Russian Painting

by Leek, Peter.

  The use of perspective and composition is no less important in Barge Haulers on the Volga — often called The Volga Boatmen — which Repin painted between 1870 and 1873, while still in his late twenties. Its power and immediacy made it one of the most widely known paintings in Russia and inspired a flood of Realist pictures with contemporary themes. Repin wrote that the choice and use of colour “should express the mood of a painting, its spirit… Like a chord in music.” The bright colour scheme and harsh shadows, the facial expressions of the haulers, their strength and exertion express both the human dignity of their labour and its inhuman demands.

  The variety of Repin’s genre painting and his gift for characterization can be seen from Vechornitsy (Ukrainian Peasant Gathering), Reading for an Examination and Seeing Off a Recruit. In They Did Not Expect Him — started in 1884 and completed in 1888 — Repin makes marvellous use of his talent for drama.

  As a result of the revolutionary movement that culminated in the assassination of Alexander II, hundreds of political suspects were imprisoned or deported to Siberia. In 1883 the new tsar, Alexander III, declared an amnesty for political offenders. The drama of They Did Not Expect Him lies partly in the reactions of the family to the “returnee”, partly in his own anxiety about how they and others will react to his return, and partly in the intrusion of nightmarish reality into a seemingly untroubled domestic scene.

  124. Arkady Plastov, Threshing on the Collective Farm, 1949.

  Oil on canvas, 200 x 382 cm, Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.

  The Post-Revolutionary Period: the life of the People

  The “life of the workers, the peasantry, and the heroes of labour” was to become the great theme of Soviet art. But it had also been the dominant preoccupation of the Itinerants — especially the “young peredvizhniki”, such as Abraham Arkhipov, Nikolaï Kasatkin and Sergeï Ivanov.

  The last decade or so of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of what was known as the “eventless genre” — pictures that expressed the underlying significance or nuances of a situation, without any narrative element or the implication of any causative event. Arguably, the ultimate “eventless” picture was a scene of bored bourgeois domesticity by Baksheyev entitled The Humdrum of Life (1893). One of the most famous was Arkhipov’s Down the Oki (1889) — depicting a group of peasants afloat on a river on a sunny day — which conveys an overwhelming feeling of time standing still. But the “eventless genre” could express the joys and pains of life as well as its existential quality. Arkhipov’s Visiting portrays the simple pleasure of spending time with friends, while the priests who demurely savour an afternoon out in Kustodiev’s Moscow Teahouse illustrate his satirical vein and sense of fun.

  In utter contrast to these, Arkhipov’s Laundresses is a powerful indictment of the grinding drudgery of manual labour. Concern with the living and working conditions of peasants and industrial workers was voiced in the works of many of his contemporaries. Kasatkin, for example, lived for several months in a coal-mining region, and many of his pictures depict the rigours of the miners’ existence. Sergeï Ivanov’s On the Road: The Death of a Migrant Peasant focused on the plight of agricultural workers in the later part of the nineteenth century. The desperate state of the economy had resulted in thousands of peasants leaving their home villages in search of work. The dead man lying in bright sunshine in the middle of nowhere, his prostrate wife and their bewildered child are powerful symbols of the cruel struggle for survival.

  125. Ilya Repin, Vechornisty (Ukrainian Peasant Gathering), 1881.

  Oil on canvas, 116 x 186 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

  126. Konstantin Savitsky, Repairing the Railway, 1874.

  Oil on canvas, 100 x 175 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

  127. Abraham Arkhipov, Laundry Workers, late 1890s.

  Oil on canvas, 91 x 70 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

  128. Abraham Arkhipov, Visiting, 1915.

  Oil on canvas, 105 x 154 cm,

  Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

  The dignity of peasant life, its closeness to nature and its serenity and vigour have been recurring themes in Russian art since the time of Venetsianov. The peasants who feature in the paintings of Serebriakova, Goncharova and Plastov are, in a sense, the descendants of Venetsianov’s sowers and reapers. In terms of imagery, among the most remarkable representations of peasant women are Philip Maliavin’s dancing peasant girls, almost lost amid the frenzied swirls of colour. Maliavin’s dancers, in the words of Dmitri Sarabianov, were seen by his contemporaries “as a symbol of the elemental force of the peasantry which exploded at the time of the Revolution”. No less memorable are the harmonious, rhythmic colours of Woman Sleeping in a Sheepfold by Pavel Kuznetsov, many of whose paintings convey the freedom and fascination with the nomadic world of the steppes.

  One of the liveliest tableaux of Russian life dates from the 1890s. To help Surikov recover from depression after his wife’s death, his brother urged him to paint a picture of the “storming” of a snow fortress — a Cossack tradition, which was still popular in the area around his home town of Krasnoyarsk. Each year, on the last day before the beginning of Lent, a snow fortress would be built, often with considerable skill and imagination. Then a battle would ensue between attackers on horseback, who had to “capture” the fortress, and defenders armed with branches and rattles.

  129. Nikolaï Kasatkin, Poor People

  Collecting Coal in an Abandoned Pit, 1894.

  Oil on canvas, 80.3 x 107 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

  130. Boris Yakovlev, Transport Returns to Normal, 1923.

  Oil on canvas, 100 x 140 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

  131. Vassily Surikov, The Taking of the Snow Fortress, 1891.

  Oil on canvas, 156 x 282 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

  132. Konstantin Somov, Pierrot and Lady, 1910.

  Gouache on paper, 46 x 55 cm, Museum of

  Oriental and Occidental Art, Odessa.

  133. Boris Kustodiev, Kiss and Congratulation for Easter, 1916.

  Tempera on paper mounted on cardboard, 50 x 42 cm,

  Kustodiev Picture Gallery, Astrakhan.

  Such examples of Russian life are also shown by other well-known artists. With their violinists, street sweepers, soldiers, newspaper vendors, cattle dealers, rabbis and lovers, Chagall’s pictures — including many painted when he lived in Paris — provide affectionate glimpses of village and small-town life in pre-Revolutionary Russia.

  In the post-Revolutionary period, however, industrialization provided a new stimulus for Soviet artists. In 1923 Boris Yakovlev painted a small picture entitled Transport Returns to Normal. In the words of the art historian John Milner, “only the approaching engine’s red star communicates the message” in this “hymn to railway transport… closely recalling Monet’s Gare St Lazare paintings”. If Yakovlev’s painting is a hymn to the railways, many of Deineka’s works are hynms to industry or to the dynamism of the Soviet people. Nevertheless, a note of ambiguity or paradox is often present.

  In Female Textile Workers there is a lightness and efficiency about the workers’ movements — but they are also trancelike and robotic, and a decidedly pre-industrial cowherd and pair of cows are visible through the window of the ultra-modern factory. Similarly, in Building New Factories the spark of communication between the two women and the athletic twist of their bodies contrast with the geometrical skeleton of lifeless steel girders.

  The development of collective farms stimulated some equally memorable images. Deineka’s trim 1930s farmworker pedalling through the immaculate countryside on her drop-handled bicycle provided a reassuring symbol of progress (tempered, perhaps, with a barely expressed hint of irony). In the 1930s and after the Second World War, Arkady Plastov painted farming scenes full of life and confidence, celebrating the beauty of the Russian countryside and the heroic efforts of the workers engaged in the drive for agricultural regeneration. Meant to impress, these huge canvases were intend
ed for public buildings and they have been aptly described as “calls to action, icons of Socialism”.

  Some aspects of rural life, however, have altered little. In 1934 Sergeï Maliutin (1859-1937) — a multi-talented artist who designed several buildings in Moscow incorporating folk-art elements and who headed the woodwork studios at Talashkino in the 1890s — painted The Brigade’s Lunch. But, as so often the case with Russian painting, there is a thread of continuity in this painting that links the present and the past. The peasant meal of soup and green onions, the lunchers themselves and the riverside setting might have provided subject matter for one of the Itinerants (perhaps Miasoyedov, Arkhipov or Sergeï Ivanov) — or even for Mikhaïl Shibanov, the painter who provoked something of a furore when he exhibited his Peasant Meal at the Academy in the eighteenth century.

  134. Zinaida Serebriakova, Ballet Dressing Room:

  Snow Flakes (The Nutcracker), 1923. Oil on canvas,

  105 x 85 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

  135. Alexeï Sarasov, The Rooks have returned, 1871.

  Oil on canvas, 62 x 48 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

  Landscape

  From the Eighteenth Century to the 1860s

  It was only in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and during the first part of the nineteenth century that landscape painting in Russia emerged as a separate genre. Artists such as Fyodor Alexeyev (1753-1824), Fyodor Matveyev (1758-1 826), Maxim Vorobiev (1787-1855) and Sylvester Shchedrin (1791-1830) produced masterpieces of landscape painting, although their work was heavily influenced by the Latin tradition — by painters such as Claude Lorrain, Poussin and Canaletto — it is in the work of Venetsianov and his followers (for example, in his Summer: Harvest Time and Spring: Ploughing) that landscape with a truly Russian character makes its first appearance.

  Two of Venetsianov’s most promising pupils were Nikifor Krylov (1802-31) and Grigory Soroka (1823-64). Despite the brief span of their working lives, both of these artists were to have a considerable influence on the painters who came after them. The countryside in Kryiov’s best-known picture, Winter Landscape (1827), is unmistakably Russian, as are the people that enliven it. In order to paint the scene realistically, he had a simple wooden studio erected, looking out over the snow-covered plain to the woodlands visible in the distance. Krylov’s artistic career had barely begun when, at the age of twenty-nine, he succumbed to cholera. Only a small number of his works have survived.

  Soroka died in even more tragic circumstances. He was one of the serfs belonging to a landowner named Miliukov whose estate, Ostrovki, was close to Venetsianov’s. Conscious of Soroka’s talent, Venetsianov tried to persuade Miliukov to set the young painter free, but without success. (True to his humanitarian ideals, Venetsianov pleaded for the freedom of other talented serf artists and in some cases purchased their liberty himself.) Later, in 1864, Soroka was arrested for his part in local agitation for land reforms and sentenced to be flogged. Before the punishment could be carried out, he committed suicide. One of his most representative paintings is Fishermen: View of Lake Moldino (late 1840s), which is remarkable for the way it captures the silence and stillness of the lake.

  For a period of thirty or forty years most of the leading Russian landscape painters were taught by Maxim Vorobiev, who became a teacher at the Academy in 1815 and continued to teach there — except for long trips abroad, including an extended stay in Italy — almost up to the time of his death. Vorobiev and Sylvester Shchedrin were chiefly responsible for introducing the spirit of Romanticism into Russian landscape painting, while remaining faithful to the principles of classical art. Especially during the last decade of his life, Shchedrin favoured dramatic settings. Vorobiev went through a phase where he was attracted by landscapes shrouded in mist or lashed by storms, and both he and Shchedrin delighted in Romantic sunsets and moonlit scenes.

  136. Ivan Aivazovsky, The Ninth Wave, 1850.

  Oil on canvas, 221 x 332 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

  137. Fyodor Vassilyev, Wet Meadow, 1872.

  Oil on canvas, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

  138. Fyodor Vassilyev, The Thaw, 1871.

  53.5 x 107 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

  Among Vorobiev’s most talented pupils were Mikhaïl Lebedev (1811-37) — whose landscapes are less overtly Romantic than either Vorobiev’s or Shchedrin’s — and Ivan Aivazovsky, one of the most popular scenic painters of his time and certainly the most prolific. Indeed, those who reach such fame in their lifetime are rare. Barely finished with his studies, his name was already circulating throughout Russia. His learning years were situated, in effect, at a critical time. If academic rules were still in force, Romanticism was growing and each and everyone had Briullov’s fabulous The Last Day of Pompeii on their minds. This painting had a great effect on Aïvazovki’s inspiration. He was further taught by Vorobiov, whose teaching was influenced by the Romantic spirit. Aïvazovki remained faithful to this movement all his life, even though he oriented his work toward the realist genre. In October 1837, he finished his studies at the Academy and received a gold medal, synonymous with a trip to foreign countries at the cost of the Academy. But Aïvasovki’s gifts were such that the Council made an unusual decision: he was to spend two summers in the Crimean painting views of southern towns, present them to the Academy, and leave for Italy after that. The echo of the success of his Italian exhibitions was even heard in Russia. The Khoudojestvennaïa Gazeta wrote, “In Rome, Aïvasovski’s paintings presented at the art exhibition won first prize. Neapolitan Night, Chaos… made such an impression in the capital of fine arts that aristocratic salons, public gatherings and painters’ studios resound with the glory of the new Russian landscape artist. Newspapers dedicate laudatory lines to him and everyone says and writes that before Aïvasovski no one had shown light, water and air with such realism and life. Pope Gregory XVI bought Chaos and hung it in the Vatican where only paintings by world-famous painters have the honour of hanging.” While in Paris, he received the gold medal of the Council of the Academy of Paris and was made Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1857!

  Influenced to some extent by Turner, he created magnificent seascapes, such as Moonlit Night in the Crimea, View of the Sea and Mountains at Sunset and The Creation of the World. One of Aivazovsky’s most famous works, The Ninth Wave (1850), owes its title to the superstition among Russian sailors that in any sequence of waves, the ninth is the most violent. Like many of his paintings, it bears the imprint of Romanticism: the sea and sky convey the power and grandeur of nature, while in the foreground, the survivors of a shipwreck embody human hopes and fears. Although the sea is the dominant theme in the majority of the 6,000 paintings that Aivazovsky produced, he also painted views of the coast and countryside, both in Russia (especially in the Ukraine and Crimea) and during travels abroad.

  The enthusiasm for all things French that had been so prevalent in Russia during the eighteenth century diminished following the Napoleonic Wars — which is one reason that Russian painters, in common with European artists and writers generally, began to transfer their allegiance to Italy. This trend was reinforced by the Academy’s veneration of antiquity and the Italian Renaissance, and also by the first stirrings of the Romantic movement. Fyodor Matveyev painted little else besides Italian architecture and landscape. Both Sylvester Shchedrin (who spent the last twelve years of his life in Italy) and Mikhaïl Lebedev delighted in idyllic fishing scenes and tableaux of Italian peasant life. Aivazovsky painted views of Venice and Naples (many of them bathed in moonlight), and Fyodor Alexeyev actually became known as “the Russian Canaletto”.

  139. Ivan Shishkin, Countess Mordinova’s Forest, Peterhof, 1891.

  Oil on canvas, 81 x 108 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

  Sylvester Shchedrin entered the Academy of the Arts in Saint Petersburg in the landscape department. He received the gold medal to crown his graduation. The Academy offered him a trip abroad. He left for Italy, but only in 1818, because of the
Neapolitan invasion. The most famous work of this period is undoubtedly New Rome, the Castle of the Holy Angel. Indeed, this painting was a great success and Shchedrin had to fill several orders and made several replicas of the painting from different angles. He lived in Rome and then in Naples. Orders were abundant and Italy was a constant source of inspiration. He worked outdoors, drawing nature, bays, hills, villages, fishermen… Among his works, we can point out View of Serrento (1826) and Terrace on a Seashore (1828). He liked drawing hillsides of vineyards overlooking the sea. His numerous terraces were very well received as, for him, they represented the harmony between people’s lives and nature. After the 1820’s, he began drawing night landscapes filled with anxiety. As he had fallen ill, this certainly explains the change. Most of his works belong to private collectors throughout the world.

  During the first half of the nineteenth century a steady stream of Russian painters travelled to Italy or took up residence there — among them the Chernetsov brothers (who also travelled to Egypt, Turkey and Palestine) and such influential painters as Briullov, Kiprensky and Alexander Ivanov, whose Appian Way at Sunset and Water and Stones near Pallazzuolo have an almost Pre-Raphaelite quality. In 1846, Nestor Kukolnik — a fashionable poet and aesthete whose portrait was painted by Briullov — declared that Russian painting had virtually become a “continuation of the Italian school”.