Culture Facts

A sonnet is a form of poetic writing.  A sonnet has fourteen lines (in English) and ten syllables to each line.

Different rhyming patterns have been followed at different times. Shakespeare wrote 153 sonnets and generally ended them with a rhyming couplet.

A sonnet is almost always a complete poem and not one that can be set to music, like a ballad or lyric.

One famous sonnet used was in Romeo and Juliet, when the lovers meet for the first time and Shakespeare divided a sonnet between them.

The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in 1768 by George III after talks with one of the leading painters at that time, Sir Joshua Reynolds.

There was to be a president and forty academicians and the Academy was to hold regular exhibitions of art, which had to include not only members work but contribution from outside bodies as well. 

Not long after it was set up the Academy instituted its own school which acted as an enormous encouragement to young artists whatever their background.

The King selected 36 out of the 40 members which included the famous landscape and portrait painter, Thomas Gainsborough. 

He made Sir Joshua Reynolds the first president and held the position until his death in 1792.

To start with at the age of ten Pablo Picasso was a mature painter,  and he was still painting into his 90’s.

Picasso was born in Spain in 1881, and became an exceptional painter of high merit.   His early work representational, but as he grew up he embraced all aspects of artistry from Expressionism, abstract painting to Cubism to many more.

His work was quite complicated and was sometimes hard to understand.   His painting were daring yet could sometimes be irritating, yet they always attracted the attention they deserved.

Even in the year of his death in 1973, he was still painting as commandingly as ever, but he’s particularly remembered for the paintings from his ‘blue period’ in 1901 to 1904.

The Talmud is an assemblage of writing which incorporate the works of Jewish scholars and it shows the records of their discussions, especially over legal matters.

There are two versions, both of which contained the Mishnah which is the spoken law handed down from generation to generation since the time of Moses.

Lithography is a form of printing based on the principle that oil and water do no mix, but reject each other.

A drawing is made on an absorbent stone using an oil based ink.  Then the stone is washed with water, then it’s inked  and the watered parts repel the ink while the drawing part attracts it.   Afterwards it is printed on paper.

This process was invented by an Austrian, Aloys Senefelder, in the 1790’s  and has proved to have been very popular.

One of the leading lithographic artists of our time includes Barnett Freedman.