by Leek, Peter.
Oil on canvas, 111 x 65 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
With, Venetsianov, however, the distinction between portraiture and genre painting is often blurred, as can be seen from his Girl with a Birch-Bark Jar and Reaper, both painted after 1823. And, he clearly did not take his “relinquishment” of portraiture very seriously, since he afterwards painted affectionate portraits of his wife, daughter and young serfs and peasants — including a series in which he portrayed various peasant girls with face and hair framed by a shawl. In 1834 he painted a portrait of Gogol, whose progressive ideas he greatly admired.
Venetsianov’s declared aim was “to depict nothing in any way different from how it appears in nature… without recourse to the style of any other artist, that is, not to paint à la Rembrandt, à la Rubens and so forth, but simply, so to speak, à la Nature”. In 1819 he resigned from the civil service and went to live at Safonkovo, the country estate to the east of Moscow that he had bought a few years earlier. At Safonkovo, he started teaching some of his neighbours and their serfs to paint. In the end, more than seventy pupils had absorbed his approach to art, including several who became popular teachers and transmitted his ideas to the next generation.
Among Venetsianov’s contemporaries, the most popular Russian portrait painter was undoubtedly Karl Briullov, whose fashionable clients in Rome and Saint Petersburg were very different from the shepherds and dairymaids that sat for Venetsianov in Safonkovo. Briullov was taught to paint by his father, a Huguenot woodcarver, before going to the preparatory school of the Academy at the age of ten. Then in 1822 he was awarded a grant which enabled him to travel to Italy, where he stayed until 1835. Briullov’s portraits from the 1820s are unmistakably Romantic in spirit, and some of his outdoor portraits from that period, such as his watercolour of Cyril and Maria Naryshkin, have an Italian setting. In 1827 he painted one of his most delightful and best known works, a picture of a girl gathering grapes (intended as part of a series of genre portraits), to which he gave the title Italian Midday.
Towards the end of the 1820s and during the 1830s he produced increasingly large and elaborate compositions, such as The Portrait of the Artist with Baroness Yekaterina Meller-Zakomelskaya and her Daughter in a Boat.
As Briullov’s art developed, his style evolved beyond Romanticism. His portraits began to exhibit more psychological preoccupations, often giving the impression of being unaffected and placing a greater emphasis on the sitter’s personality. The ultimate development of his style can be seen in the remarkable self-portrait that he painted in 1848.
44. Ivan Kramskoï, The inconsolable Grief, 1884.
Oil on canvas, 228 x 141 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
45. Ilya Repin, Archidiacre, 1877.
Oil on canvas, 124 x 96 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
46. Ilya Repin, Portrait of Pavel Tretyakov, 1883.
Oil on canvas, 98 x 75.8 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
47. Vassily Surikov, Man with an Injured Arm, 1913.
Oil on canvas, 68.5 x 53.9 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
48. Valentin Serov, Portrait of the Artist Isaac Levitan, 1893.
Oil on canvas, 82 x 86 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
From the 1860s to the 1890s
The most prominent role in setting up the artists’ cooperative was played by Ivan Kramskoï, who had also been a leading member of the “Revolt of the Fourteen”. Although initially drawn to historical and genre painting, he found his fullest expression as a portrait painter. Among the gallery of celebrities who appear in his paintings are fellow-Itinerant Ivan Shishkin — pictured against a backdrop of trees surveying the landscape before setting up his easel — and the singer Elizaveta Lavrovskaya (1879) on the stage of a concert hall, receiving an ovation. His portrait of the forty-four-year-old Leo Tolstoy, who sat for him while writing Anna Karenina, focuses on the thoughtful intensity of the novelist’s gaze. Kramskoï’s portrait of Nikolaï Nekrasov, painted during the poet’s harrowing final illness, shows the poet courageously attempting to finish his Last Songs. Even more heart-rending is his painting entitled Inconsolable Grief (1884), depicting a grieving woman standing beside a wreath of flowers, painted when his own wife was mourning the death of their son.
Vassily Perov, a warm-hearted man whose views commanded respect among his fellow Itinerants, almost invariably shows his models sitting in a quiet and dignified pose. With great subtlety, he conveys the haunted sensitivity of Dostoyevsky, the mental energy of the dramatist Alexander Ostrovsky, and the shrewdness of the merchant Ivan Kamynin — whose family refused to allow this portrait to be exhibited at the World Fair in Paris in 1878 because it did not present a sufficiently congenial image of him. Many of Perov’s liveliest genre paintings, such as Hunters at Rest, A Meal in a Monastery and The Angler, rely on character observation for their lively satire or humour.
Ilya Repin (1844-130) has a style of portraiture that remains very much his own, despite being influenced by both Manet and Velazquez. Among his most enchanting portraits are the ones of his daughters Vera and Nadezhda and the idyllic group portrait On a Turf Bench (1876), all painted en plein air.
Repin was a close friend of Leo Tolstoy. He made numerous paintings and sketches of the novelist, and it is interesting to compare the portrait reproduced here with the one painted by Kramskoï in 1872. An interval of fifteen years separates the two paintings, during which Tolstoy had become increasingly ascetic. No less revealing is Repin’s Portrait of Mussorgsky painted in hospital (hence the dressing-gown) shortly before the composer’s early death, hastened by alcoholism. One of Repin’s most memorable portraits is The Archdeacon (1877), which splendidly conveys the patriarchal robustness of this “lion among the clergy” who, he felt, embodied “the echo of a pagan priest”.
The most demanding official commission undertaken by Repin was a painting of the formal session of the State Council held on 7 May 1901. In order to complete this gigantic group portrait, he prepared dozens of studies so he could accurately capture the character of each of the 100 councillors, and he enlisted the help of two of his pupils, Boris Kustodiev and Ivan Kulikov. The painting was commissioned to celebrate the Council’s centenary — but, whether intentionally or not, Repin succeeded in conveying its aura of implacable conservatism. One critic remarked that he had painted a vision of “Carthage on the eve of destruction”.
Many of the other Itinerants were gifted portrait painters, among them Yuri Leman, Alexeï Kharlamov, Nikolaï Yaroshenko (1846-98) — dubbed “the conscience of the peredvizhniki”, who succeeded Kramskoï as leader of the Itinerants — and Nikolaï Gay, who painted a marvellously expressive self-portrait during the two years preceding his death. The portraiture of two of the most brilliant of the Itinerants, Serov and Surikov, will be discussed in the third part of this book.
49. Alexander Golovin, Portrait of
Stage Director Vsevolod Meyerhold, 1917.
Tempera on panel, 80 x 67 cm,
Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.
50. Boris Kustodiev, Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin, 1921.
Oil on canvas, 215 x 172 cm, Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.
51. Alexander Golovin, Portrait of Dmitry Smirnov
as Grieux in Jules Massenet’s “Manon”, 1909.
Tempera on canvas, 210 x 116 cm,
Bakhrushin Theatre Museum, Moscow.
52. Alexander Golovin, Portrait of
Fyodor Chaliapin as Boris Godunov, 1912.
Tempera and gouache on cardboard,
221.5 x 139.5 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
53. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Savva Mamontov, 1897.
Oil on canvas, 187 x 142.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
From the 1890s to the Post-Revolutionary Period
Although the World of Art movement attracted many of the best artists, it did not have a monopoly on talent and had little appeal to the older Itinerants, many of whom were still producing interesting and innovative paintings. Surikov, f
or example, continued to paint until the year before his death, and during the 1880s and 1890s produced a magnificent series of “costume portraits”, often graced with a descriptive title, such as A Siberian Beauty or A Cossack Girl, in addition to the model’s name. In doing so, he aimed to portray “a special beauty, ancient, Russian”. According to Alexander Benois, Surikov was “the first… to discover the peculiar beauty of old Russian colouring”, and these costume portraits are remarkable for their rich, warm tones. But Surikov also painted portraits that were more “modern” in style and more concerned with the personality of the sitter, such as Unknown Girl Against a Yellow Background and Man with an Injured Arm.
Among the “young peredvizhniki” who joined the World of Art group, the most brilliant portraitist was Valentin Serov. Like many of his contemporaries, he delighted in painting out of doors, and some of his most appealing portraits — such as Girl with Peaches, Girl in Sunlight and In Summer — owe their naturalness to their setting or to the interplay of sunlight and shadows. Indeed, Serov regarded them as “studies” rather than portraits, giving them descriptive titles that omitted the sitter’s name. The subject of Girl with Peaches — painted when Serov was only twenty-two — was in fact Mamontov’s daughter Vera. The model for In Summer was Serov’s wife.
When only six years old, Serov began to display signs of artistic talent. Repin acted as his teacher and mentor, giving him lessons in his studio in Paris, at the age of nine, then letting Serov work with him in Moscow, almost like an apprentice. Eventually Repin sent him to study with Pavel Chistiakov — the teacher of many of the World of Art painters, including Nesterov and Vrubel, who was to become a close friend. Because Serov’s career spanned such a long period, his style and subject matter vary considerably — ranging from voluptuous society portraits (the later ones notable for their grand style and sumptuous dresses) to sensitive studies of children, like the one he painted of Mika Morozov in 1901. His portraits of Isaac Levitan and the actress Maria Yermolova demonstrate his genius for capturing his sitter’s personality. Utterly different from any of these is the famous nude study of the dancer Ida Rubinstein, in tempera and charcoal on canvas, which he painted towards the end of his life.
54. Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev, 1904.
Oil on canvas, 57 x 83 cm,
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
55. Konstantin Korovin, Chorus Girl, 1883.
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
56. Vassily Surikov, Unknown Girl against a
Yellow Background, 1911. Oil on canvas,
51 x 44 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
57. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Mika Morozov, 1901.
Oil on canvas, 62.3 x 70.6 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Although Serov’s early style has much in common with the French Impressionists, he did not become acquainted with their work until after he had painted pictures such as Girl with Peaches. In contrast, Konstantin Korovin was deeply influenced by the French Impressionists almost from the outset of his career, as can be seen from his Chorus Girl, which is regarded as one of the first Impressionist works by a Russian painter.
Together with Korovin, Alexander Golovin designed the crafts section of the Russian Pavilion at the 1900 Paris World Fair. He then went on to design stage sets and costumes for a number of theatres, including the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg (where he became the principal decorator), the Bolshoi, the Moscow Arts Theatre and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Two of his most powerful paintings arose from his interest in the performing arts, namely his Portrait of the theatrical director Vsevolod Meyerhold and the one of the bass singer Fyodor Chaliapin in the role of Boris Godunov, which he painted in 1912.
Chaliapin was the subject of a number of other portraits, including one (when young) by Serov and one by Boris Kustodiev, who depicted him standing like a fur-coated colossus on a snow-covered hillock, while in the background there is a fairgound scene busy with tiny brightly coloured figures. Many of Kustodiev’s portraits and genre paintings are richly decorative — for example, his splendid Merchant’s Wife Drinking Tea — while the elegance and accuracy of his portrayal of the human figure reflect his early training as a sculptor.
58. Valentin Serov, Girl with Peaches
(Portrait of Vera Mamontova), 1887.
Oil on canvas, 91 x 85 cm,
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
59. Konstantin Somov, Lady in Blue
(Portrait of Elizaveta Martynova), 1897-1900.
Oil on canvas, 103 x 103 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
60. Konstantin Somov, L’Echo du temps passé
(Echo of the Past), 1903. Watercolor, gouache and
graphite on paper mounted on cardboard,
61 x 64 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
61. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Ida Rubinstein, 1910.
Tempera and charcoal on paper, 147 x 233 cm,
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
62. Leon Bakst, The Supper, 1902.
Oil on canvas, 150 x 100 cm,
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
63. Leon Bakst, Portrait of Zinaida Hippius, 1906.
Pencil and red and white chalk on paper mounted
on cardboard, 54 x 44 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
64. Valentin Serov, Portrait of the Princess Olga Orlova, 1911.
Oil on canvas, 327.5 x 160 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
65. Mikhaïl Vrubel, Young Girl against a Persian Carpet, 1886.
Oil on canvas, 104 x 68 cm, Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.
66. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin,
Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, 1922.
Oil on canvas, 54.5 x 43.5 cm.
This accuracy was also evident in Lady in Blue, on which Konstantin Somov worked from 1897 to 1900. He achieves its effects by an unexpected synthesis of realism and stylization. The delicate beauty of the model — the artist Elizaveta Martynova, who died soon after this portrait was painted — appears all the more lifelike because of the artificial pose and scenery, and the old-fashioned dress that Somov asked her to wear. In contrast, the sketch of the poet Zinaida Hippius by Leon Bakst — who produced spectacular costume designs — is uncontrived and naturalistic. Philip Maliavin painted portraits of several of the World of Art painters, such as Somov and Grabar, that convey their character and characteristics with great insight and sensitivity.
From the first decade of the twentieth century onwards, “expressive” use of colour became more prevalent in Russian portraiture and figure painting — as, for example, in Ilya Mashkov’s Artist’s Model. It is also exhibited in Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s Portrait of the poet Anna Akhmatova, and furthermore in Martiros Saryan’s portraits of his family and Victoria Alabian.
Further examples of this “expressive” use of colour are demonstrated by artists such as Saryan, Surikov, Vrubel, Petrov-Vodkin, Robert Falk and Mikhaïl Nesterov who all painted remarkable self-portraits. Among the canvases that Nesterov created in the l930s was his double portrait of the painters Pavel and Alexeï Korin, which, unlike most of his works from the post-Revolutionary period, echoes his earlier Symbolist style. In terms of style, Vrubel’s portraits, like Nesterov’s, vary enormously. They range from the sober and conventional — for example, the portrait of Konstantin Artsybushev that he painted in 1897 — to highly decorative works such as Girl Against a Persian Carpet, which is both a sensitive portrait of a child and an inspired exploration of pattern and colour.
In addition to Nesterov and the other remarkable portraitists, there was Zinaida Serebriakova, who was the daughter of a sculptor, the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of architects, the niece of Alexander Benois and the sister of Yevgeny Lanceray. She painted portraits that have a lucidity and freshness of vision. Her self-portraits and pictures of children, such as At Dinner, are particularly delightful. During the 1920s, the ballet and dancers featured prominently in her work, while many of her other portraits from the same period include elements of still life, contributi
ng to their feeling of tranquillity.
67. Martiros Saryan, Portrait of Ivan Chtchoukine, 1911.
Tempera on canvas, 85 x 85 cm, Private Collection.
68. Martiros Saryan, My Family, 1929.
Oil on canvas, 102 x 80 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
69. Martiros Saryan, Self-portrait: Three Ages, 1942.
Oil on canvas, 97 x 146 cm, Martiros Saryan Museum, Yerevan.
70. Martiros Saryan, Portrait of Victoria Alabian, 1931.
Oil on canvas, 46 x 61 cm, Martiros Saryan Museum, Yerevan.
71. Nikolaï Gay, Peter I Interrogating his Son Alexeï at Peterhof, 1871.
Oil on canvas, 135.7 x 173 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
72. Konstantin Flavitsky, Princess Tarakanova, 1864.
Oil on Canvas, 245 x 187.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Historical Painting
From the Eigteenth Century to the 1860s
Early Russian history painting was closely linked to religious painting, and only freed itself from the canons of icon painting at the start of the eighteenth century. One of the first Russian paintings in which a realistic reconstruction of a historical event conveyed a patriotic message was Ivan Nikitin’s depiction of the victory of Prince Dmitri of Moscow over the Tatars at Kulikovo in 1380 — with vivid portrayals of the individuality of the combatants, the fury of the battle, and the musculature of the men and horses.