Russian Painting

by Peter. Leek

  MSTISLAV VALERIANOVICH DOBUZHINSKY

  Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky was born on 2 August (14 N.S.) 1875 in Novgorod. He studied in Saint Petersburg at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, from 1895 to 1899 at the Law Faculty of Saint Petersburg University, in 1897 at the studio of the engraver and painter Lev Dmitriyev-Kavkazsky. In 1899-1901 he studied in Munich at the art schools of Anton Ažbe and Simon Hollósy; in 1901, on his return to Saint Petersburg, he trained in etching under Vladimir Mathé. Over the years, he traveled widely in Europe (Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, England, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland) and around Russian cities (Vilno, Chernigov, Nezhin, Voronezh, Kursk, Pskov, Novgorod, etc). During World War I he visited the front to sketch from life. He was a member of the World of Art and contributor to its exhibitions as from 1902. From 1906 to 1910 he taught at Yelizaveta Zvantseva’s school, from 1911 to 1917 at the New Art Studio (M. Gagarina’s school), in 1918-19 at the State Workshops of Decorative Arts (the former Stieglitz School of Technical Drawing) and at the same time at the Vitebsk Practical Art Institute, in 1919 at the Institute of Photography and Photo-technology and in A. Gausch’s private school, in 1922-23 at VKhUTEIN (the Academy of Arts). After 1917 he participated in the work to preserve Saint Petersburg’s monuments, in the activities of various artistic councils and was the deputy chairman of the House of Arts. His work in the field of literary and newspress graphic art began with drawings for the journals Strekoza and Shut (1897-1902). In 1905-06 he contributed satirical drawings to the political journals The Bugaboo and Hell’s Mail. From 1902 to 1915 he contributed to the journals The World of Art, The Art Treasures of Russia, The Golden Fleece, Apollon, the almanachs Beliye nochi (White Nights), Nevskiy Almanach (The Neva Almanach), and others. In the 1920s he worked for the journals Perezuony (Peal of BelIs), Zhar-Ptitsa (The Firebird), etc. He designed many book covers and also designed and produced illustrations for S. Ausländer’s Prince of the Night (1909), Pushkin’s Station Inspector, La Demoiselle paysane (1919), and The Covetous Knight (1921), Karamzin’s Poor Liza, Leskov’s Toupée Artist (both 1921), Dostoyevsky’s White Nights (1922), and several more publications. He worked in the field of applied graphic art (posters, bookplates, stamps, postcards for the Publishing House of the Red Cross Society of St. Eugenia, etc.). His easel works are mainly devoted to the urban theme: paintings embodying “Dobuzhinsky’s Saint Petersburg” — A Corner in Saint Petersburg (1904), A House in Saint Petersburg (1905), Winter (1909), City Outskirts: the Priazhka River (1914), etc.; numerous views of Russian provincial towns; capitals and cities of European countries such as Vilno: Omnibus (1906-07), Chernigov: A Photograph (1912), Tambov: Baker’s Shop (1923), A Bridge in London (1908), Haarlem (1910), Naples (1911), etc.; a series of fantastic compositions Urban Dreams (1906-1920s); a series of autolithographs of Saint Petersburg in 1921-22. Between 1907 and 1911 he created a number of paintings devoted to historical subjects: The Provinces in the 1830s, Training of New Recruits and A Military Settlement (for Knoebel’s publication A History of Russia in Pictures), Peter the Great in Holland (panel for the Peter the Great School in Saint Petersburg, sketches, and variants). From 1910 on, he drew dozens of portraits: Konstantin Stanislavsky, Lydia Koreneva, Grigory Yakulov, Tamara Karsavina, Alexander Benois, Dmitry Mitrokhin, etc. He also practiced monumental decorative art. In 1910 he designed a number of interiors and produced designs for the painted decoration of the Kazan Railroad Station in Moscow. In 1918 he created 48 sketches for the decoration of the Admiralty during the celebration of the first anniversary of the October Revolution. During his life abroad he decorated private dwellings and social buildings in Lithuania, Paris, and Brussels. As a theatrical designer, he worked on productions of Adam de la Halle’s A Play about Robin and Marion at the Antique Theatre and Remizov’s Devilish Act at the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre in 1908, as well as Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Francesca da Rimini (at the same theatre) and Potiomkin’s Petrouchka at the Lukomorye Theatre. In 1909-17 he designed twelve productions at the Moscow Arts Theatre, including Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in a Village, Nikolaï Stavrogin and The Village of Stepanchikovo, both after Dostoyevsky’s works, and Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit. In 1914 he worked for Diaghilev’s company (Schumann’s Les Papillons and M. Steinberg’s Midas) and for Anna Pavlova’s troupe (Bayer’s Puppenfee). In 1919-20 he designed productions of M. Levberg’s Danton, Schiller’s Die Râuber, and Shakespeare’s King Lear, followed in 1921 by Anatoly Lunacharsky’s drama Oliver CromwelI at the Maly Theatre in Moscow. From 1924 to 1939 he lived in Kaunas, Lithuania, spending long periods in France and England. He worked for the Lithuanian State Theatre, taught art, and continued to paint landscapes as well as to draw portraits and produce works of graphic art for publications. From 1926 to 1928 he worked for N. Balieff’s cabaret-theatre La Chauve-Souris in Paris. He illustrated Yury Olesha’s novel The Three Fat Men (1928) and Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1936). In 1939 he moved to the USA. He designed more than one hundred theatrical productions at various theatres in America and elsewhere — France, Italy, Britain, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark. He produced a number of paintings inspired by Dmitry Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony and designed an edition of The Lay of Igor’s Host. He wrote the books Recollections of Italy and Reminiscences. He died in New York on 20 November 1957.

  ANNA PETROVNA OSTROUMOVA-LEBEDEVA

  Anna Petrovna Ostroumova-Lebedeva was born on 5 May (17 N.S.) 1871 in Saint Petersburg. From 1889 to 1992 she studied at the Stieglitz Central College of Technical Drawing under Vassily Mathé, Nikolaï Koshelev, Genrich Manizer and Alexander Novoskoltsev, from 1892 to 1900, with breaks, at the Academy of Arts under llya Repin (from 1896) and Vassily Mathé (from 1899). In 1898-99 she practiced painting in the studio of James Whistler and studied western European and Japanese engraving.

  In the late 1900s she improved her skills in watercolour in Yelizaveta Zvantseva’s private school under Leon Bakst. She traveled widely in Europe: Italy (1899, 1903, 1911), Finland (1905, 1908), Paris and Austria (1906), Germany (1911), Holland and Belgium (1913), Spain (1914), Berlin and Paris (1926), as well as to the Caucasus (1916, 1929) and the Crimea (1902, 1924).

  Between 1918 and 1921 she taught at the Institute of Photography and Photo-technology, from 1934 to 1936 at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of the All-Russian Academy of Arts in Leningrad. She participated in exhibitions from 1898 on and became a member of the World of Art in 1899.

  In 1926 she joined the Four Arts group. She worked in various media: wood engraving, watercolour, drawing, and, considerably less, in lithography, oil and tempera painting. The dominant subjects of her work in all media were townscapes, mainly the views of Saint Petersburg. She is known mainly as a xylographer; producing both coloured and black-and-white engravings. In 1901 she created her first series of wood engravings devoted to Saint Petersburg for the World of Art journal, which included one of her most famous prints, Saint Petersburg: New Holland.

  From 1901 to 1905 she created a number of coloured prints depicting the palace-and-park ensembles of Pavlovsk and Tsarskoye Selo, and between 1908 and 1910 a series of colour views of Saint Petersburg (The Columns of the Exchange and the Fortress, A Perspective View of the Neva, The Mining Institute, The Kriukov Canal, The Admiralty Clad in Snow, etc.).

  She produced two series of black-and-white engraved illustrations for books — for V. Kurbatov’s Saint Petersburg (1912) and for N. Antsiferov’s Soul of Saint Petersburg (1920). Among her best works of the 1910s and 1920s featuring Saint Petersburg are The Biron Palace and Barques (1916). Tackle (1917), The Moika by the Singers’ Bridge (1919), Smolny (1924), View from the Trinity Bridge (1926), and The Fontanka and the Summer Gardens in Hoar-Frost (1929).

  In 1922-23 she produced a series of small-scale black-and-white engravings, Pavlovsk, which was published as a book with her introduction. Besides Saint Petersburg and its environs, her xylographs captured landscapes and urban views in m
any countries: Finland Beneath Blue Skies (1900), Fiesole (1904), Saint-Cloud and Fireworks in Paris on July 14 (both 1908), Venice by Night and Villa d’Este (both 1914), Versailles: The Pool (1927), etc. She often used the medium of wood engraving to produce bookplates for, among others, V. Riabushinsky (1911), Sergeï Lebedev (1923-24), Ivan Pavlov (Our Library, 1929), Dmitry Mitrokhin (1940), and herself (My Epitaph, 1946). Sometimes she turned to lithography: she produced a series of landscapes at Tsarskoye Selo, Pavlovsk, and Peterhof (1904); a series of twelve sheets making up her album Saint Petersburg (1922), and a series of postcards with views of Leningrad for letters to the front (1942). Drawings and watercolours produced throughout her creative career depicted Saint Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad, Tsarskoye Selo, and Pavlovsk (Tsarskoye Selo: A Bench, 1904; Saint Petersburg: View from the Peter Park, 1912; Pavlovsk: The Temple of Friendship, 1921; Petrograd: Red Pillars, 1922; Leningrad: The Kirov Islands in Early Autumn, 1937), Finland (Rocks over a Fiord at Nodendal, At Sunset, both 1905), Paris (Notre-Dame de Paris, Musée Cluny, 1906), Italy (Venice: The Grand Canal; Villa Borghese: A Pine Grove, both 1911), Holland and Belgium (Amsterdam: Old Warehouses; Bruges: A Group of Houses, both 1913), Spain (Segovia: View of Alcazar, Landscape near Toledo, both 1914), oil derricks in Baku and the town of Koktebel in the Crimea (Baku: Bibi-Eibat, Old Oil Derricks, 1916; Koktebel: Sura-Kaya in the Evening, 1924). She also practiced portraiture, her first attempts having been made in Repin’s studio. She produced a number of watercolour portraits of artists, actors, writers, and scholars: Ivan Yershov (1923), Alexander Benois (1924), Andreï Bely (1924), Sergeï Lebedev (1924, 1932), Yelizaveta Kruglikova (1925), Maximilian Voloshin (1927), and a tempera self-portrait (1940). She wrote Autobiographical Notes. She died on 5 May 1955 in Leningrad.

  ZINAIDA YEVGENYEVNA SEREBRIAKOVA

  Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova was born on 28 November (10 December N.S.) 1884 on the estate of Neskuchnoye near Kharkov. She was the granddaughter and great granddaughter of architects, Nicholas Benois and Albert Cavos respectively, the daughter of the animal sculptor Yevgeny A. Lanceray, Alexander Benois’ niece and the sister of the artist Yevgeny Ye. Lanceray and the architect Nikolaï Lanceray.

  After the death of her father in 1886, the family moved to Saint Petersburg and settled in the Benois family house, visiting Neskuchnoye, from 1898 onward, every summer.

  In 1901 she studied for less than a month in Princess Tenisheva’s private school (before its closure); from the autumn of 1902 to the spring of 1903 she was in Italy studying the art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; from 1903 to 1905 she studied in the Osip Brais studio in Saint Petersburg and copied works by the Old Masters in the Hermitage.

  In 1905-06 she trained in drawing and watercolour at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, visited museums and exhibitions. In 1911 and 1913 she traveled to the Crimea, in 1914 she toured Switzerland and Italy.

  From 1918 to 1920 she lived in Kharkov, working in the Archeological Museum, and then returned to Petrograd. She contributed to exhibitions from 1910 and became a member of the World of Art in 1911.

  She worked in many genres and media (oils, tempera, gouache, watercolour; from the early 1920s on she often resorted to pastel). She produced a large number of landscapes at Neskuchnoye and during her travels to Italy, Switzerland, and the Crimea: Capri, 1903; Orchard in Bloom, 1908; Winter Crops, 1910; Before a Thunderstorm, 1911; Spring in the Crimea, Mountain Landscape (both 1914); Landscape, The Village of Neskuchnoye, Kursk Province, 1916; View of the Peter and Paul Fortress, 1921, etc.

  She produced many portraits and portrait studies: Christia the Peasant Girl (1903), A Peasant Girl (1906), a portrait of a nurse (1907), a student (1909), Olga Lanceray, Nadezhda Chulkova and Georgy Chulkov (1910), Yevgeny Lanceray (1912), Boris Serebriakov (1913), Sergeï Ernst (1921), Anna Cherkesova-Benois with her son (1922), etc.

  Children’s portraits occupy a special place in her work: At Dinner (1914), The Guard House (1919), Boys in Sailors’ Jackets (1919), Girls at the Piano (1919); she also produced many self-portraits: At Toilette: A Self-Portrait (1909), Girl with a Candle: A Self-Portrait (1911), Self-Portrait with Daughters (1921), Self-Portrait with a Brush (1924), etc.

  Between 1913 and 1917 she created a number of paintings devoted to peasant life: A Bathhouse, Harvest, Bleaching Linen, Sleeping Beauty, producing many preliminary drawings, sketches, and studies, which sometimes have an artistic value of their own, such as A Bathhouse. Study; Peasants; Peasant Woman with a Kvass Jar; Bleaching Linen. Study.

  In 1922, 1923 and 1924 the theme of ballet became prominent in her work: portraits of dancers in theatrical costumes (George Balanchivadze-Balanchine, Alexandra Danilova, Lydia Ivanova, Yekaterina Geidenrich, Valentina Ivanova, her daughter Tatyana, etc.), scenes in ballet dressing rooms during performances (Pugni’s Pharaoh’s Daughter, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Nutcracker, Bayer’s Puppenfee; Ballerina before Her Entry, Blue Ballerinas, etc.). In the same years she turned to the still life which she often combined with portraits: The Attributes of Arts. Still Life, Tata with Vegetables, Katia with a Still Life, In the Kitchen, Herring and Lemon.

  In 1915-16 she took part in the Kazan Railroad Station project, producing sketches for paintings in four lunettes: Turkey, Japan, India, and Siam. In the autumn of 1924, having received a commission for a decorative painting, she left for Paris and did not return.

  She made journeys to England, Germany,Belgium, Morocco, Italy, Switzerland, Brittany, and the south of France. She painted portraits (including those of Sergeï Prokofyev, Konstantin Somov, and Sergeï Lifar), landscapes, and still lifes. She died on 19 September 1967.

  IGOR EMMANUILOVICH GRABAR

  Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar was born on 13 March (25 N.S.) 1871 in Budapest; in 1876 the family moved to Russia. During his studies at the Katkov Lyceum (1882-89) he attended Sunday classes of drawing at the Society of Art Lovers where he studied under V. Popov. From 1889 to 1893 he was a student at the Law Faculty of Saint Petersburg University; at the same time he covered the whole course of the Faculty of History and Philology. From 1894 to 1896 he studied at the Academy of Arts in the studios of Pavel Chestiakov and Ilya Repin. From 1896 to 1901 he lived in Munich and attended the school of Anton Ažbe (later he taught there); he also studied architecture at the Munich Polytechnic. From 1895 onward, he made frequent visits to Europe (Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Denmark, Britain, Greece, Spain); visited Egypt in 1914 and the USA in 1924. He lived in Saint Petersburg until 1903 and then moved to Moscow. He contributed to exhibitions as from 1898. He was a member of the World of art from 1901 on, of the Union of Russian Artists beginning in 1904, of the Moscow Painters group as from 1924, and of the Society of Moscow Artists from 1927 on. From 1913 until 1917 he was a trustee, then, until 1925, director of the Tretyakov Gallery. In 1914-15 he rearranged the display on the art-historical principle; in 1917 he published the gallery’s first ever catalogue raisonné. In 1917-18 he headed the Museum Department of the People’s Commissariat for Education. In 1918 he organized the State Central Restoration Workshops and was their director until 1930; from 1944 to 1966 he directed scholarly research there. Between 1919 and 1930 he organized and participated in expeditions to restore and discover works of art in the central and northern areas of Russia. From 1920 to 1946 he was a professor at Moscow University (lecturing on art restoration); from 1937 to 1947 he was director and professor of the Moscow Art Institute. From 1943 to 1946 he was the director of the All-Union Academy of Arts and the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad. In 1944 he proposed establishing an Institute of the History of Art attached to the USSR Academy of Sciences and was its director to the end of his life. His artistic legacy consists mainly of easel paintings, with the exception of drawings produced at an early age, before the Academy of Arts, for the journals Shut (The Jester) and Strekoza (The Dragonfly) (1890-91) and a large number of illustrations for Gogol’s stories The Overcoat, The Sorochintsy Fair, The Night Before Ch
ristmas, and others (1893-94). In 1892, during a journey down the Sukhona and Northern Dvina Rivers, he produced a series of watercolours depicting works of wooden architecture and used them to make originals for postcards issued in 1903 by the Publishing House of the Red Cross Society of St. Eugenia. His favourite genre in painting was landscape, in which he worked throughout his career: Sunbeam (1901), September Snow (1903), March Snow (1904), studies and paintings depicting hoar-frost (1903-08, 1918-19, and every winter after 1941), Rowan Tree (1915), On the Lake (1926), A Creek (1930), Winter Landscape (1954), The First Thawed Patches of Spring (1957), etc. He also often painted still lifes: Flowers and Fruit on the Piano (1904), Chrysanthemums (1905), After the Meal (1907), Delphinium (1908), Pears on a Blue Tablecloth (1915), Roses on the Piano (1939), etc. Portraiture, which had already attracted him in his school years, occupied a prominent place in his work in the 1930s and 1940s: he produced portraits of his brother Vladimir Grabar (1901), his mother Olga Grabar-Khrabrova (1924), Piotr Neradovsky (1931), Nikolaï Zelinsky (1932), S?etlana (1933), Sergeï Prokofyev (1934, 1941), Sergeï Chaplygin (1935), Kornei Chukovsky (1935), Boris Grekov (1945) and others, as well as more than twenty self-portraits (1897-1956). From 1909 to 1914 he designed the Zakharyin Hospital complex near Moscow. Between 1894 and 1960 he published many critical articles in various journals and newspapers; from 1899 to1912 he worked for the journals The World of Art, The Old Years, and The Balance. He wrote monographs on Isaac Levitan (together with Sergeï Glagol), Valentin Serov, Ilya Repin, Theophanes the Greek, Andreï Rublev, books about old Russian art, restoration and preservation of works, articles for encyclopedias, and the book My Life: an Automonograph. He initiated and directed the publication of the first scholarly History of Russian Art (vols.1-6, 1910-14, unfinished; he was also the editor and author of its most important sections). In the early 1950s he again undertook the publication of a multi-volume History of Russia Art, being one of its editors and authors (five volumes appeared during his lifetime, from 1953 to 1960; the work was completed in 1969). He died in Moscow on 16 May 1960.