1From your reading of the text, say if the following statements are true or false. Tick the relevant box. T F a. The door to the chateau was locked. b. Pedro was badly injured. c. Paintings were hung all over the walls in the apartment d. It was the middle of the night when they got there. e. The room had dark curtains at the window. f. The picture was illuminated when the candles were lit. g. The narrator observed it for a long time. h. The artist did not see beyond his wife’s smile. i. He realized she was dead as he put the last two strokes of his brush on the painting.
2 Complete these sentences with information from the text.
a. Pedro broke open the door because .................................................................. b. Before the light was moved, the picture was ................................................... c. When the narrator’s eyes focused on the picture, he ............................... d. He was first attracted by the picture but then ............................................... e. The young girl unwillingly allowed her husband to ...................................... f. He wanted her beauty to be .................................................................................... g. Some people thought the painting was .............................................................. h. His last brushstrokes were a .....................................................................................
3 Find at least five words or phrases in the text which help to create a ‘Gothic’ atmosphere in the story. There is one example given. ..... gloomy ...... ................................... ................................... ................................... ................................... ...................................
WORKING ON VOCABULARY 4 These anagrams are all adjectives from the story. Write them in the space provided. esrtaeu .................................................. oylomg ......................................................... fkleilie ..................................................... rsalungi ......................................................... spiemsiea .............................................. etrmeo ......................................................... lhebum .................................................. ditboene ...................................................... 14 AFTER READING • The Oval Portrait
Writing 1 Story
7 Poe said that the opening sentence of a good short story must be striking and make an immediate impact on the reader. Write the first paragraph of a story about a mysterious portrait, setting the scene and capturing the attention of your reader. ........................................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................... ...........................................................................................................................................................
Speaking 8 The National Portrait Gallery in London has thousands of visitors every year. Do you agree that painted faces still hold a fascination and mystery for us which goes beyond the realism of photographic portraits? Discuss this with your friends.
“… the flames illuminated a picture which had previously
been hidden in the dark shadows.”
16 E X T E N S I O N
PORTRAIT PAINTING
Strangely enough, in our modern world
of analog selfies and Instagram, more people than ever are actually painting portraits, many of them returning to traditional techniques to portray contemporary faces. In The Oval Portrait, Poe says that the portrait on the wall was ‘in the style of Sully’. Thomas Sully was one of the most successful portrait painters in America in the 19th century. He emigrated from England with his family when he was 10 and learned to paint with his brother-in-law, a French miniaturist1 painter. He was especially well-known for his rather exaggerated, elegant and idealized portraits of fashionable women. His technique was flawless2, refined and decorative and his sitters Thomas Sully were often in rather self-conscious positions, which meant that his portraits were totally aesthetic, beauty in Art, giving no insight3 into the character of the person portrayed. This is why perhaps Poe chose to give the reader the idea of such a portrait: extraordinary beauty captured on canvas, focusing only on the Art form, cancelling out the woman herself. It is an instrument to put across his ideas on Art. Portraits have been around since the ancient Egyptians. Their history has continued since then, with the court painters such as Diego Velasquez or Hans Holbein the Younger and their portraits of kings and queens, to the Renaissance artists such as Jan Vermeer or Georges de La Tour, who began to paint ordinary people leading quiet lives. In those days, artists were limited to a few J. Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, very skilled individuals, but by the 19th century, c. 1665
1. miniaturist: a person who paints very 3. insight: clear perception and
small portraits. understanding. 2. flawless: perfect, with no fault.
17 after the Industrial Revolution and with the arrival of the Age of Reason, ????and paint could be easily obtained, so portraiture flourished, canvas with names such as Thomas Lawrence, William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, Francisco Goya and Thomas Sully himself becoming known throughout society. With the arrival of social realism, Gustave Courbet and Honoré Daumier began to paint the poor and use portraits as political statements. Impressionism brought experimental portrait painting in the work of Vincent Van Gogh or Paul Gauguin for example, followed by the post impressionist exploration of the mind behind the face as in Henri Matisse or Edvard Munch and Pablo Picasso. The popularity of portraits suddenly fell for a long time, until Andy Warhol brought the art back to life in the 60’s, and now it is up and coming and attracting an increasing number of both artists themselves and Art lovers.The BP Portrait Award is a prestigious4, international portrait painting competition held annually by the National Portrait gallery in London with great success. The painted face and the idea of preserving someone’s image beyond their lifetime, still holds a fascination for G. Courbet, The Desperate Man, us. Portraits continue to hold an aura of (self-portrait), 1843-1845 mystery and the enduring5 power of faces taken from life and transformed into Art, makes The Oval Portrait a compelling6 tale.
4. prestigious: important, influential.
5. enduring: lasting for a long time. 6. compelling: interesting and exciting and holds your attention.
V. Van Gogh, The Gardener, 1889 A. Warhol, Ingrid Bergman, 1983
18 INTERMEDIATE R A I N B O W S Intermediate B2 (Vantage) B2 (Vantage) R A I N B O W S Approx. number of headwords: 1500
The Oval Portrait and Other Stories
The Oval Portrait
Edgar Allan Poe
Five short-stories by Edgar Allan Poe: The Oval Portrait (the story of an artist
and Other Stories
who wants to make a painting of his young wife, but becomes so obsessed with it that he doesn’t realize his wife is dying meanwhile), Berenice (a horror story in which the protagonist is unable to stop thinking about his cousin- wife’s beautiful teeth), The Premature Burial (a sequence of different episodes Edgar Allan Poe where people are buried alive by mistake), The Cask of Amontillado (a tale
The Oval Portrait and Other Stories
of terror in which a man takes his cruel revenge during a Carnival in Italy), The Fall of the House of Usher (Usher’s sister Madeline dies from a mysterious illness; she comes back from the grave and the visitor flees the house before it collapses.)
beginner • A1 (Breakthrough) Levels of accredited examination boards:
elementary • A2 (Waystage) Cambridge English: First (FCE) Trinity: Grade 7, 8 / ISE II pre-intermediate • B1 (Threshold) City & Guilds (Pitman): Intermediate ✓ intermediate • B2 (Vantage) ESB: Intermediate 2, 3 Edexcel: Intermediate post-intermediate • C1 (Effectiveness)
(Faux Titre No. 355) Apollinaire, Guillaume - Bohn, Willard - Apollinaire, Guillaume - Apollinaire On The Edge - Modern Art, Popular Culture, and The Avant-garde-Rodopi (2010)
Hou-Cheng Huang PHD, BSC, MSC, Asif S. Usmani PHD, BE, MS (Auth.) - Finite Element Analysis For Heat Transfer - Theory and Software-Springer-Verlag London (1994) PDF
(Faux Titre No. 355) Apollinaire, Guillaume - Bohn, Willard - Apollinaire, Guillaume - Apollinaire On The Edge - Modern Art, Popular Culture, and The Avant-garde-Rodopi (2010)
Hou-Cheng Huang PHD, BSC, MSC, Asif S. Usmani PHD, BE, MS (Auth.) - Finite Element Analysis For Heat Transfer - Theory and Software-Springer-Verlag London (1994) PDF
