1.
Art exhibition
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An art exhibition is traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, in American English, they may be called exhibit, exposition or show. In UK English, they are always called exhibitions or shows, and an individual item in the show is an exhibit. The art works may be presented in museums, art halls, art clubs or private art galleries, or at some place the business of which is not the display or sale of art. An important distinction is noted between those exhibits where some or all of the works are for sale, normally in private art galleries, sometimes the event is organized on a specific occasion, like a birthday, anniversary or commemoration. There are different kinds of art exhibitions, in there is a distinction between commercial and non-commercial exhibitions. A commercial exhibition or trade fair is often referred to as an art fair that shows the work of artists or art dealers where participants generally have to pay a fee. A vanity gallery is a space of works in a gallery that charges the artist for use of the space. They normally include no items for sale, they are distinguished from the permanent displays. Exhibitions in commercial galleries are often made up of items that are for sale. Typically, the visitor has to pay to enter a museum exhibition, retrospectives look back over the work of a single artist, other common types are individual expositions or solo shows, group expositions, or expositions on a specific theme or topic. The Biennale is an exhibition held every two years, often intending to gather together the best of international art, there are now many of these. A travelling exhibition is another category of art exhibition, Exhibitions of new or recent art can be juried, invitational, or open. If prizes are to be awarded, the judge or panel of judges will select the prizewinners as well. In an invitational exhibition, such as the Whitney Biennial, the organizer of the show asks certain artists to supply artworks, an open or non-juried exhibition, such as the Kyoto Triennial, allows anybody to enter artworks and shows them all. A type of exhibition that is usually non-juried is an art exhibition. The art exhibition has played a part in the market for new art since the 18th and 19th centuries. The Paris Salon, open to the public from 1737, rapidly became the key factor in determining the reputation, and so the price, of the French artists of the day
2.
Royal Academy of Arts
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The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. The Royal Academy of Arts was founded through an act of King George III on 10 December 1768 with a mission to promote the arts of design in Britain through education and exhibition. Supporters wanted to foster a national school of art and to encourage appreciation, fashionable taste in 18th-century Britain was based on continental and traditional art forms, providing contemporary British artists little opportunity to sell their works. From 1746 the Foundling Hospital, through the efforts of William Hogarth, the success of this venture led to the formation of the Society of Artists of Great Britain and the Free Society of Artists. Both these groups were primarily exhibiting societies, their success was marred by internal factions among the artists. The combined vision of education and exhibition to establish a school of art set the Royal Academy apart from the other exhibiting societies. It provided the foundation upon which the Royal Academy came to dominate the art scene of the 18th and 19th centuries, supplanting the earlier art societies. Sir William Chambers, a prominent architect, used his connections with George III to gain royal patronage and financial support of the Academy, the painter Joshua Reynolds was made its first president. Francis Milner Newton was elected the first secretary, a post he held for two decades until his resignation in 1788, the instrument of foundation, signed by George III on 10 December 1768, named 34 founder members and allowed for a total membership of 40. William Hoare and Johann Zoffany were added to this list later by the King and are known as nominated members, among the founder members were two women, a father and daughter, and two sets of brothers. The Royal Academy was initially housed in cramped quarters in Pall Mall, although in 1771 it was given temporary accommodation for its library and schools in Old Somerset House, then a royal palace. In 1780 it was installed in purpose-built apartments in the first completed wing of New Somerset House, located in the Strand and designed by Chambers, the Academy moved in 1837 to Trafalgar Square, where it occupied the east wing of the recently completed National Gallery. These premises soon proved too small to house both institutions, in 1868,100 years after the Academys foundation, it moved to Burlington House, Piccadilly, where it remains. Burlington House is owned by the British Government, and used rent-free by the Royal Academy, the first Royal Academy exhibition of contemporary art, open to all artists, opened on 25 April 1769 and ran until 27 May 1769. 136 works of art were shown and this exhibition, now known as the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, has been staged annually without interruption to the present day. In 1870 the Academy expanded its programme to include a temporary annual loan exhibition of Old Masters. The range and frequency of these exhibitions have grown enormously since that time. Britains first public lectures on art were staged by the Royal Academy, led by Reynolds, the first president, a program included lectures by Dr. William Hunter, John Flaxman, James Barry, Sir John Soane, and J. M. W. Turner
3.
Burlington House
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Burlington House is a building on Piccadilly in London. It was originally a private Palladian mansion, and was expanded in the century after being purchased by the British government. The house was one of the earliest of a number of large private residences built on the north side of Piccadilly, previously a country lane. The first version was begun by Sir John Denham about 1664 and it was a red-brick double-pile hip-roofed mansion with a recessed centre, typical of the style of the time, or perhaps even a little old fashioned. In 1704 the house passed to the ten-year-old Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, who was to become the patron of the Palladian movement in England. The colonnade separated the house from increasingly urbanized Piccadilly with a cour dhonneur, inside, Baroque decorative paintings in the entrance hall and staircase by Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini resulted in some of the richest interiors in London. In between his two Grand Tours of Italy young Lord Burlingtons taste was transformed by the publication of Giacomo Leonis Palladio. In 1717 or 1718, Colen Campbell was appointed to replace Gibbs, the ground floor became a rusticated basement, which supported a monumental piano nobile of nine bays. This had no centrepiece, but was highlighted by venetian windows in the end bays. Other alterations included a monumental screening gateway to Piccadilly and the reconstruction of most of the principal interiors, with typical Palladian features such as rich coved ceilings. The Saloon, constructed immediately after William Kents return from Rome in December 1719, has survived in the most intact condition and its plaster putti above the pedimented doorcases were probably by Giovanni Battista Guelfi. Lord Burlington transferred his energies to Chiswick House after 1722. On Burlingtons death in 1753, Burlington House passed to the Dukes of Devonshire, the 4th Dukes younger son Lord George Cavendish and a Devonshire in-law, the 3rd Duke of Portland, each used the house for at least two separate spells. Portland had some of the interiors altered by John Carr in the 1770s. Eventually Lord George, who was a man in his own right due to a marriage to an heiress. Like Carrs work Wares was sympathetic with the Palladian style of the house, providing an example of the Kent Revival. In 1819 the Burlington Arcade was built along the part of the grounds. In 1854, Burlington House was sold to the British government for £140,000 and this plan, however, was abandoned in the face of strong opposition and in 1857 Burlington House was occupied by the Royal Society, the Linnean Society and the Chemical Society
4.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
5.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
6.
Sculpture
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Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts, a wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast. However, most ancient sculpture was painted, and this has been lost. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, the Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith, the revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelos David. Relief is often classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt. Relief sculpture may also decorate steles, upright slabs, usually of stone, techniques such as casting, stamping and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work, many of these allow the production of several copies. The term sculpture is used mainly to describe large works. The very large or colossal statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity, another grand form of portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in recent decades. The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the head, showing just that, or the bust, small forms of sculpture include the figurine, normally a statue that is no more than 18 inches tall, and for reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin. Sculpture is an important form of public art, a collection of sculpture in a garden setting can be called a sculpture garden. One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in form of association with religion. Cult images are common in cultures, though they are often not the colossal statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art. The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have survived, were rather small. The same is true in Hinduism, where the very simple. Some undoubtedly advanced cultures, such as the Indus Valley civilization, appear to have had no monumental sculpture at all, though producing very sophisticated figurines, the Mississippian culture seems to have been progressing towards its use, with small stone figures, when it collapsed. Other cultures, such as ancient Egypt and the Easter Island culture, from the 20th century the relatively restricted range of subjects found in large sculpture expanded greatly, with abstract subjects and the use or representation of any type of subject now common. Today much sculpture is made for intermittent display in galleries and museums, small sculpted fittings for furniture and other objects go well back into antiquity, as in the Nimrud ivories, Begram ivories and finds from the tomb of Tutankhamun
7.
Architecture
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Architecture is both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings and other physical structures. Architectural works, in the form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements, Architecture can mean, A general term to describe buildings and other physical structures. The art and science of designing buildings and nonbuilding structures, the style of design and method of construction of buildings and other physical structures. A unifying or coherent form or structure Knowledge of art, science, technology, the design activity of the architect, from the macro-level to the micro-level. The practice of the architect, where architecture means offering or rendering services in connection with the design and construction of buildings. The earliest surviving work on the subject of architecture is De architectura. According to Vitruvius, a building should satisfy the three principles of firmitas, utilitas, venustas, commonly known by the original translation – firmness, commodity. An equivalent in modern English would be, Durability – a building should stand up robustly, utility – it should be suitable for the purposes for which it is used. Beauty – it should be aesthetically pleasing, according to Vitruvius, the architect should strive to fulfill each of these three attributes as well as possible. Leon Battista Alberti, who elaborates on the ideas of Vitruvius in his treatise, De Re Aedificatoria, saw beauty primarily as a matter of proportion, for Alberti, the rules of proportion were those that governed the idealised human figure, the Golden mean. The most important aspect of beauty was, therefore, an inherent part of an object, rather than something applied superficially, Gothic architecture, Pugin believed, was the only true Christian form of architecture. The 19th-century English art critic, John Ruskin, in his Seven Lamps of Architecture, Architecture was the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by men. That the sight of them contributes to his health, power. For Ruskin, the aesthetic was of overriding significance and his work goes on to state that a building is not truly a work of architecture unless it is in some way adorned. For Ruskin, a well-constructed, well-proportioned, functional building needed string courses or rustication, but suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say, This is beautiful, le Corbusiers contemporary Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. The notable 19th-century architect of skyscrapers, Louis Sullivan, promoted an overriding precept to architectural design, function came to be seen as encompassing all criteria of the use, perception and enjoyment of a building, not only practical but also aesthetic, psychological and cultural
8.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
9.
A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881
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A Private View at the Royal Academy,1881 is a painting by the English artist William Powell Frith exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1883. The room is Gallery III, the largest and most imposing room at Burlington House, Frith worked on the painting through much of 1881 and 1882. I therefore planned a group, consisting of an apostle of the beautiful. The subject of the painting is the contrast between lasting historical achievements and ephemeral fads, the portrait of Disraeli represents the former, and the influence of the Aesthetic movement in dress represents the latter. Aesthetic dress is exemplified by the female figures, to the left, in green, pink. Oscar Wilde, one of the proponents of Aestheticism, is depicted at the right behind the boy in the green suit, with signature lily buttonhole. Behind Wilde, further to the right, a group of opponents glare disapprovingly at him as he speaks, painters Philip Calderon and Henry Stacy Marks, sculptor Joseph Boehm, and journalist G. A. To the left, behind and immediately to the right of Wilde, are the actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, to Wildes left are Lillie Langtry, in a white dress, beside the soberly-dressed William Thomson, Archbishop of York. In the centre of the composition, bearded and dressed in a frock coat, stands Frederic Leighton, President of the Royal Academy, talking to a seated woman, Constance. The head of surgeon Sir Henry Thompson appears between Leighton and the Countess, Frith himself appears in the centre of the painting, bare-headed and whiskered, directly below the painting of Disraeli, talking to two women behind the seat. One of the two women on the side of the seat, facing away from Leighton, is the heiress. Baroness Burdett-Coutts is shown in conversation with the younger Lady Diana Huddleston, daughter of William Beauclerk and their husbands also appear among the standing figures behind the seat. Lady Dianas husband was Sir John Walter Huddleston, the last Baron of the Exchequer and a judge of Queens Bench. He wears a top hat, and stands just behind and to the left of poet and playwright Robert Browning, to the right, listening to Brownings conversation, is naturalist Thomas Huxley. Mr Burdett-Coutts stands behind and to the right of Huxley, reading, with moustache, Frith describes them as a family of pure aesthetes absorbed in affected study of the pictures with Trollope affording a striking contrast to the eccentric forms near him. Cartoonist George du Maurier, with moustache and hat, stands immediately behind, to the left, behind him, further left, between Trollope and the edge of the painting, are novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon and musician Sir Julius Benedict. The paintings on the wall accurately reproduce the exhibits at the 1881 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, a second portrait of Disraeli is visible on the wall behind Langtry. On the wall at the right, above Wildes opponents, is the similarly angry-looking central figure in John Colliers Last Voyage of Henry Hudson, Millais at the extreme right is looking at Lawrence Alma-Tademas painting Sappho and Alcaeus, accompanied by a myopic connoisseur
10.
William Powell Frith
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William Powell Frith RA was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1853, presenting The Sleeping Model as his Diploma work and he has been described as the greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth. William Powell Frith was born in Aldfield, North Yorkshire on 19 January 1819, Frith was encouraged to take up art by his father, a hotelier in Harrogate. Frith was great uncle and an advisor to the English school portrait painter Henry Keyworth Raine and he moved to London in 1835 where he began his formal art studies at Sasss Academy in Charlotte Street, before attending the Royal Academy Schools. Frith started his career as a painter and first exhibited at the British Institution in 1838. In the 1840s he often based works on the output of writers such as Charles Dickens, whose portrait he painted. He was a member of The Clique, which also included Richard Dadd, the principal influence on his work was the hugely popular domestic subjects painted by Sir David Wilkie. Wilkies famous painting The Chelsea Pensioners was a spur to the creation of Friths own most famous compositions, in Ramsgate Sands, Life at the Seaside he depicted visitors and entertainers at the seaside resort. He followed this with The Derby Day, depicting scenes among the crowd at the race at Epsom Downs and this 1858 composition was bought by Jacob Bell for £1,500. It was so popular that it had to be protected by a specially installed rail when shown at the Royal Academy of Arts, another well-known painting was The Railway Station, a scene of Paddington station. In 1865 he was chosen to paint the Marriage of the Prince of Wales and his 1858 painting The Crossing Sweeper has been described as breaking new ground in its description of the collision of wealth and poverty on a London street. Later in his career he painted two series of five each, telling moral stories in the manner of William Hogarth. These were the Road to Ruin, about the dangers of gambling, and he retired from the Royal Academy in 1890 but continued to exhibit until 1902. Frith was a traditionalist who made known his aversion to modern-art developments in a couple of autobiographies – My Autobiography and Reminiscences and Further Reminiscences –, fellow traditionalist Frederic Leighton is featured in the painting, which also portrays painter John Everett Millais and novelist Anthony Trollope. In his later years, he painted copies of his famous paintings, as well as more sexually uninhibited works. A well-known raconteur, his writings, most notably his chatty autobiography, were very popular, in 1856, Frith was photographed at The Photographed Institute by Robert Howlett, as part of a series of portraits of fine artists. The picture was among a group exhibited at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester in 1857, Frith is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London. The first major retrospective in Friths native Britain for half a century was staged at the Guildhall Art Gallery and it transferred to Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate, North Yorkshire in March 2007
11.
Oscar Wilde
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Oscar Fingal OFlahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he one of Londons most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment, Wildes parents were successful Anglo-Irish, Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life, at university, Wilde read Greats, he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the philosophy of aestheticism. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles, known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with social themes. He wrote Salome in French in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to the prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, at the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest, was still being performed in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wildes lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, the charge carried a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest, after two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years hard labour. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain, there he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46, Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, the second of three children born to Sir William Wilde and Jane Wilde, two years behind William. Wildes mother was of Italian descent, and under the pseudonym Speranza and she read the Young Irelanders poetry to Oscar and Willie, inculcating a love of these poets in her sons. Lady Wildes interest in the neo-classical revival showed in the paintings and busts of ancient Greece, William Wilde was Irelands leading oto-ophthalmologic surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services as medical adviser and assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland. He also wrote books about Irish archaeology and peasant folklore, a renowned philanthropist, his dispensary for the care of the citys poor at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road. On his fathers side Wilde was descended from a Dutchman, Colonel de Wilde, on his mothers side Wildes ancestors included a bricklayer from County Durham who emigrated to Ireland sometime in the 1770s. Wilde was baptised as an infant in St, marks Church, Dublin, the local Church of Ireland church
12.
Varnish
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Varnish is a transparent, hard, protective finish or film that is primarily used in wood finishing but also for other materials. Varnish is traditionally a combination of a oil, a resin. Varnish finishes are usually glossy but may be designed to produce satin or semi-gloss sheens by the addition of flatting agents. Varnish has little or no color, is transparent, and has no added pigment, as opposed to paints or wood stains, varnishes are also applied over wood stains as a final step to achieve a film for gloss and protection. Some products are marketed as a stain and varnish. Resin varnishes dry by evaporation of the solvent and harden almost immediately upon drying, acrylic and waterborne varnishes dry upon evaporation of the water but will experience an extended curing period. Environmental factors such as heat and humidity play a large role in the drying and curing times of varnishes. In classic varnish the cure rate depends on the type of oil used and, to some extent, the drying and curing time of all varnishes may be sped up by exposure to an energy source such as sunlight, ultraviolet light, or heat. Many varnishes contain plant-derived oils, synthetic oils or resins as their binder in combination with organic solvents and these are highly flammable in their liquid state. A highly important note, that is often over looked, all drying oils, certain alkyds, thus, oil-soaked rags and paper can smolder and ignite into flames, even several hours after use if proper precautions are not taken. Varnishing was a well known in ancient Egypt. Varnishing is also recorded in the history of Asia, in India, China and Japan, where the practice of lacquer work, varnishing was likely popular in India & China before it spread to Japan and Korea. Varnish and lacquer work are, however, generally treated in the arts as separate, berenice comes from the Greek words phero + nike. There are many different types of drying oils, including linseed oil, tung oil and these contain high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Resins that are used in varnishes include amber, kauri gum, dammar, copal, rosin, sandarac, balsam, elemi, mastic, in the 1900s in Canada, resins from local trees were used to finish pianos. As a result, these now antique pianos are considered difficult to refinish, however, shellac can be used over the existing resins provided sufficient time is allowed for thin coats to cure. Thus the original finish can be returned to its original lustre while preserving the color, violin varnishing is a multi-step process involving some or all of the following, primer, sealer, ground, color coats, and clear topcoat. Some systems use an oil varnish as described below, while others use spirit varnish
