Art History and Techniques

How can ‘colour’ be considered a distinct element of Louis Ouinze Art?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
Fanciful as the Louis Quinze art seems, by contrast with that of Louis Quatorze, it, too, is essentially classical. Watteau, Fragonard, are as gay, as spontaneous, as careless, as vivacious as Boldini. Their very names suggest not merely freedom but a sportive and abandoned license. But in what a narrow round they move! How their imaginativeness is limited by their artificiality! What a talent, what a genius they have for artificiality. It is the era par excellence of dilettantism, and nothing is less romantic than dilettantism. All their material is traditional. Of ideas they have almost none. They are as barren of invention in any large sense as if they were imitators instead of, in a sense, the originators of a new phase.
Yet they have that distinct quality of charm which is eternally incompatible with routine. They are as little constructive as the age itself. Of everything thus indicated one predicates at once unconsciousness, the momentum of antecedent thought modified by the ease born of habit; the carelessness due to having one's thinking done for one. But out of this very condition of things, and out of this attitude of mind, arises a new art, or rather a new phase of art, essentially classic, as I said, but nevertheless imbued with a character of its own, and this character is distinctly charming. Wherein does the charm lie? In two qualities, I think, one of which has not hitherto appeared in French painting, and that is cleverness in the use of color. The Louis Quinze painters were sensitive to that vibration of atmosphere that blends local hues into the ensemble that produces tone. The ensemble of their tints is what we mean by color. Since the Venetians this note had not appeared.
By cleverness, as exhibited by the Louis Quinze painters, I do not mean mere technical ability, but something more inclusive, something relating quite as much to attitude of mind as to dexterity of treatment. There is a sense of confidence and capability in the way they view, as well as in the way they handle the light material. To be adequate to the requirements - rarely very exacting in any case - never to show stupidity, to have a great deal of taste and an instinctive feeling for what is elegant and refined, to abhor pedantry and take gayety at once lightly and seriously, and beyond this to take no thought, is to be clever; and in this sense the Louis Quinze painters are the first, as they certainly are the typical, clever artists.

Which of the following can be inferred about French Art? I. French art was more conservative than liberal. II. French and the Italian art owe their ancestry to a common source. III. Initially, poetic expression was not found in French art.

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
Naturally thus, when the Italian influence wore itself out, and the Fontainebleau school gave way to a more purely national art; when France had definitely entered into her Italian heritage and had learned the lessons that Holland and Flanders had to teach her as well; when, in fine, the art of the modern world began, it was an art of grammar, of rhetoric. Certainly up to the time of Géricault painting in general held itself rather pedantically aloof from poetry. Claude, Chardin, what may be called the illustrated vers de société of the Louis Quinze painters — of Watteau and Fragonard — even Prudhon, did little to change the prevailing color and tone. Claude's art is, in manner, thoroughly classic. His personal influence was perhaps first felt by Corot. He stands by himself, at any rate, quite apart. He was the first thoroughly original French painter, if indeed one may not say he was the first thoroughly original modern painter. He has been assigned to both the French and Italian schools — to the latter by Gallophobist critics, however, through a partisanship which in aesthetic matters is ridiculous; there was in his day no Italian school for him to belong to. The truth is that he passed a large part of his life in Italy and that his landscape is Italianate. The great English painter, Mr. Ruskin says that Claude could paint a small wave very well, and acknowledges that he affected a revolution in art, which revolution “consisted mainly in setting the sun in heavens.” Mr. George Moore observes of Mr. Ruskin that his unusual attrition of Mr. Whistler — “the lot of critics” being “to be remembered by what they have failed to understand” — “will survive his finest prose passage.” I am not sure about Mr. Whistler. Contemporaries are too near for a perfect critical perspective. But assuredly Mr. Ruskin's failure to perceive Claude's point of view — to perceive that Claude's aim and Stanfield's, say, were quite different; that Claude, in fact, was at the opposite pole from the botanist and the geologist whom Mr. Ruskin’s “reverence for nature” would make of every landscape painter — is a failure in appreciation than to have shown which it would be better for him as a critic never to have been born. It seems hardly fanciful to say that the depreciation of Claude by Mr. Ruskin, who is a landscape painter himself, using the medium of words instead of pigments, is, so to speak, professionally unjust.

Which of the following best explains the author’s use of the word “counterpoint” in referring to Yeats?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In the past century Irish painting has changed from a British - influenced lyrical tradition to an art that evokes the ruggedness and roots of an Irish Celtic past. At the turn of the twentieth century Irish painters, including notables Walter Frederick Osborne and Sir - William Orpen, looked elsewhere for influence.
Osborne’s exposure to “Plein Air” painting deeply impacted his stylistic development; and Orpen allied himself with a group of English artists, while at the same time participating in the French avant - garde experiment, both as painter and teacher.
However nationalist energies were beginning to coalesce, reviving interest in Irish culture and Irish visual arts. Beatrice Elvery’s Aire (1907), a landmark achievement, merged the devotional simplicity of fifteenth - century Italian painting with the iconography of Ireland’s Celtic past, linking the history of Irish Catholicism with the still - nascent Irish republic. And, although also captivated by the French Plein Air school, Sir John Lavery invoked the mythology of his native land for a 1928 commission to paint the central figure for the bank note of the new Irish Free State. Lavery chose as this figure Aire, with her arm on a Celtic harp, the national symbol of independent Ireland. In Irish painting from about 1910, memories of Edwardian romanticism coexisted with a new sense of realism, exemplified by the paintings of Paul Henry and Sean Keating, a student of Orpen’s realism also crept in to the work of Edwardian’s Lavery and Orpen, both of whom made paintings depicting World War I, Lavery with a distanced Victorian nobility, Orpen closer to the front, revealing a more sinister and realistic vision. Meanwhile, counterpoint to the Edwardians and realists came Jack B. Yeats, whose travels throughout the rugged and more authentically Irish west led him to depict subjects ranging from street scenes in Dublin to boxing matches and funerals. Fusing close observations of Irish life and icons with an Irish identity in a new way, Yeats changed the face of Irish painting and became the most important Irish artist of his century.

Which of the following is the most likely title of a longer article in which the passage might have appeared?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In the past century Irish painting has changed from a British - influenced lyrical tradition to an art that evokes the ruggedness and roots of an Irish Celtic past. At the turn of the twentieth century Irish painters, including notables Walter Frederick Osborne and Sir - William Orpen, looked elsewhere for influence.
Osborne’s exposure to “Plein Air” painting deeply impacted his stylistic development; and Orpen allied himself with a group of English artists, while at the same time participating in the French avant - garde experiment, both as painter and teacher.
However nationalist energies were beginning to coalesce, reviving interest in Irish culture and Irish visual arts. Beatrice Elvery’s Aire (1907), a landmark achievement, merged the devotional simplicity of fifteenth - century Italian painting with the iconography of Ireland’s Celtic past, linking the history of Irish Catholicism with the still - nascent Irish republic. And, although also captivated by the French Plein Air school, Sir John Lavery invoked the mythology of his native land for a 1928 commission to paint the central figure for the bank note of the new Irish Free State. Lavery chose as this figure Aire, with her arm on a Celtic harp, the national symbol of independent Ireland. In Irish painting from about 1910, memories of Edwardian romanticism coexisted with a new sense of realism, exemplified by the paintings of Paul Henry and Sean Keating, a student of Orpen’s realism also crept in to the work of Edwardian’s Lavery and Orpen, both of whom made paintings depicting World War I, Lavery with a distanced Victorian nobility, Orpen closer to the front, revealing a more sinister and realistic vision. Meanwhile, counterpoint to the Edwardians and realists came Jack B. Yeats, whose travels throughout the rugged and more authentically Irish west led him to depict subjects ranging from street scenes in Dublin to boxing matches and funerals. Fusing close observations of Irish life and icons with an Irish identity in a new way, Yeats changed the face of Irish painting and became the most important Irish artist of his century.

Which of the following statements about Egyptian paintings is/are not correct as per the passage? (i) Egyptian paintings were precursors of Greco-Roman paintings. (ii) Egyptian paintings were predominantly inspired by religious and imperial considerations. (iii) In a way the Egyptians have purposely recorded their history in paintings.

Answer the question is based on the following passage.

            Life would have existed without fine arts such as architecture,
            sculpture, painting, poetry and music, but would have not
            been as pleasant an experience as it is with enjoying these
            art forms. Take for example, pictures. How much more easily
(5)        do we understand the subject we are studying through the
            help we get from pictures of objects or places which we have
            not seen and we wish to know about. Egyptian paintings were
            not only used to adorn the temple walls, tombs, columns,
            cornices etc but they were also intended to be useful in telling
(10)      the history of the various countries, their wars, conquests,
            triumphs. Lives of kings and stories are as distinctly told by
            pictures as by Egyptian writings. The Greek paintings and
            those of ancient Romans are almost alike. The art of ancient
            Rome was almost transplanted from Greece. Romans imitated
(15)      Greece so that Roman painting of the pre-Christian era must
           be considered together with that of Greece.