood(Hunt, Burne-Jones)(ground floor) and paintings by their followers(1st floor).It wasn't very easy for me to find an amazingly beautiful room with Tiffany glass windows,furniture and textile by Morris and Co(almost all pre-raphaelits participated in creating designs for this company) where there were wonderful pictures like ''Perseus and Andromeda''by Burne-Jones.

Creative work of Burne-Jones is represented rather well in this gallery:there was a book with illustrations, a tapestry (''Adoration of the Magy'') and a painting illustrating many-sided personality of this outstanding representative of pre-rapaelite movement.The tapestry is interesting from the point of view that it was the most popular ecclesiastical work ever produced by Morris and Co .

It was wery interesting to see the work of this painter in different media.

In this room(so called Morris room) there was also a painting by the founder of PRB -W.H.Hunt.It was called'' Christ and two Marys''.The work impressed me by it's unusual and beautiful color combinations (violet with blue and green).The work itself was very unusual-Christ was more realistic then in the works created before by other artists.

Morris's room astounded me most of all by textile and wallpaper designed by Pre-raphaelits.It was more then just beautiful-it was incredibly wonderfull.It was so impessive that I returned to this room two more times in following days.I want to have the same upholstery,curtains as in the exhibition.Walking in this room I was thinking why the people who created such a beauty and surrounded themselves by it were so unhappy in their life?Beautiful and harmonious homes and paintings doesn't bring happiness -that what was I thinking about in this room.

Second part of collection is exhibited in a beatifuul room with Rodin's sculptures.The pictures that I liked most of all were -''Priestess of Dephi'' by John Collier and ''Circe Invidiosa'' by J.W.Waterhouse.

The first painting stroke me by its beautiful shades of dark colour of the clothes of this priestess.The woman depicted in the painting was gorgeous ,very rare type of beauty.Combination of precise detailes of this work of art and bright ,shining colors produced the effect that impressed me.

The second painting depicts a woman that is putting poison into the sea water to turn her rival into the monster.The woman is actually standing on a sea-monster.Dramatic effect of this picture was created by contrast of cold green and black-the main colors of this work.Those colors symbolise awful,vile intentions of the woman.The dress of the heroine is shimmering with different nuances of green and blue- definitely very nice powerful picture.

My visit to the Art gallery of South Australia was extremely pleasant,cognitive and I think that collection of pre-raphaelits in it is one of the best in Australia.

My impressions about the book Pre-Raphelites

My impressions about the book ''Pre-Raphaelites'' by K.E.Sullivan.

I enjoyed reading this book because it is written in an easy way (not many dates and names).That makes this book very helpful for an ignorant person in pre-raphaelite art like me(I wasn’t lost in non-useful information). I gained the necessary information (who, when, why, main ideas, history of movement) in understandable structured way.

Another good side of the book is the interesting way in which information is presented. It's not a dry reference book but exciting reading thanks to details about personal life of painters like love-stories, drug problems etc. It makes pre-raphaelites more understandable, closer to the reader.

Illustrations in the book were rather impressive, quality was good and I enjoyed looking at them.

Things I didn't like:

1 .First of all, the author was naming lots of paintings without giving illustrations. To my mind, this book is for people who have just started studying pre-raphaelites. How are they supposed to know those paintings named? Without a picture just naming or describing a painting loses its sense.

2. Second thing I didn't like is that all the paintings for illustrating the text were from European museums. I live in Australia which possesses rather nice collection of pre-raphaelites and would like to know more about the paintings hanging in the walls in the galleries of this country.

What I would like to offer the author to add to this book:

1. List of museums that have pre-raphaelite paintings in their collection.

2. Bibliography on this topic for future studies in this sphere.

All things considered, I enjoyed reading this book, it made my pre-raphaelite studies so much more enjoyable!

Ten reasons why i like pre-raphaelite paintings

Ten reasons why I like pre-raphaelites.

1. First of all, they used very unusual colour combinations for their paintings. The paintings are either full of sunlight, very optimistic or dark, gloomy and scary. This effect was reached by usage of new shades of colours.

2. Paintings itself are very elaborate and detailed. One can spend hours looking at every flower or herb or detail of costume depicted in the picture. It took a very long time for the artist to finish the painting. It was, at least at the very beginning, non-commercial art. Artists tried to express themselves, to make the world a little bit better rather than to sell their paintings.

3. The plots of most of the pictures are very romantic and poetic.

4. Artists depicted very handsome women and men in their works. Looking at those paintings give me great aesthetic pleasure.

5. Background information about each of the paintings is usually fascinating. That's because of the interesting plots that painters were choosing for their works. Artists themselves were outstanding people, multy-faceted personalities. Their stories of life are as if taken from the novels about passionate tragic love.

6. To understand and appreciate pre-raphaelite paintings one doesn't need to have profound knowledge in history of arts, Bible or mythology. Each canvas has it's own more profound meaning, it accumulates many ideas, but the main topic can be easily understood.

7. Pre-raphaelites were interested in Medieval ages, their works of art have a lot in common with art before the renaissance (i.e. detailed, importance of symbols).I am very interested in medieval history .

8. Very important is that they as if depict world of dreams, beautiful and a little bit unreal, which is a very good distraction from the problems of the modern world.

9. There are lots of those paintings in Australian museums. It is always much more pleasant to see the painting on the wall than in the book. I can admire small strokes of a brush of the painter, see real size of the canvas and enjoy other benefits of close contact with the painting.

10. My boyfriend likes them too, it is very pleasant to go to the art-galleries together. It is extremely nice to exchange ideas and just to be together in such a place.