Introduction........................................................ ........................2
Russian painting of the first half of the 19th century...........3
Russian painting of the second half of the 19th century...........10
Conclusion................................................. ....................25
Bibliography................................................ .......26
INTRODUCTION
The beginning of the 19th century was a time of cultural and spiritual upsurge in Russia. At the same time, the transformations of the previous time became the main support for the development of Russian culture in the first half of the 19th century. The penetration of elements of capitalism into the economy only increased the need for literate and educated people. Cities became major cultural centers. With each decade, more and more social strata were drawn into social processes. Artistic culture developed against the background of the growing national self-awareness of the Russian people and therefore had a pronounced national character. The Patriotic War of 1812 had a colossal influence on all types of art, which greatly accelerated the growth of the national self-awareness of the Russian people and its consolidation. At the same time, internationalization took place, rapprochement with the Russian people of other peoples of Russia. But conservative tendencies in the policies of Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I held back the development of culture. The government actively fought against manifestations of advanced social thought. In addition, the preservation of serfdom did not make it possible for the entire population to enjoy high cultural achievements, thereby again slowing down the process of development of Russian culture.
Glorifying the heroic deeds of the people, the idea of their spiritual awakening, exposing the ills of feudal Russia - these are the main themes of the fine arts of the 19th century.
Russian painting of the first halfXIXcentury.
Russian fine art was characterized by romanticism and realism. But at the same time, classicism was the officially recognized method. The Academy of Arts turned into a conservative and inert institution that hindered any attempts by artists to show freedom in creativity. She demanded strict adherence to the canons of classicism, encouraged the painting of biblical and mythological stories. Young talented Russian artists were not at all satisfied with the framework of academicism. Therefore, they more often turned to the portrait genre. Let's start talking about portrait painters with Vasily Andreevich Tropinin.
Vasily Andreevich Tropinin born on March 19, 1776 in the village of Korpovo, Novgorod province (now the village of Korpovo, Chudovsky district, Novgorod region) in the family of a serf who belonged to Count A. S. Minich. Subsequently it was given to Count Morkov as a dowry. Around 1798 he was sent to St. Petersburg to study with a pastry chef, however, having a natural talent and a penchant for drawing, he secretly began to study at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts with S. S. Shchukin. In 1804 he was recalled by his landowner - he was ordered to go to Ukraine, to Podolia, to the new estate of Count Morkov. Until 1821 he lived mainly in Ukraine, where he painted a lot from life, then moved to Moscow with the Morkov family. In 1823, at the age of 47, the artist finally gained freedom. In September 1823, he presented the paintings “The Lacemaker”, “The Old Beggar” and “Portrait of the Artist E. O. Skotnikov” to the Council of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and received the title of appointed artist. In 1824, for “Portrait of K. A. Leberecht” he was awarded the title of academician. Since 1833, Tropinin, on a voluntary basis, has been teaching students of a public art class that opened in Moscow (later the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture). In 1843 he was elected honorary member Moscow Art Society. In total, Tropinin created more than three thousand portraits. Tropinin's early portraits, painted in restrained colors (family portraits of Counts Morkov, 1813 and 1815, both in the Tretyakov Gallery), still entirely belong to the tradition of the Age of Enlightenment: the model is the unconditional and stable center of the image in them. Later, the color of Tropinin’s painting becomes more intense, the volumes are usually sculpted more clearly and sculpturally, but most importantly, the romantic feeling of the moving element of life insinuatingly grows, of which the hero of the portrait seems to be only a part, a fragment (“Bulakhov”, 1823; “K. G. Ravich”, 1823; self-portrait, circa 1824; all three - in the same place). Such is A. S. Pushkin in the famous portrait of 1827 (All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin, Pushkin): the poet, placing his hand on a stack of paper, as if “listening to the muse,” listens to the creative dream that surrounds the image with an invisible halo . The viewer appears before him, wise with life experience, not very happy man. Before Vasily Tropinin was in bondage until the age of 47. That’s probably why the faces on his canvases are so fresh and inspired ordinary people. And the youth and charm of his “Lacemaker” are endless. Most often, V.A. Tropinin turned to the depiction of people from the people ("The Lacemaker", "Portrait of a Son", etc.).
Orest Adamovich Kiprensky born on March 13, 1782 in Nezhinskaya Manor, known as an outstanding master of Russian fine art of romanticism, a wonderful portrait painter. With the painting “Dmitry Donskoy on the Kulikovo Field” (1805), he demonstrated a confident knowledge of the canons of academic historical painting. But quite early on, portraiture becomes the area where his talent reveals itself most naturally and effortlessly. His first pictorial portrait (“A.K. Schwalbe”, 1804), painted in the “Rembrandt” manner, stands out for its expressive and dramatic chiaroscuro structure. Over the years, his skill grows stronger and manifests itself in the creation of unique, individually characteristic images. Such paintings as the portrait of a boy A. A. Chelishchev (circa 1810-11), paired images of the spouses F. V. and E. P. Rostopchin (1809) and V. S. and D. N. Khvostov (1814) are full of impressive vitality , all - Tretyakov Gallery). The artist increasingly plays with the possibilities of color and light and shadow contrasts, landscape backgrounds, and symbolic details (“E. S. Avdulina,” circa 1822, ibid.). The artist knows how to make even large ceremonial portraits lyrically, almost intimately relaxed (“Portrait of Life Hussar Colonel Evgraf Davydov”, 1809, Russian Museum). His portrait of the young A.S., covered in poetic glory. Pushkin is one of the best in creating a romantic image. In Kiprensky, Pushkin looks solemn and romantic, in an aura of poetic glory. “You flatter me, Orestes,” Pushkin sighed, looking at the finished canvas. Kiprensky was also a virtuoso draftsman who created (mainly using the Italian pencil and pastel technique) examples of graphic skill, often surpassing his painted portraits in their open, excitingly light emotionality. These include everyday types (“The Blind Musician”, 1809, Russian Museum; “Kalmychka Bayausta”, 1813, Tretyakov Gallery), and the famous series of pencil portraits of participants in the Patriotic War of 1812 (drawings depicting E.I. Chaplits, A.R. Tomilova, P. A. Olenina, the same drawing with the poet Batyushkov and others; 1813-15, Tretyakov Gallery and other collections); the heroic beginning here acquires a sincere connotation. A large number of sketches and textual evidence show that the artist throughout his mature period gravitated toward creating a large (in his own words from a letter to A.N. Olenin in 1834), “spectacular, or, in Russian, striking and magical painting,” where the results of European history, as well as the destiny of Russia, would be depicted in allegorical form. “Newspaper Readers in Naples” (1831, Tretyakov Gallery) - in appearance just a group portrait - in fact there is a secretly symbolic response to the revolutionary events in Europe.
However, the most ambitious of Kiprensky's pictorial allegories remained unfulfilled or disappeared (like the "Tomb of Anacreon", completed in 1821). If we return to the artist’s biography, we must say that only at the beginning of 1836 did he finally manage to earn such a sum that allowed him to pay off his creditors and carry out his long-made decision - to marry Anna Maria Falkucci. To do this, he had to convert to Catholicism in June 1836, and in July he got married without publicity. It is unknown whether he found the peace he desired. Some contemporaries recalled that he quarreled with his young wife and drank violently, others kept silent about this. All the same, his life came to an end: he caught a cold, contracted pneumonia and died four months after the wedding. A few more months later, his daughter, Clotilde Kiprenskaya, was born, but her trace was hopelessly lost. After the death of the painter, romantic searches in Russian painting received a large-scale continuation in the works of K. P. Bryullov and A. A. Ivanov.
Karl Pavlovich Bryullov born on December 12 (23), 1799 in St. Petersburg, in the family of academician, woodcarver and engraver Pavel Ivanovich Brulleau (Brulleau, 1760-1833). From 1809 to 1821 he studied painting at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, and was a student of Andrei Ivanovich Ivanov. A brilliant student, he received a gold medal in the class of historical painting. His first known work, Narcissus, dates back to 1820. In the future, the artistic and ideological quest of Russian social thought and the expectation of change were reflected in the paintings of K.P. Bryullov “The Last Day of Pompeii” and A.A. Ivanov "The Appearance of Christ to the People."
The background to the painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” is as follows: Karl Bryullov visited the excavations of the ancient city of Pompeii in 1830. He walked along the ancient pavements, admired the frescoes, and in his imagination that tragic night of August 79 AD arose. e., when the city was covered with hot ash and pumice of the awakened Vesuvius. Three years later, the painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” made a triumphant journey from Italy to Russia. The artist found amazing colors to depict the tragedy of the ancient city, dying under the lava and ash of the erupting Vesuvius. The picture is imbued with high humanistic ideals. It shows the courage of people, their dedication shown during terrible disaster. Bryullov was in Italy on a business trip to the Academy of Arts. This educational institution provided good training in painting and drawing techniques. However, the Academy clearly focused on the ancient heritage and heroic themes. Academic painting was characterized by a decorative landscape and theatricality of the overall composition. Scenes from modern life and ordinary Russian landscapes were considered unworthy of the artist’s brush. Classicism in painting was called academicism. Bryullov was associated with the Academy with all his creativity.
Karl Petrovich Bryullov had a powerful imagination, a keen eye and a faithful hand - and he gave birth to living creations consistent with the canons of academicism. Truly, with Pushkin's grace, he knew how to capture on canvas both the beauty of a naked human body and the trembling of a sunbeam on a green leaf. In addition to the paintings listed above, his canvases “Horsewoman,” “Bathsheba,” “Italian Morning,” “Italian Afternoon,” and numerous ceremonial and intimate portraits will forever remain masterpieces of Russian painting. However, the artist has always gravitated towards large historical themes, towards depicting significant events in human history. Many of his plans in this regard were not realized. Bryullov never left the idea of creating an epic canvas based on a plot from Russian history. He begins the painting “The Siege of Pskov by the Troops of King Stefan Batory.” It depicts climax the siege of 1581, when the Pskov warriors and. The townspeople rush to attack the Poles who broke into the city and throw them behind the walls. But the painting remained unfinished, and the task of creating truly national historical paintings was carried out not by Bryullov, but by the next generation of Russian artists. Born on the same day as A.S. Pushkin, Bryullov outlived him by 15 years. He has been ill in recent years. From a self-portrait painted at that time, a reddish man with delicate facial features and a calm, thoughtful gaze looks at us. Bryullov, unlike Pushkin and his friend Glinka, did not have such a significant influence on Russian painting as they did on literature and music, respectively. However, the psychological tendency of Bryullov’s portraits can be traced among all Russian masters of this genre: from Kramskoy and Perov to Serov and Vrubel.
Alexander Andreevich Ivanov - historical painter, landscape painter, portrait painter. Born on July 16, 1806 in St. Petersburg. A. A. Ivanov’s father, Andrei Ivanovich, was a professor at the Academy of Arts. He gave his son initial training in drawing and painting and had a great influence on his further development. At the age of eleven, Alexander entered the Academy as a volunteer student. From a young age he showed astonishing successes and his works gave reason to suspect that he carried them out with the help of his father. In 1824, for the painting “Priam asking Achilles for the body of Hector,” Ivanov received a Small Gold Medal. At the end of the academic course, he was given the program “Joseph interpreting the dreams of the baker and cupbearer imprisoned with him” (1827, Russian Russian Museum), which brought him a Big Gold Medal. However, in the interpretation of the topic, the academic authorities unexpectedly saw political hints. The biblical story about the cruel Egyptian pharaoh executing people seemed to be a reminder of the massacre of the Decembrists, since the artist depicted Joseph as if pointing with his hand at the sculptural bas-reliefs with the scene of the Egyptian execution. “This case almost cost me exile,” Ivanov later recalled. For lack of evidence, the episode was hushed up, but the artist had to make a new work - the painting “Bellerophon goes on a campaign against the Chimera” (1829, Russian Museum). In 1830, Ivanov went to Italy as a pensioner of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. The study of ancient monuments and paintings of great masters was reflected in his painting “Apollo, Hyacinth and Cypress” (1831-1834). From the very beginning of his stay abroad, Ivanov sought to find a significant topic. The idea of an artistic embodiment of the Gospel legend telling of the coming of the Messiah arose in him already in the early 1830s. But he did not immediately consider himself prepared to implement this plan and, as an approach to the theme, began the two-figure composition “The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene” (1835, Russian Russian Museum). Despite the classicist conventions, the artist managed to create a life-like image of Magdalene, conveying the complexity and sincerity of her feelings. The painting was sent to St. Petersburg, was a great success and gave the artist the title of academician. In 1837, Ivanov began his huge canvas “The Appearance of Christ to the People.” Work on it in subsequent years was closely intertwined with work on countless sketches. It should be borne in mind that the total period for creating a painting - twenty years - determines only the period of time between the beginning and end of the embodiment of the idea directly on the canvas. Carrying out other jobs along the way, traveling around Italy, as well as eye disease sometimes took Ivanov away from his main occupation for a long time. Thus, in the mid-1840s, he developed a sketch of a composition for the monumental painting of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was being built in Moscow, and from the late 1840s he devoted a lot of effort to the extensive series “Biblical Sketches”. The latter was a new outstanding achievement in his work. Captivated by the poetic beauty and philosophical wisdom of ancient legends, Ivanov saw in them a reflection of the thoughts, feelings and deeds of people of the distant past and soulfully, with great artistic power, embodied his ideas in watercolors. Despite his commitment to the “high style” in art, Ivanov created several excellent watercolors on everyday themes (“The Groom Choosing a Ring for the Bride,” ca. 1839, Russian Russian Museum; “October Holiday,” 1842, etc.). During his long work on his large painting, Ivanov never ceased to deepen and rethink its concept. A deep interest in history, philosophy, and religious teachings was a distinctive feature of the artist. It is no coincidence that his close friendship with N.V. Gogol, acquaintance in 1848 with A.I. Herzen and N.P. Ogarev, friendly relations with D.M. Shchepkin, I.M. Sechenov. These outstanding people satisfied his thirst for knowledge. Throughout the 40s, against the backdrop of events in public life in Europe, Ivanov’s attitude towards his work changed. “My work - the big picture - is becoming more and more debased in my eyes. We, who live in 1855, have gone far, in our thinking - the main idea of my picture is almost completely lost, and thus I barely have the courage to do more improve its execution,” Ivanov wrote in one of his letters. In the spring of 1858, he returned to Russia, where he soon met Chernyshevsky, who praised him highly. The painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People” and the sketches for it were greeted with restraint in official circles. The artist lived in St. Petersburg for only six weeks and died of cholera on July 3, 1858.
In the first half of the 19th century. Russian painting includes everyday subjects.
Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov(1780–1847), Russian artist, representative of romanticism, who was one of the first Russian artists to turn to everyday subjects in paintings. Born in Moscow on February 7 (18), 1780 in a merchant family. In his youth he served as an official. He studied art largely on his own, copying paintings from the Hermitage. In 1807–1811 he took painting lessons from V.L. Borovikovsky. He painted portraits, usually small in format, marked by subtle lyrical inspiration (M.A. Venetsianova, the artist’s wife, late 1820s, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; Self-portrait, 1811, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). In 1819 he left the capital and since then lived in the village of Safonkovo (Tver province), which he bought, inspired by the surrounding landscape and rural life. Already in the landmark painting Gumno (1821–1823, Russian Museum), rural life looks like an immutable basis for the artistic study of nature. The best of Venetsianov’s paintings in an unusual way combined the qualities of a painting in the style of classicism, revealing this nature in a state of idealized, enlightened harmony; on the other hand, the romantic element obviously prevails in them, the charm not of ideals, but of simple natural feelings against the backdrop of native nature and everyday life. Among the most famous works depicting the life of peasants are “On the Plowed Field”, “Spring” (the first half of the 1820s), “At the Harvest. Summer" (1820s), "Morning of the Landowner" (1823), "Sleeping Shepherd" (1823–1824). His peasant portraits “Zakharka” of 1825 and “Peasant Woman with Cornflowers” of 1839 appear as fragments of the same enlightened-natural, classical-romantic idyll. Other facets of Venetsianov’s talent are revealed in his religious compositions, written for local churches, as well as in later paintings, where he strives for greater dramatic imagery (“Communion to a Dying Woman,” 1839). New creative searches were interrupted by the death of the artist: Venetsianov died in an accident in the Tver village of Poddubye on December 4 (16), 1847 from injuries - he was thrown out of a wagon when the horses skidded on a slippery winter road.
His traditions continued Pavel Andreevich Fedotov(1815-1852). His canvases are realistic, filled with satirical content, exposing the merchant morality, life and customs of the elite of society in such films as “Major's Matchmaking”, “Fresh Cavalier” and others. He began his path as a satirical artist as a guards officer. Then he made funny, mischievous sketches of army life. In 1848, his painting “Fresh Cavalier” was presented at an academic exhibition. It was a daring mockery not only of the stupid, complacent bureaucracy, but also of academic traditions. Bryullov stood in front of the canvas for a long time, and then said to the author, half-jokingly: “Congratulations, you defeated me.” Other films by Fedotov (“Breakfast of an Aristocrat”, “Major’s Matchmaking”) also have a comedic and satirical character. His last paintings are very sad (“Anchor, more anchor!”, “Widow”). Contemporaries rightly compared P.A. Fedotov in painting with N.V. Gogol in literature. Exposing the ills of feudal Russia is the main theme of the work of Pavel Andreevich Fedotov.
2 Russian painting of the second halfXIXcentury.
The second half of the 19th century was marked by the flourishing of Russian fine art. It became truly great art, was imbued with the pathos of the people’s liberation struggle, responded to the demands of life and actively invaded life. In the fine arts, realism was finally established - a truthful and comprehensive reflection of the life of the people, the desire to rebuild this life on the principles of equality and justice. The central theme of art has become the people, not only the oppressed and suffering, but also the people - the creator of history, the people-fighter, the creator of all the best that there is in life.
The establishment of realism in art took place in a stubborn struggle with the official direction, whose representative was the leadership of the Academy of Arts. The academy's leaders instilled in their students the idea that art was higher than life, and they put forward only biblical and mythological themes for the artists' creativity.
On November 9, 1863, a large group of graduates of the Academy of Arts refused to write competition works on the proposed topic from Scandinavian mythology and left the Academy. The rebels were led by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy (1837-1887). They united into an artel and began to live as a commune. Seven years later it disintegrated, but by this time the “Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions” was born, a professional and commercial association of artists who held similar ideological positions.
The Peredvizhniki were united in their rejection of “academicism” with its mythology, decorative landscapes and pompous theatricality. They wanted to depict living life. Leading place Genre (everyday) scenes took over their work. The peasantry enjoyed particular sympathy with the “Itinerants”. They showed his need, suffering, oppressed position. At that time - 60-70s. XIX century - the ideological side of art was valued higher than the aesthetic. Perhaps, V.G. Perov paid the greatest tribute to ideology, and we will talk about him further.
Vasily Grigorievich Perov born in 1834 in Tobolsk in the family of lawyer G.K. Kridener. Perov was considered illegitimate, since his parents were married after his birth. He spent part of his childhood years in Arzamas, where he studied at the school of A.V. Stupin. In 1853 he entered the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. Experiencing material need, I met the support of teacher E.Ya. Vasiliev. Perov's teachers were M.I. Scotti, A.N. Mokritsky, S.K. Zaryanko, classmate and friend - I.M. Pryanishnikov. Already in early work Perov acted as a socially critical artist. In 1858, his painting “The Arrival of the Stavoy for Investigation” (1857) was awarded the Large Silver Medal, then he received the Small Gold Medal for the painting “First Rank. The Son of a Sexton, Promoted to Collegiate Registrar” (1860, location unknown). Perov's first works were a great success at exhibitions. For the graduation competition, Perov wanted to write “Rural religious procession at Easter,” but the sketch was not approved. Continuing to work on this plot, Perov simultaneously prepared the painting “Sermon in a Village” (1861). Its critical content was not expressed so directly, and the author was awarded a Big Gold Medal, as well as the right to travel abroad. In 1862, he exhibited “Rural Procession at Easter” (1861) at the Society for the Encouragement of Artists in St. Petersburg, but the canvas was removed from the exhibition with a prohibition against making it known. The lack of spirituality of church pastors, darkness, ignorance and unbelief of the people - the content of this work, which in terms of the power of exposure has no equal in previous Russian painting. By this time, Perov’s artistic language was freed from student shackles, and one can talk about the novelty of his means of expression. The various elements of the picture were subordinated to the task of realistically reflecting an observed and deeply meaningful life situation. In 1862, "Tea Party in Mytishchi near Moscow" was completed - another striking example of critical realism. Having traveled abroad, the artist settled in Paris. "The Rag Pickers of Paris" (1864), "The Organ Grinder" (1863), "The Savoyard" (1864), and "The Song Book Seller" were written here. However, “not knowing either the people, their way of life, or their character,” Perov did not see the benefit of working in France and asked permission to return home ahead of schedule. He received permission to continue his retirement in Russia and in 1864 came to Moscow. Perov's creativity in the second half of the 1860s was varied in subject matter. While still containing socially accusatory content, it also acquired clear lyrical notes. During this period, many outstanding works of the artist were written: "Seeing off the Dead Man" ("Funeral of a Peasant", 1865), "The Arrival of a Governess at a Merchant's House", "Troika" (both 1866), "The Drowned Woman" (1867), "The Last Tavern at the Outpost "(1868). A mature master of the everyday genre and a deep psychologist, Perov acts in a number of cases both as a subtle landscape painter and as the author of outstanding portraits - A.N. Ostrovsky (1871), F.M. Dostoevsky (1872), etc. At the turn of the 1860-1870s, Perov became one of the initiators and active figures of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. From 1871 until the end of his life, he taught at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. In the 1870s, Perov's everyday genre took on a new direction. Now the artist was especially attracted to social and psychological types people ("The Wanderer", 1870; "Birder", 1870; "Hunters at Rest", 1871). In 1876, the painting “The Monastic Meal”, begun in the 1860s, was also completed. For several years the artist worked on the historical painting “The Court of Pugachev” (1879). Perov's contribution to the art of the mid-19th century is extremely significant. His works clearly demonstrated the features of Russian critical realism of that time.
Some of the paintings of the “Itinerants,” painted from life or inspired by real scenes, have enriched our ideas about peasant life. S. A. Korovin’s film “On the World” shows a clash between a rich man and a poor man at a village gathering. V. M. Maksimov captured the rage, tears and grief of the family division. The solemn festivity of peasant labor is reflected in the painting “Mowers” by G. G. Myasoedov.
The ideological leader of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions was Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy (1837-1887) - a wonderful artist and art theorist. He was born in the city of Ostrogozhsk, Voronezh province, into the family of a minor official. Since childhood, I have been interested in art and literature. After graduating from the district school (1850), he served as a scribe, then as a retoucher for a photographer, with whom he roamed around Russia. In 1857 he ended up in St. Petersburg, working in the photo studio of A. I. Denier. In the autumn of the same year he entered the Academy of Arts and was a student of A. T. Markov. He received a Small Gold Medal for his painting “Moses Bringing Water Out of a Rock” (1863). During his years of study, he rallied advanced academic youth around himself. He led the protest of Academy graduates who refused to paint pictures (“programs”) based on a subject set by the Council, far from life. The artists who left the Academy united into the St. Petersburg artel. They owe a lot to Kramskoy for the atmosphere of mutual assistance, cooperation and deep spiritual interests that reigned here. . At this time, Kramskoy’s vocation as a portrait painter was completely determined. Then he most often resorted to his favorite graphic technique (using sauce, white, Italian pencil). This is how famous portraits of artists A.I. were made. Morozova (1868), I.I. Shishkina (1869), G.G. Myasoedova (1861), P.P. Chistyakova (1861), N.A. Kosheleva (1866). Some similar works are reproduced in this publication. The nature of a pictorial portrait - devoid of circumstance, meticulous in drawing and light and shadow modeling, but restrained in color - also developed in Kramskoy during these years. The artistic language corresponded to the image of a democrat commoner, who was a frequent subject of the master’s portraits. These are the artist’s “Self-Portrait” (1867) and “Portrait of the Agronomist Vyunnikov” (1868). In 1863-1868, Kramskoy taught at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. By the end of the decade, the artel had lost its unity and social significance. Kramskoy left its membership (1870) and became one of the founders of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. At the first exhibition of the Partnership, “Portrait of F.A. Vasilyev” and “Portrait of M.M. Antokolsky” were exhibited. A year later, the painting “Christ in the Desert” was shown, the idea of which had been incubated for several years. According to Kramskoy, “even among previous artists, the Bible, Gospel and mythology served only as a pretext for expressing completely contemporary passions and thoughts.” He himself, like Ge and Polenov, in the image of Christ expressed the ideal of a person filled with high spiritual thoughts, preparing himself for self-sacrifice. The artist repeatedly returned to the theme of Christ. The large painting “Laughter” (GRM) related to it, however, remained unfinished. While collecting material for him, Kramskoy visited Italy (1876). He traveled to Europe in subsequent years. The predominant area of artistic achievement for Kramskoy remained portraiture. In the 1870s - early 1880s, many of his best works were completed, including a series of portraits of outstanding people of the era: L.N. Tolstoy (1873, Tretyakov Gallery), N.A. Nekrasova (1877 and 1877-1878, Tretyakov Gallery), P.M. Tretyakov (1876, Tretyakov Gallery), I.I. Shishkin (1880, State Russian Museum) and others. Collective portraits of peasants were also created: “Forester” (1874, Tretyakov Gallery), “Mina Moiseev” (1882, Russian Museum), “Peasant with a bridle” (1883, KMRI). Repeatedly Kramskoy turned to a form of painting in which two genres seemed to come into contact - portraiture and everyday life. These are “Unknown” (“Stranger”, 1883), “Inconsolable Grief” (1884, Tretyakov Gallery; versions - State Russian Museum and the Museum of the Latvian SSR). Throughout his life, the artist also had to fulfill numerous church and portrait commissions, which served as a source of income for him. Kramskoy is an outstanding figure in the cultural life of Russia in the 1860-1880s. The organizer of the St. Petersburg artel, one of the founders of the Wanderers association, a subtle art critic, passionately interested in the fate of Russian art, he was the ideologist of a whole generation of realist artists. Kramskoy fought against the so-called “pure art”. He called on the artist to be a man and a citizen, to fight for high social ideals with his creativity.
The Peredvizhniki made genuine discoveries in landscape painting.
Alexey Kondratievich Savrasov (1830-1897) managed to show the beauty and subtle lyricism of a simple Russian landscape. In his early youth, the future artist showed extraordinary abilities for painting. Contrary to the wishes of his father, who dreamed of adapting his son to “commercial affairs,” the boy in 1844 entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he studied in the class of landscape painter K. I. Rabus and graduated in 1854. In the summer of 1854, Savrasov worked near the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg, and at the autumn exhibition at the Academy of Arts he showed two paintings: “View in the vicinity of Oranienbaum” and “Seashore in the vicinity of Oranienbaum,” for which he was awarded the title of academician.
In 1857 he married S.K. Hertz, and in 1871 the master created a number of his best works (“Pechersky Monastery near Nizhny Novgorod”, Nizhny Novgorod Art Museum; “The Volga Flood near Yaroslavl”, Russian Museum), including the famous painting “The Rooks Have Arrived” (Tretyakov Gallery), which became the most popular Russian landscape, a kind of pictorial symbol of Russia. Sketch work on “The Rooks” took place in March, in the village. Molvitino (now Susanino) Buisky district, Kostroma province. Melted snow, spring rooks on birch trees, a gray-blue, faded sky, dark huts and an ancient church against the backdrop of frozen distant meadows - everything fused into an image of amazing poetic charm. The picture is characterized by a truly magical effect of recognition, “already seen” (deja-vue, in the language of psychology) - and not only somewhere near the Volga, where “Rooks” were painted, but almost in any corner of the country. Here the “mood” - as a special contemplative space that unites the picture with the viewer - finally turns into a completely special component of the image; this is aptly recorded by I. N. Kramskoy when he writes (in a letter to F. A. Vasiliev, 1871), regarding other landscapes at the exhibition: “all these are trees, water and even air, but the soul is only in “Rooks.” The invisibly visible “soul”, the mood gives life to Savrasov’s subsequent works: wonderful Moscow landscapes, organically combining the everyday simplicity of the foreground with the majestic distances (“Sukharev Tower”, 1872, Historical Museum, Moscow; “View of the Moscow Kremlin, Spring”, 1873, Russian Museum), virtuoso in conveying moisture and light and shade "Country Road" (1873, Tretyakov Gallery), sentimental "Tomb over the Volga" (1874, Altai Regional Museum of Fine Arts, Barnaul), luminous "Rainbow" (1875, Russian Museum), melancholic painting “Winter Landscape. Frost" (1876-77, Voronezh Museum of Fine Arts). In the later period, Savrasov's skill weakened sharply. Having fallen into disrepair in life, suffering from alcoholism, he lives off copies of his best works, primarily “The Rooks.” The artist spent his last years in poverty and died alone on September 26 (October 8), 1897 in Moscow, in a hospital for the poor.
Fyodor Alexandrovich Vasiliev (1850-1873) lived a short life. His work, which was cut short at the very beginning, enriched Russian painting with a number of dynamic, exciting landscapes. The artist was especially good at transitional states in nature: from sun to rain, from calm to storm. Coming from the family of a postal worker, he studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and also in 1871 at the Academy of Arts; in 1866-67 he worked under the leadership of I. I. Shishkin. Vasiliev’s outstanding talent developed early and powerfully in films that impress the viewer with their psychological drama. The painting “Before the Rain” (1869, Tretyakov Gallery) is already imbued with remarkable “poetry with a natural impression” (in the words of I. N. Kramskoy, a close friend of Vasiliev, about the fundamental property of his work as a whole). In 1870 he traveled along the Volga with I.E. Repin, as a result of which the painting “View on the Volga” appeared. Barges" (1870, Russian Museum) and other works, noted for the subtlety of light-air effects and the skill of conveying river and air moisture. But external effects are not the point here. In Vasiliev’s works, nature, as if responding to the movements of the human soul, expresses a complex range of feelings between despair, hope and quiet sadness. The most famous paintings are “The Thaw” (1871) and “Wet Meadow” (1872; both in the Tretyakov Gallery), where the artist’s constant interest in the transitional, uncertain states of nature is translated into images of insight through the melancholic darkness. These are a kind of natural dreams about Russia that can withstand comparison with the landscape motifs of I. S. Turgenev or A. A. Fet. The artist (judging by his correspondence with Kramskoy) dreams of creating some unprecedented works, symbolic landscapes-revelations that could heal humanity, burdened with “criminal intentions.” But his days are already numbered. Having fallen ill with tuberculosis, he moved to Yalta in 1871. The fatal illness, merging with impressions of southern nature, which appears to him not as festive, but as alienated and alarming, gives his painting even greater dramatic tension. Anxious and gloomy is his most significant painting of this period - “In the Crimean Mountains” (1873, Tretyakov Gallery). The mountain road, drowning in haze, painted in gloomy brownish-gray tones, takes on an otherworldly hue here, like a hopeless road to nowhere. The influence of Vasiliev's art, enhanced by the tragedy of his early death, was very significant. The romantic tradition, finally abandoning the idea of landscape as a decorative spectacle, achieved in his works a special spiritual content, foreshadowing the art of symbolism and modernism, the landscape of the Chekhov-Levitan era.
The work of Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1848-1926) is closely connected with Russian folk tales and epics, the plots of which he took as the basis for his paintings. This will be discussed further.
Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov born on May 15, 1848 in the Russian village of Lopyal, Urzhum district, Vyatka province (now Kirov region), in the family of an Orthodox priest who came from the ancient Vyatka family of the Vasnetsovs. The artist considered himself a Scythian. He studied at the theological school (1858-1862), then at the Vyatka Theological Seminary. He took drawing lessons from the gymnasium art teacher N. G. Chernyshev. With the blessing of his father, he left the seminary in his penultimate year and went to St. Petersburg to enter the Academy of Arts. He studied painting in St. Petersburg - first with I. N. Kramskoy at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts (1867-1868), then at the Academy of Arts (1868-1873). During his studies, he came to Vyatka and met the exiled Polish artist Elviro Andriolli, whom he asked to paint with his younger brother Apollinaris. After graduating from the Academy, he traveled abroad. He began exhibiting his works in 1869, first participating in exhibitions of the Academy, then in exhibitions of the Itinerants. Member of the Mamontov circle in Abramtsevo. In 1893, Vasnetsov became a full member of the Academy of Arts. After 1905, he was close to the Union of the Russian People, although he was not a member of it, and participated in the financing and design of monarchist publications, including the Book of Russian Sorrow. In 1915, he participated in the establishment of the Society for the Revival of Artistic Rus', along with many other artists of his time. Vasnetsov’s work clearly represents different genres, which have become stages of a very interesting evolution: from a description of everyday life to a fairy tale, from easel painting to monumental painting, from the earthiness of the Wanderers to the prototype of the Art Nouveau style. At an early stage, Vasnetsov’s works were dominated by everyday subjects, for example, in the paintings “From Apartment to Apartment” (1876), “Military Telegram” (1878), “Book Shop” (1876), “Booth Shows in Paris” (1877).
Later, the main direction became the epic-historical - “The Knight at the Crossroads” (1882), “After the Battle of Igor Svyatoslavich with the Polovtsians” (1880), “Alyonushka” (1881), “Ivan Tsarevich on the Gray Wolf” (1889), “Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible" (1897). In the late 1890s, a religious theme occupied an increasingly prominent place in his work (works in the Vladimir Cathedral in Kyiv and in the Church of the Resurrection in St. Petersburg, watercolor drawings and generally preparatory originals of wall painting for the Cathedral of St. Vladimir). His best work is “Three Heroes”. Before the viewer are the favorite heroes of the Russian epic epic - heroes, defenders of the Russian land and native people from numerous enemies. After 1917 Vasnetsov continued to work on folk fairy tale themes, creating the canvases “The Fight of Dobrynya Nikitich with the seven-headed Serpent Gorynych” (1918); "Koschei the Immortal" (1917-1926). Viktor Vasnetsov died on July 23, 1926 in Moscow, and was buried at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery.
He became the singer of the Russian forest, the epic breadth of Russian nature Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832-1898). Ivan Shishkin was born on January 13, 1832 in the city of Elabuga, Vyatka province. He came from the ancient Vyatka family of the Shishkins, was the son of the merchant Ivan Vasilyevich Shishkin. At the age of twelve he was assigned to the 1st Kazan gymnasium, but, having reached the 5th grade, he left it and entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1852-1856). Having completed the course at this institution, from 1857 he continued his education at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1856-1865), where he was listed as a student of Professor S. M. Vorobyov. Not content with studying within the walls of the academy, he diligently drew and wrote sketches from nature in the vicinity of St. Petersburg and on the island of Valaam, thanks to which he acquired more and more familiarity with its forms and the ability to accurately convey it with a pencil and brush. Already in the first year of his stay at the academy, he was awarded two small silver medals for a class drawing and for a view in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. In 1858 he received a large silver medal for a view of Valaam, in 1859 - a small gold medal for a landscape from the outskirts of St. Petersburg and, finally, in 1860 - a large gold medal for two views of the area of Cucco, on Valaam.
Having received, along with this last award, the right to travel abroad as a pensioner of the academy, he went to Munich in 1861, visited the workshops of famous artists there, the workshops of Benno and Franz Adam, who were very popular animal painters. Then, in 1863, he moved to Zurich, where, under the guidance of Professor Koller, who was then considered one of the best depictors of animals, he sketched and painted animals from life. In Zurich I tried engraving with “regia vodka” for the first time. From here he made an excursion to Geneva in order to get acquainted with the works of Dide and Kalam, and then moved to Dusseldorf and painted there, at the request of N. Bykov, “View in the vicinity of Dusseldorf” - a painting that, being sent to St. Petersburg, gave the artist the title of academician . Abroad, in addition to painting, he did a lot of pen drawings; his works of this kind surprised foreigners, and some were placed in the Düsseldorf Museum next to the drawings of first-class European masters.
Feeling homesick for his homeland, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1866 before his pension expired. Since then, he often traveled for artistic purposes throughout Russia, and almost every year he exhibited his works, first at the academy. After the Association of Traveling Exhibitions was established, he produced pen drawings at these exhibitions. In 1870, having joined the circle of aquafortists formed in St. Petersburg, he again began engraving with “royal vodka,” which he did not leave until the end of his life, devoting almost as much time to it as to painting. All these works each year increased his reputation as one of the best Russian landscape painters and an incomparable, in his way, aquafortist. The artist owned an estate in the village of Vyra (now the Gatchina district of the Leningrad region). In 1873, the Academy elevated him to the rank of professor for the masterful painting “Wilderness” that it acquired. After the new charter of the academy came into force, in 1892 he was invited to head its educational landscape workshop, but, due to various circumstances, he did not hold this position for long.
Among Russian landscape painters, Shishkin can rightfully be called one of the most powerful artists. In all his works he is an amazing connoisseur of plant forms, reproducing them with a subtle understanding of both the general character and the smallest distinctive features of any species of trees, bushes and grasses. Whether he took on the image of a pine or spruce forest, individual pines and spruces, just like their totality, received from him their true physiognomy, without any embellishment or understatement - that appearance and with those particulars that are fully explained and determined the soil and climate where the artist made them grow. Whether he depicted oaks or birches, they took on completely truthful forms in his foliage, branches, trunks, roots and in all details. The very area under the trees - stones, sand or clay, uneven soil overgrown with ferns and other forest herbs, dry leaves, brushwood, dead wood, etc. - received the appearance of perfect reality in Shishkin's paintings and drawings.
But this realism often harmed his landscapes: in many of them it obscured the general mood, giving them the character not of paintings conceived not with the aim of arousing this or that feeling in the viewer, but of random, albeit excellent sketches. It should also be noted that with Shishkin what happens with almost every particularly strong draftsman was repeated: the science of forms was given to him to the detriment of color, which, while not being weak and inharmonious for him, still does not stand on the same level with masterful drawing. Therefore, Shishkin’s talent is sometimes shown much more clearly in single-color drawings and etchings than in works in which he used many colors.
If we talk again about the biography of Ivan Shishkin as an artist, we must definitely mention that in the 1870s. the master is entering a time of unconditional creative maturity, as evidenced by the paintings “Pine Forest. Mast forest in the Vyatka province" (1872) and "Rye" (1878; both - Tretyakov Gallery). Usually avoiding the unsteady, transitional states of nature, the artist captures its highest summer flowering, achieving impressive tonal unity precisely due to the bright, midday, summer light that determines the entire color scale. The monumental romantic image of Nature with a capital “N” is invariably present in the paintings. New, realistic trends appear in the soulful attention with which the signs of a specific piece of land, a corner of a forest or field, or a specific tree are written down. With particular desire, the artist paints the most powerful and strong species, such as oaks and pines - in the stages of maturity, old age and, finally, death in the windfall. Shishkin’s classic works - such as “Rye” or “Among the Flat Valley...” (the painting is named after the song by A.F. Merzlyakov; 1883, Kiev Museum of Russian Art), “Forest Distances” (1884, Tretyakov Gallery) - are perceived as generalized, epic images of Russia. The artist is equally successful in both distant views and forest “interiors” (“Pines illuminated by the sun”, 1886; “Morning in pine forest"Where the bears are painted by K. A. Savitsky, 1889; both are in the same place). His drawings and sketches, which represent a detailed diary of natural life, have independent value. He also worked fruitfully in the field of etching. By printing his finely nuanced landscape etchings in different states, publishing them in the form of albums, Shishkin powerfully intensified interest in this type of art. He died suddenly in St. Petersburg on March 8 (20), 1898, sitting at an easel, working on a new painting. The artist’s house-museum has been opened in Yelabuga.
A. I. Kuindzhi (1841 -1910) was attracted by the picturesque play of light and air. The mysterious light of the moon in rare clouds, the red reflections of dawn on the white walls of Ukrainian huts, the slanting morning rays breaking through the fog and playing in puddles on a muddy road - these and many other picturesque discoveries are captured on his canvases.
Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi born in Mariupol, in the family of a poor Greek shoemaker. He lost his parents early and lived in great poverty, tending geese, serving as a contractor for the construction of a church, then as a grain merchant; learned to read and write in Greek from a Greek teacher, then attended the city school for some time.
From an early age, Kuindzhi was fond of painting, drawing on any suitable material - on walls, fences and scraps of paper. Worked as a retoucher for photographers in Mariupol, Odessa and St. Petersburg. For five years, from 1860 to 1865, Arkhip Kuindzhi worked as a retoucher in Isakovich’s photographic studio in Taganrog. Kuindzhi tried to open his own studio, but without success. He was a student of Aivazovsky, however, he was never allowed to paint on canvas - only a touch of paint. After this, Arkhip Ivanovich leaves Taganrog and goes to St. Petersburg. Finally, he created a large painting, “Tatar Saklya in the Crimea,” which he exhibited at an academic exhibition in 1868. As a result, Kuindzhi became a volunteer student at the academy on the third attempt. In 1872, for the painting “Autumn Thrush” he received the title of class artist. In 1873, Kuindzhi exhibited the painting “Snow” at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, for which in 1874 he received a bronze medal at an international exhibition in London. In the same 1873, he exhibited his painting “View of the Island of Valaam” in Vienna, and “Lake Ladoga” in St. Petersburg. In 1874, at the exhibition of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, Kuindzhi exhibited “The Forgotten Village”, in 1875 - “Steppes” and “Chumatsky Tract”, in 1876 - the famous “Ukrainian Night”. In 1877, Kuindzhi became a member of the Association of Itinerants; in 1878 he exhibited “Forest” and “Evening in Little Russia”, which aroused a lot of controversy and created many imitators. In 1879 he exhibited “North”, “Birch Grove”, “After the Storm”; in the same year Kuindzhi left the exhibitions of the partnership. In 1880, he organized an exhibition of one of his paintings at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts: “Night on the Dnieper”; This exhibition was a huge success. In 1881, also in “solo” mode, Kuindzhi exhibited “Birch Grove,” which had an equally resounding success, and in 1882 he presented “Dnieper in the Morning” along with “Birch Grove” and “Night on the Dnieper.” After this exhibition, until his death, Kuindzhi did not exhibit his paintings anywhere else, and until the 1900s he did not show them to anyone. From 1894 to 1897 Kuindzhi was the head professor of the Higher Art School at the Academy of Arts. In 1904, he donated 100,000 rubles to the Academy to issue 24 annual prizes; in 1909 he donated 150,000 rubles and his estate in Crimea to the art society named after him, and 11,700 rubles to the society for the promotion of arts for a prize in landscape painting.
Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi died on July 11 (24), 1910 in St. Petersburg. He was buried at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
By the end of the 19th century. The influence of the Wanderers fell. New directions have appeared in the visual arts. Portraits by V.A. Serov and landscapes by I.I. Levitan were in tune with the French school of impressionism. Some artists combined Russian artistic traditions with new visual forms (M.A. Vrubel, B.M. Kustodiev, I.L. Bilibin, etc.).
Russian landscape painting of the 19th century reached its peak. achieved in the student's creativity Savrasov Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860-1900). Levitan is a master of calm, quiet landscapes. A very timid, shy and vulnerable man, he knew how to relax only alone with nature, imbued with the mood of his favorite landscape.
One day he came to the Volga to paint the sun, air and river expanses. But there was no sun, endless clouds crawled across the sky, and the dull rains did not stop. The artist was nervous until he got involved in this weather and discovered the special charm of the bluish-lilac colors of Russian bad weather. Since then, the Upper Volga and the provincial town of Ples have become firmly entrenched in his work. In those parts he created his “rainy” works: “After the Rain”, “Gloomy Day”, “Above Eternal Peace”. Peaceful evening landscapes were also painted there: “Evening on the Volga”, “Evening. Golden Reach", "Evening Ringing", "Quiet Abode".
In the last years of his life, Levitan drew attention to the work of French impressionist artists (E. Manet, C. Monet, C. Pizarro). He realized that he had a lot in common with them, that their creative searches went in the same direction. Like them, he preferred to work not in the studio, but in the air (in the open air, as the artists say). Like them, he lightened the palette, banishing the dark, earthy colors. Like them, he sought to capture the fleeting nature of existence, to convey the movements of light and air. In this they went further than him, but almost dissolved in the light-air streams volumetric forms(houses, trees). He avoided it.
“Levitan’s paintings require slow viewing,” wrote K. G. Paustovsky, a great connoisseur of his work. “They do not stun the eye. They are modest and precise, like Chekhov’s stories, but the longer you look at them, the sweeter the silence of provincial towns, familiar rivers and country roads becomes.”
In the second half of the 19th century. marks the creative flowering of artists I. E. Repin, V. I. Surikov and V. A. Serov.
Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930) born in Chuguev, in the family of a military settler. He managed to enter the Academy of Arts, where his teacher was P. P. Chistyakov, who trained a whole galaxy of famous artists (V. I. Surikov, V. M. Vasnetsov, M. A. Vrubel, V. A. Serov). Repin also learned a lot from Kramskoy. In 1870, the young artist traveled along the Volga. He used numerous sketches brought from his travels for the painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga” (1872). She made a strong impression on the public. The author immediately rose to the ranks of the most famous masters. Criticizing the supporters of “pure art,” he wrote: “The life around me excites me too much, does not give me peace, it itself asks to be put on canvas; reality is too outrageous to embroider patterns with a clear conscience - let’s leave that to well-bred young ladies.” Repin became the banner of the Itinerants, their pride and glory.
Repin was a very versatile artist. I. E. Repin was a wonderful master in all genres of painting and said his own new word in each. The central theme of his work is the life of the people in all its manifestations. He showed the people in work, in struggle, glorified the fighters for the freedom of the people. A number of monumental genre paintings belong to his brush. Repin's best work in the 70s was the painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga.” The painting was perceived as an event in the artistic life of Russia; it became a symbol of a new direction in fine art. Repin wrote that “the judge is now a man, and therefore it is necessary to reproduce his interests.” Perhaps no less impressive than “Barge Haulers” is the “Religious Procession in the Kursk Province”. The bright blue sky, clouds of road dust pierced by the sun, the golden glow of crosses and vestments, the police, ordinary people and cripples - everything fits on this canvas: the greatness, strength, weakness and pain of Russia.
Many of Repin’s films dealt with revolutionary themes (“Refusal of Confession,” “They Didn’t Expect,” “Arrest of the Propagandist”). The revolutionaries in his paintings behave simply and naturally, avoiding theatrical poses and gestures. In the painting “Refusal to Confess,” the man sentenced to death seemed to have deliberately hidden his hands in his sleeves. The artist clearly sympathized with the characters in his paintings.
A number of Repin’s paintings were written on historical themes (“Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan”, “Cossacks composing a letter to the Turkish Sultan”, etc.). Repin created a whole gallery of portraits of scientists (Pirogov, Sechenov), writers (Tolstoy, Turgenev, Garshin), composers (Glinka, Mussorgsky), artists (Kramsky, Surikov). At the beginning of the 20th century. he received an order for the painting “The Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council.” The artist managed not only to place such a large number of those present on the canvas compositionally, but also to give psychological characteristics to many of them. Among them were such famous figures as S. Yu. Witte, K. P. Pobedonostsev, P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky. Nicholas II is hardly noticeable in the picture, but is depicted very subtly.
Vasily Ivanovich Surikov (1848-1916) born in Krasnoyarsk on January 12 (24), 1848 in the family of a clerical employee, a descendant of an old Cossack family. He received his first drawing lessons from school teacher N.V. Grebnev. In 1868 he went to St. Petersburg, where in 1869 he entered the Academy of Arts; Having graduated from the Academy in 1875, from 1877 he lived in Moscow. He constantly traveled to Siberia, visited the Don, Volga, and Crimea. In the 1880–1890s he visited France, Italy and a number of other European countries. Already in his student years he showed himself as a master of historical and associative images (“View of the monument to Peter I in St. Petersburg”, 1870). In 1876–1877 he created sketches on the theme of four ecumenical councils to decorate the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Moving young artist to Moscow, impressions of the ancient architecture of the “first throne” played an important role in the formation of his first masterpiece in a series of paintings on a historical theme, “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution,” completed in 1881 (Tretyakov Gallery). Choosing the theme of the tragic outcome of the first Streltsy revolt of 1698 - the execution of rebels on Red Square under the personal supervision of Peter I, Surikov essentially showed the great conflict of the Russian Middle Ages and the Russian Modern Age, from which neither side emerges victorious. Surikov confirmed his gift as an outstanding historical painter in the canvases “Menshikov in Berezovo” (1883) and “Boyarina Morozova” (1887; both paintings are in the same place), also a kind of complex and at the same time impressively holistic visual novels - about the Siberian the exile of the once powerful courtier of Peter the Great and the deportation of an Old Believer ascetic to prison. The colorful expressiveness of the details is combined with the virtuosity of the overall direction. Not inferior to all these three paintings is “The Capture of the Snowy Town” (1891, Russian Museum), which is entirely dedicated to modern folk life - the Maslenitsa game, presented as a cheerful and yet crushingly menacing element. His works “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution”, “Menshikov in Berezovo”, “Boyaryna Morozova”, “The Conquest of Siberia by Ermak Timofeevich”, “Stepan Razin”, “Suvorov’s Crossing of the Alps” are the pinnacle of Russian and world historical painting. The greatness of the Russian people, their beauty, their unbending will, their difficult and complex fate - this is what inspired the artist. Surikov knew well the life and customs of past eras, and was able to give vivid psychological characteristics. In addition, he was an excellent colorist (color master). Suffice it to recall the dazzlingly fresh, sparkling snow in “Boyaryna Morozova”. If you come closer to the canvas, the snow seems to “crumble” into blue, light blue, and pink strokes. This painting technique, when two or three different strokes at a distance merge and give the desired color, was widely used by the French impressionists. Vasily Surikov died on March 19, 1916.
Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov (1865-1911), the son of a composer, painted landscapes, canvases on historical themes, and worked as a theater artist. But it was primarily his portraits that brought him fame.
In 1887, 22-year-old Serov was vacationing in Abramtsevo, the dacha of philanthropist S.I. Mamontov near Moscow. Among his many children, the young artist was his own man, a participant in their noisy games. One day after lunch, two people accidentally lingered in the dining room - Serov and 12-year-old Verusha Mamontova. They sat at the table on which there were peaches, and during the conversation Verusha did not notice how the artist began to sketch her portrait. The work lasted for a month, and Verusha was angry that Anton (as Serov was called at home) made her sit in the dining room for hours.
At the beginning of September, "Girl with Peaches" was completed. Despite its small size, the painting, painted in pink and golden tones, seemed very “spacious”. There was a lot of light and air in it. The girl, who sat down at the table for what seemed like a minute and fixed her gaze on the viewer, enchanted with her clarity and spirituality. And the whole canvas was covered in a purely childish perception of everyday life, when happiness is not conscious of itself, and a whole life lies ahead.
The inhabitants of the Abramtsevo house, of course, understood that a miracle had happened before their eyes. But only time gives final assessments. It placed “Girl with Peaches” among the best portrait works in Russian and world painting.
The next year, Serov managed to almost repeat his magic. He painted a portrait of his sister Maria Simonović (“Girl Illuminated by the Sun”). The name is a little inaccurate: the girl is sitting in the shade, and the rays of the morning sun illuminate the clearing in the background. But in the picture everything is so united, so united - morning, sun, summer, youth and beauty - that it’s hard to come up with a better name.
Serov became a fashionable portrait painter. They posed in front of him famous writers, artists, artists, entrepreneurs, aristocrats, even kings. Apparently, not everyone he wrote had his heart set on it. Some high-society portraits, despite their filigree execution technique, turned out cold.
For several years Serov taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He was a demanding teacher. An opponent of frozen forms of painting, Serov at the same time believed that creative searches should be based on a solid mastery of the techniques of drawing and pictorial writing. Many outstanding masters considered themselves students of Serov: M. S. Saryan, K-F. Yuon, P.V. Kuznetsov, K.S. Petrov-Vodkin.
Many paintings by Repin, Surikov, Levitan, Serov, and the “Wanderers” ended up in Tretyakov’s collection. Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov (1832-1898), a representative of an old Moscow merchant family, was an unusual person. Thin and tall, with a thick beard and a quiet voice, he looked more like a saint than a merchant. He began collecting paintings by Russian artists in 1856. His hobby grew into the main business of his life. In the early 90s. the collection reached the level of a museum, absorbing almost the entire fortune of the collector. Later it became the property of Moscow. The Tretyakov Gallery has become a world famous museum of Russian painting, graphics and sculpture.
In 1898, the Russian Museum was opened in St. Petersburg, in the Mikhailovsky Palace (the creation of K. Rossi). It received works by Russian artists from the Hermitage, the Academy of Arts and some imperial palaces. The opening of these two museums seemed to crown the achievements of Russian painting of the 19th century.
CONCLUSION
From the beginning to the end of the 19th century, Russian painters mainly wanted to convey their thoughts to the viewer; for some, it was necessary to free themselves from the shackles of classicism, supported by the Academy of Arts; for others, on the contrary, they needed mythological subjects. In any case, the artists of Russia of the 19th century had a tremendous influence not only on the audience of their fellow citizens, many paintings became great canvases that have incredible value and weight in world artistic culture. The role of the Peredvizhniki in the life of Russian painting is great; they brought freedom to this genre of art and freed it from stereotypes.
The 19th century is a great era in the development of Russian painting.
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Voloshin M.A. Vasily Ivanovich Surikov.L.1985
Kemenov B.S. V.I. Surikov. Historical painting 1870 - 1890. M., 1987.
The work of the creator of the image (for example, drawing, painting, sculpture, scenic...More >> Dictionary >> in paintingThe view... hammer could... More >> Dictionary >> Russian painting XIX century. We also worked on our...
At the beginning of the 19th century there was a rapid rise in the cultural development of Russia. For fine art the beginning XIX century- this is truly a golden age (as its contemporaries called it and as it is indisputably considered to this day). It was at this time that Russian artists, sculptors and architects achieved the highest skill, which allowed them to rank with the best masters of European art.
At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century, the leading style of Russian fine art was classicism. The term “classicism” comes, as is known, from the Latin word “classicus”, that is, “exemplary”. The heritage of ancient arts - ancient Greek and Roman - was taken as an ideal example of classicism. The main theme of classicism is the triumph of moral ideals, the primacy of the public over the personal (“duty above all”).
The stronghold of classicism in Russia was the Academy of Arts, which required obligatory adherence to the strict canons of classicism and encouraged painting on historical, biblical and mythological subjects. It is no coincidence that in the history of Russian painting, classicism is often called “academicism.”
Art in Russia has always been a state matter. The Academy distributed government orders, subsidies, and approved pensions. Therefore, it was academic artists who were always given their due - their canvases were highly valued and extolled at the official level and, as a result, were well paid, and the historical genre, in which academicians predominantly worked, was considered the “highest” genre at the Academy of Arts.
However, most of the artists who worked in such a respected “high” genre did not reach special heights. This is explained primarily by the fact that historical painters, as a rule, carried out official government orders and worked within the framework of the canon, as a result of which the individuality of the artists often faded into the background, or even disappeared altogether.
Nevertheless, the real creators, even within the strict framework of classicism, managed not only to express themselves, but also to implement aesthetic ideals that were new for those years (not to mention the inspired reflection of the patriotic pathos of the era, born of the victory in the Patriotic War of 1812).
One of the most talented painters of that time was Andrei Ivanovich Ivanov (1776-1848) - the father of the famous Alexander Ivanov. He mainly dedicated his creations to the heroes of the ancient history of Russia. His most successful paintings are “The Feat of a Young Kievite During the Siege of Kyiv by the Pechenegs in 968” and “The Combat of Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich the Udal with the Kosozh Prince Rededey” (interestingly, the artist completed it in the days when Moscow was captured by Napoleon).
His namesake, Dmitry Ivanovich Ivanov (1782 - after 1810), also wrote works typical of classicism: the figures in his paintings resemble sculptures, the composition is geometrically verified. This is the canvas “Martha the Posadnitsa”: the hermit Theodosius Boretsky hands a sword to Miroslav to fight for the independence of Novgorod. This is a bright work of high classicism.
It is impossible not to note the historical painting by Vasily Kondratievich Sazonov (1789-1870) “The First Meeting of Igor with Olga”, which was very successful in its time. The film clearly shows an interest in everyday details; the characters are depicted in a lyrical manner.
VASILY SHEBUEV. Divination. Self-portrait. 1805. Oil on canvas 91.5×73.5 cm. State Tretyakov Gallery
VASILY SHEBUEV. The feat of the merchant Igolkin. 1839. Oil on canvas. 283.5 x 213 cm. State Russian Museum VASILY SHEBUEV. The feat of the merchant Igolkin. 1839. Oil on canvas. 283.5 x 213 cm. State Russian Museum
The most prominent representatives of academic art of the early 19th century were A.E. Egorov and V.K. Shebuev, the most magnificent masters of drawing (again in a purely classical style).
Vasily Kuzmich (Kozmich) Shebuev (1777-1855), a peer of Andrei Ivanov in his studies at the Academy of Arts, attracted attention even in the year of graduation from the Academy with the painting “The Death of Hippolytus,” the plot of which he borrowed from Racine’s tragedy “Phaedra.” His early works are very dynamic, but very soon the dynamism gives way to a certain calmness. A striking example of “tranquility” in Shebuev’s painting is the sepia “Return of the Prodigal Son”. Also V.K. Shebuev performed several compositions on themes of Russian history: “The election of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov to the kingdom”, “Prince Pozharsky”, “Peter I in the battle of Poltava” ( last picture, alas, has not been preserved, only an enthusiastic review of it by a contemporary remains: “... the talent and great freedom of the brush of an experienced artist...”).
In 1811 V.K. Shebuev created a sketch on the theme “The Feat of the Merchant Igolkin”, and then began work on a painting under the same name. It is characteristic that Shebuev sought to convey in detail the flavor of the time, which was neglected by the artists of the previous period. For example, the Swedes in the film “The Feat of Merchant Igolkin” are dressed in historically accurate uniforms.
Aleksey Egorovich Egorov (1776-1851) became famous as a first-class draftsman while still at the Academy. His drawings on ancient themes are distinguished by their softness and lyricism. TO best drawings The artist’s works include “The Nativity of John” and “Susanna”. Of the later ones, “Apostle Andrew the First-Called” especially stands out. The most significant painting by A.E. Egorova - “The Torment of the Savior.” This painting was preceded by a large preparatory work: many sketches and drawings.
In the portraits created by the master’s brush, his desire for a close study of nature was most expressed. Very expressive and poetic, for example, “Portrait of a Young Man”, painted in oil.
Egorov’s merits as a teacher at the Academy of Arts are also significant. Egorov was strict with his students, but fair, affectionate, but demanding. The goal is the same - to instill in students a love of art and teach them this art. It is not surprising that many of Egorov’s students subsequently became outstanding Russian painters. It is enough to name only one name - Karl Bryullov. And although Bryullov took a “different path,” all his life he honored the precepts of his teacher and did not forget his lessons.
Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852) in 1822, after graduating from the Academy (and he graduated with a gold medal), went to Italy with his brother Alexander. (By the way, the real surname of the brothers is Brullo. Before leaving for Italy, they changed the surname of their ancestors, immigrants from France, to the Russian style.) The elder brother of the “great Charles,” Alexander, although he was not so “great,” but left a noticeable mark in Russian fine arts. The heyday of his creativity as an artist (and in addition to this, he was also a first-class architect) coincided with the heyday of the Russian watercolor portrait, which replaced the pencil portrait and miniature on bone. The portrait of Pushkin’s wife Natalya Nikolaevna is quite typical for Alexander Bryullov. Numerous watercolors by A. Bryullov are executed more than masterfully, but are somewhat cold in color.
ALEXANDER BRYULLOV. Portrait of M. O. Smirnova. Early 1830s. Bristol board, watercolor, pencil, white, varnish
21.5 x 17 cm (clear). State Museum of A.S. Pushkin, Moscow
ALEXANDER BRYULLOV. Portrait of A.D. Baratynskaya. 1830s. Paper, watercolor. 19.2 x 16 cm. Nizhny Novgorod State
Art Museum
Returning to the work of Karl Bryullov, let us note his most characteristic feature- harmonious coexistence of the features of the academic school, and the features of romanticism, and the desire for historical truth. Many contemporaries (and descendants) reproached Bryullov for allegedly making some kind of compromise. In fact, this was not a compromise at all, but an artistic vision: Bryullov understood his path in art this way and not otherwise.
Karl Bryullov, one might say, was fantastically lucky: he experienced full-fledged fame during his lifetime (and not every Russian artist succeeded and succeeds in this). The historical painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” became a real event in the artistic life of those years. Assessments of Bryullov’s work, and above all of the same “The Last Day of Pompeii,” changed more than once or twice over time - from stormy enthusiasm to skeptical grins, or even complete denial. But what no one (neither his contemporaries nor his descendants) ever raised any doubts about was his talent as a portrait painter. Suffice it to recall “The Horsewoman” - the painter’s indisputable masterpiece.
KARL BRYULLOV. Portrait of the writer Nestor Vasilyevich Kukolnik. 1836. Oil on canvas 117×81.7 cm. State Tretyakov Gallery
Karl Bryullov was also a virtuoso watercolorist. But unlike the works of “professional” watercolorists (for example, P.F. Sokolov, discussed below), in Bryullov’s watercolors the hand of a master of large forms is always recognizable. Bryullov's watercolor portraits can be divided into two groups. The first one is watercolor sketches future oil portraits (one of them is a watercolor portrait of the fabulist I.A. Krylov). And the second group is watercolor portraits as such.
In a word, Bryullov was an artist, as they say, “from God.” Whatever he took on, be it historical paintings, portraits or watercolors, all his works undoubtedly became works of art in the truest sense of these words.
However, with all Bryullov’s talent, virtuosity and luck, many of the artist’s plans remained unfinished. The artist, for example, has always been attracted to Russian history. For many years he nurtured the idea of an epic painting called “The Siege of Pskov by the Polish King Stefan Batory in 1581.” If this plan had been realized, we would now perhaps be able to talk about a truly national masterpiece in the historical genre. But, alas, the picture was not painted...
Just as peacefully and fruitfully as in the work of Karl Bryullov, classicism and romanticism coexisted in the work of another remarkable artist, as well as an equally remarkable sculptor, medalist, engraver, author of silhouette drawings and miniature wax portraits, Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy (1783-1873). ). He was equally inspired by the ruins of ancient Hellas, lilac branches, canaries, and moonlit nights. (Love for moonlit nights, by the way, was one of the most common signs of romanticism. Romantic artists paid an indispensable tribute to the mysterious night lighting - let’s remember M. N. Vorobyov and his “Autumn Night”. And what could be more romantic than a moonlit night ?)
However, the “compromise” intersection of classicism and romanticism in the works of K.P. Bryullova, F.P. Tolstoy did not serve as an example for other artists. Quite the contrary, many talented painters did not recognize any compromises: directly burdened by the demands of high classical art, they just as directly gravitated towards romanticism.
Romanticism (from the French romantisme) is, as you know, an artistic movement in European culture of the late 18th - first half of the 19th century. In the fine arts, romanticism was formed in the struggle against official academic classicism. And Russian fine art was by no means an exception here. It is believed that it was thanks to romanticism that Russian landscape painting freed itself from the shackles of classicism.
However, some clarification is required here.
In art, and especially in fine art, not everything is as simple and unambiguous as it sometimes seems at first glance. Fetters are fetters, but at the same time one of the most characteristic features of Russian romanticism of the early 19th century was its close connection with classicism. Another thing is that the role of the classical heritage in romanticism is very contradictory. On the one hand, we see that romanticism absorbed the ethics and aesthetics of classicism (in other words, the belief in everything beautiful and noble that is inherent in a person) and “borrowed” high professionalism from classicism. On the other hand, the same classicism, with its rigid boundaries, fettered the possibilities of romantic artists.
FEDOR TOLSTOY. Darling admires herself in the mirror. 1821 Paper, watercolor. State Tretyakov GalleryFEDOR TOLSTOY. Darling admires herself in the mirror. 1821 Paper, watercolor. State Tretyakov Gallery
FEDOR TOLSTOY. Bouquet of flowers, butterfly and bird. 1820. Brown paper, watercolor, whitewash. 49.8 x 39.1 cm
State Russian Museum
In Russian landscape painting, romanticism was mainly optimistic, bright in nature (unlike, say, French romanticism). Russian romanticism is elegiac, melancholic, contemplative... At the same time, it does not at all ignore the objective picture of the world. On the contrary, in romantic landscape painting the harsh reality is unusually visible. You can go “in reverse” and say that Russian realistic painting had a pronounced romantic overtones.
Until the beginning of the 19th century, landscape painting was mainly limited to depicting fields and streams, as well as shepherds and shepherdesses watching herds of goats and sheep (by the way, at the Academy of Arts such pastorals were called, without a hint of humor, “landscapes with cattle” - for that reason after all, it is the Academy). But by the beginning of the 19th century the situation
gradually begins to change. For example, the canvas by F.M. Matveev’s “View of the Roman Campagna” was still written in the traditions of academic classicism, but already in his “Italian Landscape” completely different moods are clearly visible. Also in to a greater extent this applies to the landscapes of A.A. Ivanova. It is also worth noting the landscapes of N.G. Chernetsova. Although Chernetsov’s works are not as free and uninhibited as Ivanov’s works, Chernetsov painted precisely Russian nature, while Ivanov preferred to paint Italian nature.
But it was not Ivanov, not Matveev, not Chernetsov and not other quite worthy artists who had the honor of discovering new ways of developing the Russian landscape. We rightfully call Semyon Fedorovich Shchedrin (1745-1804) the founder of Russian landscape painting. He was the first in Russian art to reveal the intrinsic value of ordinary motifs in an ordinary landscape, he was the first landscape painter recognized by the Academy, he was the first professor of landscape painting, the first head of a special landscape class. In a word, Shchedrin is a founder and pioneer.
The founder of the genre of Russian urban landscape is considered to be Fyodor Yakovlevich Alekseev (1753(4?) - 1824). At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries, he painted views of St. Petersburg and Moscow. In the 1810s, the artist again turned in his work to the image of his beloved St. Petersburg. With reverent love and extraordinary lyricism, the artist conveys the beauty of the Neva, embankments, palaces, historical buildings... The late painting of Fyodor Alekseev is close to Pushkin’s poetry. During these years, the artist moved away from cold classicism and introduced a genre element into the landscape. “In Alekseev’s painting one can definitely feel that sweet, sincere note that, twenty years later, has become a typical sign of the times...” wrote Igor Grabar.
In Alekseev’s works of this time, the noise of the city can be heard more and more clearly. The entire foreground of his canvases is now occupied by people with their daily affairs and concerns. Before the viewer’s eyes are ordinary city everyday life: merchants and officials are rushing about their business... fishermen are fishing... carriers are transporting... Remember, as in Pushkin’s poems: “A merchant gets up, a peddler goes... A cabman pulls to the stock exchange...” That is, the most everyday life is going on. life. Somehow in a special way, “in Alekseev’s way,” the sun is shining, “in Alekseev’s way” the air is transparent... This is the “View Promenade des Anglais from the side of Vasilyevsky Island", "View of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg", "View of the spit of Vasilievsky Island from the Peter and Paul Fortress."
And don’t be fooled by the word “view” in the titles of the paintings. The artist does not paint “types” of buildings and ensembles - in each picture, like in a drop of water, the whole of St. Petersburg is reflected.
A younger contemporary of G.R. Derzhavin and senior contemporary A.S. Pushkin, Alekseev elevated the image of the city to the rank of full-fledged art,
and some idealization of the appearance of the Russian capital was for the artist a way to express his love for beauty, the embodiment of which for Alekseev was the brilliant Petersburg.
The largest stage in the development of Russian landscape is represented by the work of Sylvester Feodosievich Shchedrin (1791-1830). In his early works, Shchedrin developed the same themes of the urban (and even St. Petersburg) landscape as F.Ya. Alekseev. However, his painting of the St. Petersburg period is still closer to S.F. Shchedrin (who was Sylvester Shchedrin's uncle). Sylvester Shchedrin formulated his task clearly and clearly: creating a portrait of the area. The desire to convey the character of nature as deeply as possible was what was most important for him. His numerous repetitions and variations of the same theme speak of perseverance in achieving his goals. Eight times (!) the artist repeated his painting “New Rome. Castle Sant'Angelo" and each new option was better than the previous one, enriched with new subtle observations. You can take any painting by Shchedrin at random, and the difference between Shchedrin and any other landscape painter will immediately be evident. First of all, this is, of course, an image of people - in Shchedrin’s paintings they are not ordinary extras, not “the population”, but completely living images: tanned faces, natural movements...
The work of Sylvester Shchedrin was preceded (and partly accompanied) by the activity of artists of the so-called “second rank”, which definition, however, does not in any way detract from the importance of their work in the artistic process, and certainly does not speak of their mediocrity. These were very gifted painters; simply, for a number of subjective and objective reasons, the trends of the new time were not as powerfully manifested in their work as in the work of Sylvester Shchedrin. Nevertheless, these artists played a progressive role in the development of Russian landscape painting, since with their creativity they prepared the ground for the birth of a “new” art.
These masters were called visual artists. Although it would be more correct to call them travel artists. Some of them traveled around Russia (A.E. Martynov, T.A. Vasiliev), others - around Greece and Italy (N.F. Alferov, E.M. Korneev), others took part in circumnavigations (P.N. . Mikhailov), someone visited America (P.P. Svinin). But that's not the main point. Although they drew their inspiration from traveling around different countries and even across different continents, all these artists were united by the fact that their creations, in essence, were “video-writing,” that is, like travel observations - and nothing more.
However, not all visual artists created their work while traveling. There were also those who were content with depicting only St. Petersburg. (In the early 20s of the 19th century, whole series of views of the Russian capital appeared quite regularly.) When painting their “St. Petersburg” paintings, video painters did not set themselves any other tasks than to conscientiously describe St. Petersburg. One of the most prominent masters of this type of fine art was M.N. Vorobyov (1787-1855). When he was just beginning his creative path, he was already ranked among the artists “famous for his talent.” And when Vorobyov’s life ended, he was called “the most famous of Russian painters” and even began to be revered as “the father of Russian landscape painting.”
However, everything flows and everything changes, and the next generation of art critics did not feel such reverence for Vorobyov, and his work was assessed much more modestly, namely: “our best video painter.”
Like most romantics of the early 19th century, M.N. Vorobyov had a penchant for external artistic effects, but in his best landscapes he reached great emotional heights. This especially applies to views of St. Petersburg at night. Here Vorobiev followed in the footsteps of the same Sylvester Shchedrin, who in the works of the 1820s cultivated the romantic effect of night lighting. And from the school F.Ya. Alekseeva Vorobiev developed a love for the city landscape. In his St. Petersburg landscapes, Vorobyov managed to convey the true romance of the city.
Vorobyov’s importance as a teacher is no less important for Russian painting. At the Academy of Arts he led the “class of landscape and perspective painting.” Among his students was one of the most talented landscape painters M.M. Lebedev, who during his, alas, short life created a number of excellent works. Lebedev's landscapes, painted in Italy (where he went as a pensioner of the Academy), seem to continue the quest of Sylvester Shchedrin. Most of all, Lebedev loved to paint the outskirts of Rome, with their huge parks and ancient trees. Sometimes architecture is present in Lebedev’s paintings, sometimes human figures appear, however, they never acquire the significance that they had in Shchedrin’s landscapes. Lebedev was not destined to fully reveal his talent - in 1837, cholera took the 26-year-old painter to another world.
In addition to the above-mentioned artists, in Russian fine art there was another circle of romantic painters who, in their work, focused on the theme of the Russian province. And if the founder of Russian landscape painting is S.F. Shchedrin, and the founder of the genre of Russian urban landscape is considered to be F.Ya. Alekseev, then, without a doubt, Alexei Gavrilovich Venetsianov (1780-1847) can be considered the “father” of the Russian everyday genre. It was A.G. Venetsianov elevated the everyday genre to the rank of a full-fledged type of painting. The artist’s best works (“The Threshing Barn”, “On the Plowed Field. Spring”, “Peasant Woman with Cornflowers” and others) were created in the 1820s. The subjects of his canvases were extremely ordinary: peasants peeling beets, plowing, harvesting, haymaking... And in this the artist’s creative credo was expressed. He believed that the main task of the painter is “not to depict anything other than in nature...”, in other words, “... without any admixture of the manner of any artist.”
ALEXEY VENETSIANOV. Nurse with a child. Early 1830s. Canvas, oil. 66.7 x 53 cm. State Tretyakovskaya
gallery
When an exhibition of works by A.G. took place in St. Petersburg. Venetsianova, it was a stunning success. “Finally, we waited for an artist who turned his wonderful talent to the image of one of our own, to the representation of objects around him, close to his heart and to ours...” wrote P.P. about this exhibition. Svinin.
However, Venetsianov’s creative aspirations found warm support exclusively among the advanced part of Russian society. In official circles, Venetsianov’s work was perceived “exactly the opposite” - it was categorically rejected. The Academy of Arts did not hide its negative attitude towards the artist for the fact that he depicted only “common people.”
Venetsianov was deeply upset by this attitude towards his work, but not at all because he did not have the opportunity to become a favorite of the Academy. The master considered it his duty to pass on knowledge and experience to young aspiring artists. “However, I have been completely denied forever to receive any duties at the Academy of Arts itself...” Venetsianov wrote sadly.
Venetsianov’s desire to teach “thousands of thirsty people” was realized only when he created on his own own funds art school. And here no Academy could interfere with him. In his school, he instructed his students as he himself considered necessary and correct, resolutely rejecting the academic system, according to
in which the artist, before starting to paint from life, had to spend long hours and days in the Academy’s workshop and learn to paint from “originals”. At Venetsianov’s school, already at the very early stages of training, the master forced his students to write from life. Thus, Venetsianov’s school was the first art educational institution in Russia that set itself the goal of studying real life, and not ancient models. Many of Venetsianov's students - and there were about seventy of them - subsequently became wonderful artists, completely justifying their teacher.
One of Venetsianov’s first and most beloved students was A.V. Tyranov, who began, like most of the “Venetianists,” by painting interiors, portraits in the interior, and “peasant” genre paintings. In his youth, Tyranov was engaged in icon painting. Venetsianov accidentally saw his work and took him to his school for his “extraordinary abilities.” In the Venetian spirit, “Two Peasant Women Behind Krosny” (“Weavers”), “Self-Portrait” were written, as well as the only landscape in Tyranov’s work “View on the Tosna River near the village of Nikolskoye”, surprisingly harmonious, permeated sunlight. During his lifetime, Tyranov gained great fame. According to a contemporary, at this artist’s exhibitions “there was such a crowd of people around his paintings that it was impossible to pass by.” For a number of years Tyranov was the most popular portrait painter in St. Petersburg.
Another student of Venetsianov, S.K., also worked a lot in the field of portraiture. Zaryanko, who later became an academician and teacher at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Like Tyranov, at an early stage of his creative life Zaryanko paid great attention to group portraits in the interior. An example is his painting “View of the hall of the School of Law with groups of teachers and students.” And “Portrait of F.P. Tolstoy" is, as it were, Zaryanko’s next step in the development of the principles on which Venetsianov’s school was based, which proclaimed that art should stand as close as possible to the truth of life.
G.V. was also a student of Venetsianov. Soroka (Soroka is the artist’s pseudonym, his real name is Vasilyev), a serf artist who committed suicide. It was a bright, original talent. His landscapes are simple, laconic and clear. Soroka’s development as an artist was almost lightning fast. A letter from Venetsianov has been preserved, where he assesses Soroka’s creative abilities. Venetsianov compares him with his other student, Plakhov. Plakhov, who graduated from the Academy of Arts and completed an internship in Berlin, was already an established master. And in just a few months of training, and even in rural conditions, Soroka, according to Venetsianov, outgrew the established master Plakhov. This assessment is evidence of Soroka’s enormous natural talents and equally enormous hard work. Soroka’s first large canvas was the painting “The Barn” - in its plot and composition it clearly echoes Venetsianov’s painting of the same name. But there were also - just as obvious - differences. Venetsianov poeticized peasant labor; his picture was written from the point of view of an “outside observer.” Soroka, unlike his teacher, wrote peasant life, having the most direct relation to it, and this was reflected in the author’s way of depicting reality (in particular, in the dark tones of the earth and peasant huts). Soroka's creative path lasted no more than ten years. Only about twenty of his paintings are known, and almost all of them have an approximate date. Soroka achieved his greatest success in landscape painting. The best landscapes of Soroka are considered to be: “View of the Spasskoye estate in the Tambov province”, “View of the dam in the Spasskoye estate of the Tambov province”, “View of Lake Moldino”. All these paintings are characterized by an epic scope in the depiction of nature. And such landscapes as “Chapel in the Park” and “View in the Islands,” on the contrary, are very intimate and emphatically lyrical.
Another talented serf artist, in whose fate Venetsianov played an important role, was F.M. Slavic. Venetsianov drew attention to the artistic abilities of Fyodor Mikhailov (this is the real name and surname of the artist) and bought him out of serfdom. Having no sons, Venetsianov wanted to pass on his surname to one of his students. Another try he also undertook with Fyodor Mikhailov, but this time he was unable to obtain permission from official authorities. Therefore, Fyodor Mikhailov, having gained freedom, became not Venetsianov, but Slavic. But Venetsianov managed to obtain permission for Slavyansky to attend classes at the Academy of Arts as a visiting student. Slavyansky studied with Professor Varnek and at the same time with Venetsianov. Among Slavyansky’s works, the most interesting are “Portrait of A.G. Venetsianova", "Old Woman with a Stick". In the Tver province, Slavyansky wrote “View of Venetsianov’s estate”, and also painted portraits of peasants and peasant women. But (as, unfortunately, often happens in art), despite the high level of skill and undoubted talent, Slavyansky’s work still did not gain wide popularity.
Venetsianov's student N.S. showed his talent in the field of landscape. Krylov. “Russian Winter” by Krylov is one of the very first “winters” in Russian painting: a river bank covered with gray-bluish snow, a strip of dark forest in the distance, bare black trees in the foreground (by the way, A.V. Tyranov also painted this same river ).
OK. Plakhov, one of Venetsianov’s most talented students, managed in his painting “Carpentry Workshop of the Academy of Arts” to combine all the typical features of Venetsianov’s school: naturalness, simplicity, precision in detail. However, Plakhov was not the only one who practiced this. This type of painting (combining portraits and interiors) was very common among artists of this circle. Family members, or friends, or both are sitting, drinking tea, talking. This is, for example, the picture of K.A. Zelentsov “Workshop of the artist P.V. Basin" (of Zelentsov's other works, the sketches painted in oil paints are very interesting: "Boy with a Jug", "Old Man", "Young Peasant Woman", pencil drawing "Sale of Milk and Sbitnya").
Another master of the Venetian circle, E.F. Krendovsky, worked a lot in Ukraine. One of his most famous works is “The Square of a Provincial Town.” Critics noted “the thoroughness of the characterization of all the characters, similar to the description of a person’s appearance through the lips of a provincial.”
Close to the paintings of the “Venetian people” (especially interiors) by I.T. Khrutsky. In his canvases there is the same attention to the details of everyday life and furnishings. Related to the work of Venetsianov are the works of P.E. Zabolotsky, in which we see the same mixture of everyday genre and portraiture.
Thus, the significance of Venetsianov, the “Venetianovites,” as well as artists close to them in spirit, primarily lies in the fact that they began to paint the reality around them as it is, which was fundamentally at odds with the aesthetic canons of academic art. Thus, Venetsianov and the “Venetianovites” drew the attention of both the public and other artists to what was before everyone’s eyes in everyday life, but had not yet been the subject of art - to everyday themes, private life. Thus, the painting of Venetsianov and his followers became a given, winning the right of citizenship in Russian fine art.
In addition to the Venetsianov school, at the beginning of the 19th century there were other art schools in Russia. The largest of them was art school, founded back in 1802 by the artist A.V. Stupin in the provincial city of Arzamas. There is no need to talk about any progress or any new paths in art. Unlike the Venetsianov school, the pedagogical system of the Arzamas school coincided one to one with the academic one. However, even here life made its own amendments and adjustments. Provincial art lovers commissioned artists mainly to paint portraits of themselves or members of their families, therefore, in the practice of the Arzamas school, portraits developed most of all, which, in turn, indirectly contributed to the development of realistic portraits in Russian painting.
At the beginning of the 19th century, chamber forms of portraiture, which cultivated uniqueness and individuality, enjoyed great success. spiritual world each person. And the creator of this fundamentally new portrait concept was Orest Adamovich Kiprensky (1782-1836).
There is even an opinion that if all the pictures were put on one scale on the scales of history historical painters, and on the other - portraits by Kiprensky, then the latter would outweigh. Let's not dispute this statement. Let us only note that if brevity is considered the sister of talent, then extremeness is the sister of error. But be that as it may, we repeat once again: Kiprensky was the creator of a fundamentally new portrait concept.
At the Academy of Arts O.A. Kiprensky studied in a historical painting class. And in the film “Dmitry Donskoy on the Kulikovo Field” he confidently showed knowledge of the canons of academic historical painting. But already in this early painting, the moralizing meaning of the picture recedes somewhat and its amazing emotionality comes to the fore.
But not the historical genre, but the portrait genre from the very beginning becomes the leading one in Kiprensky’s work. As a portrait painter, Kiprensky began with romantic work- portrait of A.K. Schwalbe, his adoptive father. The portrait was painted in a somewhat “Rembrandt” manner (dramatic chiaroscuro, etc.). Looking at this work, it is impossible to accurately determine to which social circle the person depicted on the canvas belongs. All the artist’s attention is focused on the inner world of the character, the reflection of which is the appearance of the person being portrayed. In other words, the person himself comes to the fore, and not his profession or belonging to one class or another.
Having once taken this path - interest in inner world man, Kiprensky never abandoned him. For him, the main thing in creativity is the creation of individually characteristic images. These are, in particular, “Portrait of A.A. Chelishchev”, paired images of the spouses F.V. and E.P. Rostopchinykh and others. Kiprensky even makes ceremonial portraits lyrical and relaxed. A striking example of this is “Portrait of Life Hussar Colonel E.V. Davydov." And subsequently, in a series of pencil portraits of participants in the War of 1812, although the heroic is in the foreground, it has a completely “soulful connotation.”
The years that passed between graduating from the Academy and leaving abroad in 1816 were very fruitful for Kiprensky. The nature of the portraits painted at this time is romantic. The main attention is paid to the world of feelings of the people depicted. The spiritual world of a person in Kiprensky’s portraits is bright and clear.
In 1810, the heyday of pencil portraits began in Kiprensky’s work. Among his drawings you can find both quick sketches and finished compositions. In his drawings, the artist conveys the individual characteristics of the model even more directly than in oil portraits.
One of the best romantic portraits of Kiprensky is the portrait of A.S. Pushkin. The artist, faithfully conveying the poet’s appearance, at the same time refuses everything ordinary. Pushkin is depicted with his hands folded on his chest, he thoughtfully looks into the distance, past the viewer, a romantic cloak covers his modern suit. On the one hand, this is undoubtedly Pushkin, and on the other, a collective image of a creative personality.
There are two known reviews from A.S. himself. Pushkin about this portrait - poetic and prosaic. This poetic review can be set as an epigraph to the entire work of Kiprensky, which is characterized by a combination of portrait resemblance and romantic idealization of the character:
“I see myself as if in a mirror, but this mirror flatters me...”
The prosaic review was simpler and shorter (the essence, however, remained the same). great poet said to the great artist: “You flatter me, Orestes.”
A prominent portrait painter, a contemporary of Kiprensky, was Alexander Grigorievich Varnek (1782-1843). A distinctive feature of his work is the faithful rendering of nature. This immediately catches the eye in, for example, the artist’s works such as “Portrait of an Unknown Man in a Chair” or “Self-Portrait in Old Age.” Paying tribute to the artist’s art, contemporaries rated Varnek’s works as highly as Kiprensky’s creations. However, later the work of Varnek was given a more modest place in Russian fine art than the work of Kiprensky.
And this is correct, since Varnek’s works are clearly inferior to Kiprensky’s masterpieces both in depth of content and richness of form.
At the beginning of the century, lithography (flat printing from stone) appeared in Russia and quite quickly replaced chisel engraving on metal. The previously mentioned A.E. was interested in lithography. Martynov (1768-1826). He even had his own lithographic workshop. Martynov created a lithographed series “Views of St. Petersburg and its environs.” The works from this series belong to the highest achievements of the master.
I would like to say something special about Andrei Efimovich Martynov. He was the most famous representative of a talented family (both his son and his younger brother were artists). Graduated from the Academy of Arts with a degree in landscape painting. His teacher was S.F. Shchedrin. Together they worked on creating wall paintings of the Pavlovsk Palace. Over time, Martynov began to give preference to graphics. This was facilitated by the fact that the artist traveled a lot, and during these travels he found new themes for his works. In 1804, Martynov “surveyed the entire southern region of Russia and took views of all the cities.” And in 1805, as the chief artist of the Russian Embassy, he traveled from Moscow to Urga, a Mongolian nomad camp in the Gobi steppe. On this journey, he collected a wealth of material, which served as the basis for his graphic cycles.
End creative path also turned out to be very productive for the artist. In the 1820s, Martynov created the best graphic series, which placed him in one of the honorable places in the history of Russian art. I would also like to note Martynov’s undeniable primacy in describing Russian wildlife. At the very beginning of the 19th century, he created the magnificent canvases “Siberian View on the Selenge River” and “Baikal” (later this tradition was continued by I.I. Levitan).
One of the largest Russian portrait painters of the “romantic” time was Vasily Andreevich Tropinin (1776-1857). Even Tropinin's biography complied with the laws of the romantic era. This is the biography of a true talent who, thanks to his hard work, perseverance and tenacity, managed to break through to success despite the unfavorable circumstances of his life. And unfavorable circumstances accompanied Tropinin from birth - he was born into a serf family. And this circumstance followed him like a sad trail almost throughout his entire life.
Serfs were allowed to attend the Academy of Arts, but only as “outsiders,” that is, free students. Tropinin successfully passed drawing classes and entered the portrait painting workshop. According to one of the biographers, young artist“With the gentleness of his character and constant love of art, he soon acquired the friendly disposition and respect of the best students of the Academy who were at that time in sight: Kiprensky, Varnek, Skotnikov...” Tropinin studied brilliantly and soon received silver and gold medals.
Already in his early works, the artist strives to create folk characters. Although images of peasants were known back in the 18th century, they were purely episodic in nature, and to an even greater extent exotic. Only at the beginning of the 19th century did peasant themes become a full-fledged direction of Russian fine art. This is, of course, connected primarily with the work of Venetsianov and his students. But it should be noted that Tropinin’s “peasants” preceded Venetsianov’s “peasants.” And if Venetsianov’s merit is that he discovered Russian life and Russian national character for art, then Tropinin’s merit can be considered the fact that he discovered for the viewer the people and nature of Little Russia (“Russian Italy”, as its contemporaries called it).
Traces of active work on Ukrainian themes are found not only in painting, but also in Tropinin’s graphics. In his watercolors and drawings of the 1810s of the 19th century, one can see women in Ukrainian clothes, shepherds, and lads. His best sketches: “Reapers”, “At the Justice of the Peace” are also connected with Ukraine.
We can say that Tropinin is the founder of a whole movement in Russian art associated with analysis folk character. All his “servants,” “wanderers,” and “old soldiers,” ultimately, in the second half of the 19th century, “migrated” to the works of the Itinerants.
Just like Venetsianov and the Venetsianovites, Tropinin widely practiced “mixing genres,” which was an undoubted innovation for that time, that is, he created a special type of paintings in which the portrait is organically combined with everyday life (in this style he painted, for example, "The Lacemaker" and "The Goldseamstress"). All these paintings, without exception, exude peace, tranquility, comfort... Tropinin reminds us of the value of every minute of our fleeting existence. Tropinin painted quite a lot of similar paintings. They are all somewhat similar; in all of them we see young women doing needlework: spinners, embroiderers, goldsmiths. And their faces are also very similar, and this is no coincidence - the artist demonstrates his feminine ideal: a gentle oval face, dark eyes, a friendly smile... Thus, in Tropinin’s paintings there is a type everywhere in combination with a certain action, usually simple and unambiguous.
The most popular of the above-mentioned works was the painting “The Lacemaker”: a girl, busy weaving lace, looked up from her work for a minute and looked at the viewer, who thus became an involuntary participant in the plot, but at the same time was “outside the scope of the picture.”
Tropinin's paintings are characterized by extreme simplicity. The artist believed that a portrait should be artless, simple and as close as possible to the actual appearance of a person.
The nature of Tropinin's talent was such that in his canvases he reflected life poetically, and not critically. A critical attitude to reality will appear later, and not in Tropinin, but in the paintings of other artists. In the meantime, the aesthetic tastes of the era coincide with the aesthetic tastes of the artist. Even the work on Tropinin’s canvases is not exhausting, but pleasant and easy. Tropinin was also attracted to bright children's images. He depicted children with birds, toys, musical instruments. All these works are clearly tinged with sentimentalism.
As for male portraits, then Tropinin interpreted reality somewhat more realistically than in portraits of women and children. These are his “Coachman leaning on a whip”, “Old man whittling a crutch”, etc.
Tropinin was rightfully considered (and is considered) the best portrait painter of his era. And one of his best portraits is (and was) the famous portrait of A.S. Pushkin. Pushkin ordered a portrait from Tropinin as a gift to his friend Sobolevsky. In this portrait the artist managed to most strongly express his ideal spiritually free man. Pushkin is depicted in a dressing gown, his shirt collar is unbuttoned, and his tie and scarf are tied rather casually. With all this, Tropinin’s Pushkin is not at all down-to-earth; on the contrary, he is majestic, even monumental, as evidenced by his proud posture, and his dressing gown is almost like an ancient Roman toga. This portrait has quite interesting fate. Several copies were made from it, but the original itself was lost and was found only many, many years later. Tropinin was asked to renew the portrait, as it was badly damaged. But the artist flatly refused, saying that he “doesn’t dare touch the features drawn from life and, moreover, by a young hand.”
One more characteristic feature of Tropinin’s talent should be noted: the artist is always very friendly towards his models. Portraits by Tropinin are easily recognizable precisely by the friendly facial expressions characteristic of his characters. And Tropinin himself was friendly and kind to everyone in life. These were also his views on art: after all, portraits are written to last forever, why show them a person’s shortcomings when you can show his merits. Tropinin said this: “Who loves to look at angry, gloomy faces in life? Why convey something unpleasant to the canvas, which will remain unchanged, why make a difficult impression, arouse difficult memories in those who love this person? Let them see him and remember him in a happy era of life.”
In his late creativity Tropinin strove for a deeper understanding of human personality. And at the very end of his life, the artist came close to critical realism of the second half of the 19th century. But this part of his work is beyond the scope of the period under review.
First decades XIX century, a watercolor portrait appears. And here, first of all, we should mention Pyotr Fedorovich Sokolov (1791-1848), who left us, again, one of the best portraits of Pushkin, and in addition, an extensive gallery of images of Pushkin’s contemporaries. Lightness, flight, airiness - these are the characteristic features of Sokolov’s watercolor strokes.
At the beginning of the 19th century, such a genre formation as the album began to develop. Of course, it cannot be put on the same level as high art, but it would also be unfair to ignore it. After all, this is an integral part of Russian culture of that time.
Landscape graphics came out of the life of the nobility and therefore completely belong to the life of the nobility. As you know, Pushkin drew a lot in the albums of his friends. And the graphic culture of albums in those days was described by Pushkin’s contemporaries.
In essence, this is, of course, amateur or, as we would now say, amateur art. But it must be borne in mind that landscape graphics of that time were distinguished by a very high level of skill. A characteristic feature of the culture of the Golden Age is precisely the “flow” from the professional sphere into the amateur sphere of various arts. At the beginning of the 19th century, the ability to use a pencil and brush (as well as knowledge foreign languages) was quite natural for an educated person. A widespread passion for painting and drawing dates back to the twenties of the 19th century, but by the middle of the century landscape graphics were weakening and eventually came to naught.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the so-called family portrait was also widespread. At this time, many children's and family portraits appear. All of them, with rare exceptions, had purely applied significance. As a matter of fact, the family portrait in a certain sense fulfilled (and anticipated) the functions of photography in the absence of one. Usually these were simple, artless canvases painted by provincial artists. But these paintings are valuable to us not for their artistic merits, of which there are just one or two. In them we find valuable everyday details, thanks to which we can feel the aroma of the era: inkwells, ribbons, costume details, card houses, Easter eggs... Although family portraits were widespread, very, very few of them have survived to this day. At present, the phenomenon of family portraits from the beginning of the century before last has been poorly studied; it is still awaiting its thoughtful and painstaking researcher.
So, let's summarize some results.
The development of culture is continuous. From century to century a “connecting thread” stretches, and each new generation of creators comprehends and rethinks the achievements of their predecessors, builds on what has already been achieved and, building on it, moves on. This is progress.
Classicism, which arose in Russian painting in the 18th century, took ancient art as a model and began to diligently imitate it. In Russia, classicism received the official status of a “state direction” in the fine arts. The Russian Academy of Arts placed classical forms on a pedestal, making them an immutable and unchangeable law.
But at the beginning of the 19th century, in the “beautiful beginning of Alexandrov’s days,” a new direction was developing in Russian fine art - romanticism.
Romanticism quickly embraced everything European countries, having taken deep roots there and given abundant shoots, which, however, did not prevent classicism from continuing to develop its classical tendencies, partly because romanticism, for all its innovation, did not break with the traditions of classicism.
In the fine arts of Russia romantic tendencies The first half of the 19th century were successfully implemented in all genres without exception, but most of all in the genre of portrait and landscape. Russian artists preferred images of real nature with its fields and forests, rivers and lakes, cities and villages to ancient ruins... The landscape was gradually freed from the canons of classical painting. Nature began to be understood not as something decorative, but as a living space and a sphere for expressing a person’s personal feelings. This marked the beginning of the romantic direction in Russian landscape painting. At the same time, we should especially note a very characteristic feature that was characteristic of Russian romanticism at the beginning of the 19th century: the romantic perception of nature did not in any way contradict the close study of its specific appearance.
In portrait art we also find the active development of various forms of conveying reality. Man is no longer depicted only in an ancient, class or professional manner. Those portrayed appear before us in the uniqueness of their mental make-up, in their everyday appearance, in everyday surroundings... In all this, the artists’ desire to get closer to nature, to a more direct depiction of real life, was manifested. Life not only modern, but also distant in the depths of time.
Thus, the distinctive features of Russian pictorial art of the first third of the 19th century can be considered a combination of the principles of classicism and romanticism (K.P. Bryullov and others), the formation of an everyday genre (A.G. Venetsianov and others), the development of a genre portrait (V. A. Tropinin and others), a combination of a romantic perception of reality with realistic quests (O.A. Kiprensky and others).
And by the middle of the 19th century, a new direction was emerging in Russian fine art - realism.
In one of his works, A. I. Herzen wrote about the Russian people, “powerful and unsolved,” which “retained majestic features, a lively mind and a wide revelry of a rich nature under the yoke of serfdom and responded to Peter the Great’s order to form themselves a hundred years later with the enormous appearance of Pushkin ". Of course, it was not only A.S. Pushkin that Herzen had in mind. Pushkin became a symbol of his era, when there was a rapid rise in the cultural development of Russia. It is not for nothing that Pushkin’s time, the first third of the 19th century, is called the “golden age” of Russian culture.
The beginning of the 19th century was a time of cultural and spiritual upsurge in Russia. If in economic and socio-political development Russia lagged behind the advanced European countries, then in cultural achievements she not only kept up with them, but was often ahead. The development of Russian culture in the first half of the 19th century was based on the transformations of the previous time. The penetration of elements of capitalist relations into the economy has increased the need for literate and educated people. Cities became major cultural centers. New social strata were drawn into social processes. Culture developed against the background of the ever-increasing national self-awareness of the Russian people and, in connection with this, had a pronounced national character. The Patriotic War of 1812 had a significant impact on literature, theater, music, and fine arts, which to an unprecedented extent accelerated the growth of the national self-awareness of the Russian people and its consolidation. There was a rapprochement with the Russian people of other peoples of Russia. However, conservative tendencies in the policies of Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I hampered the development of culture. The government actively fought against manifestations of advanced social thought. Serfdom did not provide the entire population with the opportunity to enjoy high cultural achievements.
The Era of Liberation gave a strong impetus to the cultural development of Russia. Changes in economic and political life after the fall of serfdom created new conditions for the development of culture. The drawing into market relations of ever wider sections of the peasantry raised the issue of primary public education with all its urgency. This caused an unprecedented increase in the number of rural and urban schools. Industry, transport and trade showed increasing demand for specialists with secondary and higher education. The ranks of the intelligentsia have grown significantly. Her spiritual needs caused the growth of book publishing and increased the circulation of newspapers and magazines. The development of theater, painting, and other arts took place on the same wave. The culture of Russia in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries absorbed the artistic traditions, aesthetic and moral ideals of the “golden age” of the previous time. At the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, trends appeared in the spiritual life of Europe and Russia related to the worldview of a person in the 20th century. They demanded a new understanding of social and moral problems. All this led to the search for new artistic methods and means. A unique historical and artistic period developed in Russia, which his contemporaries called the “Silver Age” of Russian culture.
Glorifying the heroic deeds of the people, the idea of their spiritual awakening, exposing the ills of feudal Russia - these are the main themes of the fine arts of the 19th century.
ABOUT MAIN PART
1 Russian painting of the first half XIX century.
Russian fine art was characterized by romanticism and realism. However, the officially recognized method was classicism. The Academy of Arts became a conservative and inert institution that hindered any attempts at creative freedom. She demanded strict adherence to the canons of classicism and encouraged painting on biblical and mythological subjects. Young talented Russian artists were not satisfied with the framework of academicism. Therefore, they more often turned to the portrait genre.
Kiprensky Orest Adamovich, Russian artist. An outstanding master of Russian fine art of romanticism, known as a wonderful portrait painter. In the painting “Dmitry Donskoy on the Kulikovo Field” (1805, Russian Museum) he demonstrated a confident knowledge of the canons of academic historical painting. But early on, the area where his talent was revealed most naturally and effortlessly was portraiture. His first pictorial portrait (“A.K. Schwalbe”, 1804, ibid.), written in the “Rembrandt” manner, stands out for its expressive and dramatic chiaroscuro structure. Over the years, his skill - manifested in the ability to create, first of all, unique, individually characteristic images, selecting special plastic means to highlight this characteristic - grows stronger. Full of impressive vitality: a portrait of a boy A. A. Chelishchev (circa 1810-11), paired images of the spouses F. V. and E. P. Rostopchin (1809) and V. S. and D. N. Khvostov (1814, all - Tretyakov Gallery). The artist increasingly plays with the possibilities of color and light and shadow contrasts, landscape backgrounds, and symbolic details (“E. S. Avdulina,” circa 1822, ibid.). The artist knows how to make even large ceremonial portraits lyrically, almost intimately relaxed (“Portrait of Life Hussar Colonel Evgraf Davydov”, 1809, Russian Museum). His portrait of the young A.S., covered in poetic glory. Pushkin is one of the best in creating a romantic image. In Kiprensky, Pushkin looks solemn and romantic, in an aura of poetic glory. “You flatter me, Orestes,” Pushkin sighed, looking at the finished canvas. Kiprensky was also a virtuoso draftsman who created (mainly using the Italian pencil and pastel technique) examples of graphic skill, often surpassing his painted portraits in their open, excitingly light emotionality. These are everyday types (“The Blind Musician”, 1809, Russian Museum; “Kalmychka Bayausta”, 1813, Tretyakov Gallery), and the famous series of pencil portraits of participants Patriotic War 1812 (drawings depicting E.I. Chaplits, A.R. Tomilov, P.A. Olenin, the same drawing with the poet Batyushkov and others; 1813-15, Tretyakov Gallery and other collections); the heroic beginning here acquires a sincere connotation. A large number of sketches and textual evidence show that the artist throughout his mature period gravitated toward creating a large (in his own words from a letter to A.N. Olenin in 1834), “spectacular, or, in Russian, striking and magical painting,” where the results of European history, as well as the destiny of Russia, would be depicted in allegorical form. “Newspaper Readers in Naples” (1831, Tretyakov Gallery) - in appearance just a group portrait - in fact there is a secretly symbolic response to the revolutionary events in Europe. However, the most ambitious of Kiprensky's pictorial allegories remained unfulfilled or disappeared (like the "Tomb of Anacreon", completed in 1821). These romantic searches, however, received a large-scale continuation in the works of K. P. Bryullov and A. A. Ivanov.
The realistic style was reflected in the works of V.A. Tropinina. Tropinin's early portraits, painted in restrained colors (family portraits of Counts Morkov, 1813 and 1815, both in the Tretyakov Gallery), still entirely belong to the tradition of the Age of Enlightenment: the model is the unconditional and stable center of the image in them. Later, the color of Tropinin’s painting becomes more intense, the volumes are usually sculpted more clearly and sculpturally, but most importantly, the purely romantic feeling of the moving element of life insinuatingly grows, of which the hero of the portrait seems to be only a part, a fragment (“Bulakhov”, 1823; “K. G. Ravich” , 1823; self-portrait, circa 1824; all three - in the same place). Such is A. S. Pushkin in the famous portrait of 1827 (All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin, Pushkin): the poet, placing his hand on a stack of paper, as if “listening to the muse,” listens to the creative dream that surrounds the image with an invisible halo . He also painted a portrait of A.S. Pushkin. The viewer is presented with a man who is wise from life experience and not very happy. In the portrait of Tropinin, the poet is charming in a homely way. Some special old-Moscow warmth and comfort emanates from Tropinin’s works. Until the age of 47, he was in captivity. That’s probably why the faces of ordinary people on his canvases are so fresh, so inspired. And the youth and charm of his “Lacemaker” are endless. Most often, V.A. Tropinin turned to the depiction of people from the people ("The Lacemaker", "Portrait of a Son", etc.).
The artistic and ideological quest of Russian social thought and the expectation of change are reflected in the paintings of K.P. Bryullov “The Last Day of Pompeii” and A.A. Ivanov "The Appearance of Christ to the People."
A great work of art is the painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” by Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852). In 1830, the Russian artist Karl Pavlovich Bryullov visited the excavations of the ancient city of Pompeii. He walked along the ancient pavements, admired the frescoes, and in his imagination the tragic night August 79 AD e., when the city was covered with hot ash and pumice of the awakened Vesuvius. Three years later, the painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” made a triumphant journey from Italy to Russia. The artist found amazing colors to depict the tragedy ancient city, dying under the lava and ash of the erupting Vesuvius. The picture is imbued with high humanistic ideals. It shows the courage of people, their dedication, shown during a terrible disaster. Bryullov was in Italy on a business trip to the Academy of Arts. This educational institution provided good training in painting and drawing techniques. However, the Academy clearly focused on the ancient heritage and heroic themes. Academic painting was characterized by a decorative landscape and theatricality of the overall composition. Scenes from modern life and ordinary Russian landscapes were considered unworthy of the artist’s brush. Classicism in painting was called academicism. Bryullov was associated with the Academy with all his creativity.
The first half of the 19th century was a bright page in Russian culture. All directions - literature, architecture, painting of this era are marked by a whole constellation of names that brought Russian art world fame.
Culture developed against the background of the ever-increasing national self-awareness of the Russian people and, in connection with this, had a pronounced national character. The Patriotic War of 1812 had a significant impact on literature, theater, music, and fine arts, which to an unprecedented extent accelerated the growth of the national self-awareness of the Russian people and its consolidation.
Classicism
At the very beginning of the 19th century, classicism played a significant role in Russian painting.
One of the famous works of the beginning of the century on a historical theme is the painting by Dmitry Ivanovich Ivanov (1782 - after 1810) “Martha the Posadnitsa,” painted in 1808. The artist turns to history ancient Rus', period of struggle Novgorod Principality with the growing Principality of Moscow.
The painting depicts Miroslav, who is preparing to lead the Novgorodians to fight Moscow, and receives the sword of Ratmir from the hermit Theodosius Boretsky. Miroslav was brought to the hermit by Theodosius’s daughter, Martha, who heads the Novgorod opposition. Both the nature of the plot and the artistic language of the picture correspond to the classic style.
Romanticism
Romanticism, a European movement that emerged at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, brought new views to Russian art. The development of romanticism in Russian painting is associated with the fashion for ruins, Freemasonic sacraments, chivalric novels and romances.
In Russia, romanticism acquired its own peculiarity: at the beginning of the century it had a heroic connotation, and during the years of the Nicholas reaction it had a tragic connotation. At the same time, romanticism in Russia has always been a form of artistic thinking, close in spirit to revolutionary and freedom-loving sentiments.
Portraits of Orest Kiprensky
Romanticism manifested itself most clearly in portrait art. A romantic portrait affirms the unique individuality of a person’s spiritual world; it is distinguished by spontaneity of expression, accuracy and sharpness of physiognomic characteristics, and lively emotionality.
The most significant portrait painter of the first third of the 19th century. was Orest Adamovich Kiprensky (1782-1836). Already in 1804, he created one of his most interesting works - a portrait of his stepfather, Adam Schwalbe.
In Kiprensky’s work, a unique type of chamber portrait was formed, revealing the spiritual life of a person with soulful depth. Most of Kiprensky's heroes are bearers of the highest kindness, highly moral, humanistic principles.
Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov
A remarkable painter, the creator of a unique national-romantic movement in Russian painting, was Alexei Gavrilovich Venetsianov (1780-1847), Borovikovsky’s favorite student. Venetsianov created a unique style, combining in his works the traditions of capital academicism, Russian romanticism of the early 19th century. and the idealization of peasant life. He became the founder of the Russian everyday genre.
Alexander Osipovich Orlovsky
Another famous representative of Russian painting at the beginning of the century is Alexander Osipovich Orlovsky (1777-1832). In the work of Orlovsky, as well as Kiprensky, romantic tendencies were clearly expressed. The artist was interested in free strong people, national characteristics various nationalities. In his paintings, Orlovsky sometimes depicted characteristic, poignant scenes. The artist’s favorite romantic image is a man on a horse. Riders and equestrian scenes surrounded by emotional landscapes are present in many of his works of art.
Vasily Andreevich Tropinin
The famous Russian portrait artist Vasily Andreevich Tropinin (1776-1857) continued his creative activity for more than half a century, while remaining a serf for most of his life. The best years of the artist’s work coincided with the heyday of Kiprensky’s talent. Both artists were close in their desire for simplicity and ease in the image of a person. However, Tropinin’s characters are more everyday and simpler, which indicates that the artist followed the new trends towards the democratization of art characteristic of that time.
Until the age of 47, he was in captivity. That’s probably why the faces of ordinary people on his canvases are so fresh, so inspired. And the youth and charm of his “Lacemaker” are endless.
One of the most famous and realistic portraits of A.S. Pushkin is the portrait painted by V. Tropinin in 1827.
The poet's clothing is very symbolic: the artist depicted him in a loose dressing gown thrown over a white shirt with a raised collar. A silk scarf casually tied over the collar and slightly tousled hair completes the look. True Russian Byron in a robe! It is not for nothing that Tropinin chose this particular outfit to depict Pushkin: like no other, it accurately conveys the main character traits of the poet, his love of freedom and freethinking.
The portrait shows not Pushkin the poet, but Pushkin the man. His whole posture speaks of his irrepressible energy; it may seem that in a moment he will get up and leave.
The artist masterfully managed to convey through the portrait the spirituality and rich inner world of Alexander Sergeevich, thanks to which the resulting image evokes delight and love from the audience.
Karl Pavlovich Bryullov
Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852) was one of the brightest and at the same time controversial artists in Russian paintings of the 19th century century. Bryullov had brilliant talent and an independent way of thinking. Despite the trends of the times (the influence of romanticism), the artist was unable to completely get rid of the classicist canons. Perhaps that is why his work was highly valued by the far from advanced St. Petersburg Academy of Arts: in his youth he was its student, and later became an emeritus professor.
The artistic and ideological quest of Russian social thought and the expectation of change are reflected in the painting by K.P. Bryullov "The Last Day of Pompeii".
In 1830, Bryullov visited the excavations of the ancient city of Pompeii. He walked along the ancient pavements, admired the frescoes, and in his imagination that tragic night of August 79 AD arose. e., when the city was covered with hot ash and pumice of the awakened Vesuvius. Three years later, the painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” made a triumphant journey from Italy to Russia.
Alexander Andreevich Ivanov
In the first half of the 19th century. The artist Alexander Andreevich Ivanov (1806-1858) lived and worked. He devoted his entire creative life to the idea of the spiritual awakening of the people, embodying it in the film “The Appearance of Christ to the People.” He worked on this picture for more than 20 years, into which he invested all the power and brightness of his talent. In the foreground of his grandiose canvas, the courageous figure of John the Baptist, pointing the people to the approaching Christ, catches the eye. His figure is shown in the distance. He has not arrived yet, he is coming, he will definitely come, says the artist. And the faces and souls of those who wait for the Savior brighten and become clear. In this picture he showed, as I. E. Repin later said, “an oppressed people yearning for the word of freedom.”
Pavel Andreevich Fedotov
An important stage in the formation of Russian realistic painting of the 19th century is associated with the name of Pavel Andreevich Fedotov (1815-1852). Fedotov had keen powers of observation and was sensitive to the shortcomings of the social system. Possessing the talent of a satirist, the artist, for the first time in Russian painting, gave the everyday genre a social, critical expression. In his paintings, the painter showed the life of the townspeople: among the characters in his works were merchants, officers, officials, and the poor. Fedotov great importance He added to his observations of the life around him, and made a lot of sketches from life. Often the actions of his paintings are based on conflict, where social characteristics of people are given.
The script for the film “Major's Matchmaking” is based on an ordinary marriage of convenience between the daughter of a wealthy merchant and a bankrupt nobleman major. At that time, such transactions were commonplace: some sought to get money, while others sought rank in society, and the family simply needed to survive; bankruptcy was an inevitable collapse.
In 1848, his painting “Fresh Cavalier” was presented at an academic exhibition. The painting depicts an official who, the day before, was awarded his first award - an order - and now in his dreams he is already ascending the career ladder to the very top, imagining himself either as a mayor or as a governor.
It was a daring mockery not only of the stupid, complacent bureaucracy, but also of academic traditions. The dirty robe I wore main character the painting very much resembled an antique toga. Bryullov stood in front of the canvas for a long time, and then said to the author, half-jokingly, half-seriously: “Congratulations, you defeated me.”
Despite the diversity of creative individuals and the differences in specific artistic tasks, the general trend in Russian painting of the first half of the 19th century was to bring all genres of art closer to life. This tendency is reflected in the appeal of most artists to modern subjects and problems, in attention to the inner world of man, to the experiences of the artist himself. That is why acquaintance with the work of masters of the first half of the 19th century evokes in the viewer a vivid sense of the era and gives an idea of the thoughts and feelings of Russian society.
Russian painting of the first half of the 19th century.
Russian fine art was characterized by romanticism and realism. However, the officially recognized method was classicism. The Academy of Arts became a conservative and inert institution that hindered any attempts at creative freedom. She demanded strict adherence to the canons of classicism and encouraged painting on biblical and mythological subjects. Young talented Russian artists were not satisfied with the framework of academicism. Therefore, they more often turned to the portrait genre.
embodied in painting romantic ideals era of national upsurge. Having rejected the strict, non-deviating principles of classicism, artists discovered the diversity and uniqueness of the surrounding world. This was not only reflected in the already familiar genres - portrait and landscape - but also gave impetus to the birth of everyday painting, which became the focus of attention of masters of the second half of the century. For now, primacy remained with the historical genre. It was the last refuge of classicism, however, even here, behind the formally classic “façade,” romantic ideas and themes were hidden.
Romanticism - (French romantisme), ideological and artistic movement in European and American spiritual culture of the late 18th - 1st half. 19th centuries Reflecting disappointment in the results French Revolution the end of the 18th century, in the ideology of the Enlightenment and social progress. Romanticism contrasted utilitarianism and the leveling of the individual with aspirations for boundless freedom and the “infinite,” a thirst for perfection and renewal, and the pathos of personal and civil independence. The painful discord between the ideal and social reality is the basis of the romantic worldview and art. Affirmation of the intrinsic value of the spiritual and creative life of the individual, the depiction of strong passions, the depiction of strong passions, spiritualized and healing nature, for many romantics - the heroics of protest or struggle coexist with the motives of “world sorrow”, “world evil”, the “night” side of the soul, clothed in forms of irony, grotesque, poetics of two worlds. Interest in the national past (often its idealization), the traditions of folklore and culture of one’s own and other peoples, the desire to create a universal picture of the world (primarily history and literature), the idea of a synthesis of arts found expression in the ideology and practice of Romanticism.
In the fine arts, Romanticism manifested itself most clearly in painting and graphics, less clearly in sculpture and architecture (for example, false Gothic). Most of the national schools of Romanticism in the fine arts emerged in the struggle against official academic classicism.
In the depths of the official state culture there is a noticeable layer of “elite” culture, serving the ruling class (the aristocracy and the royal court) and having a special receptivity to foreign innovations. It is enough to recall the romantic painting of O. Kiprensky, V. Tropinin, K. Bryullov, A. Ivanov and other major artists of the 19th century.
Kiprensky Orest Adamovich, Russian artist. An outstanding master of Russian fine art of romanticism, known as a wonderful portrait painter. In the painting “Dmitry Donskoy on the Kulikovo Field” (1805, Russian Museum) he demonstrated a confident knowledge of the canons of academic historical painting. But early on, the area where his talent was revealed most naturally and effortlessly was portraiture. His first pictorial portrait (“A.K. Schwalbe”, 1804, ibid.), written in the “Rembrandt” manner, stands out for its expressive and dramatic chiaroscuro structure. Over the years, his skill—manifested in the ability to create, first of all, unique, individually characteristic images, selecting special plastic means to highlight this characteristic—has become stronger. Full of impressive vitality: a portrait of a boy A. A. Chelishchev (circa 1810-11), paired images of the spouses F. V. and E. P. Rostopchin (1809) and V. S. and D. N. Khvostov (1814, all - Tretyakov Gallery). The artist increasingly plays with the possibilities of color and light and shadow contrasts, landscape backgrounds, and symbolic details (“E. S. Avdulina,” circa 1822, ibid.). The artist knows how to make even large ceremonial portraits lyrically, almost intimately relaxed (“Portrait of Life Hussar Colonel Evgraf Davydov”, 1809, Russian Museum). His portrait of the young A. S. Pushkin, covered in poetic glory, is one of the best in creating a romantic image. In Kiprensky's work, Pushkin looks solemn and romantic, in an aura of poetic glory. “You flatter me, Orestes,” Pushkin sighed, looking at the finished canvas. Kiprensky was also a virtuoso draftsman who created (mainly using the Italian pencil and pastel technique) examples of graphic skill, often surpassing his painted portraits in their open, excitingly light emotionality. These include everyday types (“The Blind Musician”, 1809, Russian Museum; “Kalmychka Bayausta”, 1813, Tretyakov Gallery), and the famous series of pencil portraits of participants in the Patriotic War of 1812 (drawings depicting E.I. Chaplits, A.R. Tomilova, P. A. Olenina, the same drawing with the poet Batyushkov and others; 1813-15, Tretyakov Gallery and other collections); the heroic beginning here acquires a sincere connotation. A large number of sketches and textual evidence show that the artist throughout his mature period gravitated towards creating a large (in his own words from a letter to A.N. Olenin in 1834), “spectacular, or, in Russian, striking and magical painting ", where the results of European history, as well as the destiny of Russia, would be depicted in allegorical form. “Newspaper Readers in Naples” (1831, Tretyakov Gallery) - in appearance just a group portrait - in fact there is a secretly symbolic response to the revolutionary events in Europe.
However, the most ambitious of Kiprensky’s pictorial allegories remained unrealized or disappeared (like the “Tomb of Anacreon,” completed in 1821). These romantic searches, however, received a large-scale continuation in the works of K. P. Bryullov and A. A. Ivanov.
The realistic style was reflected in the works of V.A. Tropinina. Tropinin's early portraits, painted in restrained colors (family portraits of Counts Morkov, 1813 and 1815, both in the Tretyakov Gallery), still entirely belong to the tradition of the Age of Enlightenment: the model is the unconditional and stable center of the image in them. Later, the color of Tropinin’s painting becomes more intense, the volumes are usually sculpted more clearly and sculpturally, but most importantly, the purely romantic feeling of the moving element of life insinuatingly grows, of which the hero of the portrait seems to be only a part, a fragment (“Bulakhov”, 1823; “K.G. Ravich”, 1823; self-portrait, around 1824; all three – in the same place). Such is A. S. Pushkin in the famous portrait of 1827 (All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin, Pushkin): the poet, placing his hand on a stack of paper, as if “listening to the muse,” listens to the creative dream surrounding the image an invisible halo. He also painted a portrait of A.S. Pushkin. The viewer is presented with a man who is wise from life experience and not very happy. In the portrait of Tropinin, the poet is charming in a homely way. Some special old-Moscow warmth and comfort emanates from Tropinin’s works. Until the age of 47, he was in captivity. That’s probably why the faces of ordinary people on his canvases are so fresh, so inspired. And the youth and charm of his “Lacemaker” are endless. Most often, V. A. Tropinin turned to the image of people from the people ("The Lacemaker", "Portrait of a Son", etc.).
The artistic and ideological quest of Russian social thought and the expectation of change are reflected in the paintings of K.P. Bryullov “The Last Day of Pompeii” and A. A. Ivanov “The Appearance of Christ to the People.”
A great work of art is the painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” by Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852). In 1830, the Russian artist Karl Pavlovich Bryullov visited the excavations of the ancient city of Pompeii. He walked along the ancient pavements, admired the frescoes, and in his imagination that tragic night of August 79 AD arose. e., when the city was covered with hot ash and pumice of the awakened Vesuvius. Three years later, the painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” made a triumphant journey from Italy to Russia. The artist found amazing colors to depict the tragedy of the ancient city, dying under the lava and ash of the erupting Vesuvius. The picture is imbued with high humanistic ideals. It shows the courage of people, their dedication, shown during a terrible disaster. Bryullov was in Italy on a business trip to the Academy of Arts. This educational institution provided good training in painting and drawing techniques. However, the Academy clearly focused on the ancient heritage and heroic themes. Academic painting was characterized by a decorative landscape and theatricality of the overall composition. Scenes from modern life and ordinary Russian landscapes were considered unworthy of the artist’s brush. Classicism in painting was called academicism. Bryullov was associated with the Academy with all his creativity.
He had a powerful imagination, a keen eye and a faithful hand - and he gave birth to living creations consistent with the canons of academicism. Truly, with Pushkin's grace, he knew how to capture on canvas both the beauty of a naked human body and the trembling of a sunbeam on a green leaf. His canvases “The Horsewoman,” “Bathsheba,” “Italian Morning,” “Italian Afternoon,” and numerous ceremonial and intimate portraits will forever remain unfading masterpieces of Russian painting. However, the artist has always gravitated towards large historical themes, towards depicting significant events in human history. Many of his plans in this regard were not realized. Bryullov never left the idea of creating an epic canvas based on a plot from Russian history. He begins the painting “The Siege of Pskov by the Troops of King Stefan Batory.” It depicts the climax of the siege of 1581, when the Pskov warriors and. The townspeople rush to attack the Poles who broke into the city and throw them behind the walls. But the painting remained unfinished, and the task of creating truly national historical paintings was carried out not by Bryullov, but by the next generation of Russian artists. The same age as Pushkin, Bryullov outlived him by 15 years. He has been ill in recent years. From a self-portrait painted at that time, a reddish man with delicate facial features and a calm, thoughtful gaze looks at us.
In the first half of the 19th century. The artist Alexander Andreevich Ivanov (1806-1858) lived and worked. He devoted his entire creative life to the idea of the spiritual awakening of the people, embodying it in the film “The Appearance of Christ to the People.” For more than 20 years he worked on the painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People,” into which he invested all the power and brightness of his talent. In the foreground of his grandiose canvas, the courageous figure of John the Baptist, pointing the people to the approaching Christ, catches the eye. His figure is shown in the distance. He has not arrived yet, he is coming, he will definitely come, says the artist. And the faces and souls of those who wait for the Savior brighten and become clear. In this picture he showed, as I. E. Repin later said, “an oppressed people yearning for the word of freedom.”
In the first half of the 19th century. Russian painting includes everyday subjects.
One of the first to turn to him was Alexei Gavrilovich Venetsianov (1780-1847). He dedicated his work to depicting the life of peasants. He shows this life in an idealized, embellished form, paying tribute to the then fashionable sentimentalism. However, Venetsianov’s paintings “The Threshing Barn”, “At the Harvest. Summer", "On the arable land. Spring”, “Peasant Woman with Cornflowers”, “Zakharka”, “Morning of the Landowner”, reflecting the beauty and nobility of ordinary Russian people, served to affirm the dignity of a person, regardless of his social status.
His traditions were continued by Pavel Andreevich Fedotov (1815-1852). His canvases are realistic, filled with satirical content, exposing the merchant morality, life and customs of the elite of society (“Major’s Matchmaking”, “Fresh Cavalier”, etc.). He began his path as a satirical artist as a guards officer. Then he made funny, mischievous sketches of army life. In 1848, his painting “Fresh Cavalier” was presented at an academic exhibition. It was a daring mockery not only of the stupid, complacent bureaucracy, but also of academic traditions. The dirty robe that the main character of the picture was wearing looked very much like an antique toga. Bryullov stood in front of the canvas for a long time, and then said to the author, half-jokingly, half-seriously: “Congratulations, you defeated me.” Other films by Fedotov (“Breakfast of an Aristocrat”, “Major’s Matchmaking”) also have a comedic and satirical character. His last paintings are very sad (“Anchor, more anchor!”, “Widow”). Contemporaries rightly compared P. A. Fedotov in painting with N. V. Gogol in literature. Exposing the ills of feudal Russia is the main theme of the work of Pavel Andreevich Fedotov.
Russian painting of the second half of the 19th century.
Second half of the 19th century. was marked by the flourishing of Russian fine art. It became truly great art, was imbued with the pathos of the people’s liberation struggle, responded to the demands of life and actively invaded life. In the fine arts, realism was finally established - a truthful and comprehensive reflection of the life of the people, the desire to rebuild this life on the principles of equality and justice.
A conscious turn of new Russian painting towards democratic realism, nationality, and modernity emerged in the late 50s, together with the revolutionary situation in the country, with the social maturation of the intelligentsia of the various classes, with the revolutionary enlightenment of Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, with the people-loving poetry of Nekrasov . In “Essays on the Gogol Period” (in 1856), Chernyshevsky wrote: “If painting is now generally in a rather pitiful position, the main reason for this must be considered the alienation of this art from modern aspirations.” The same idea was presented in many articles in the Sovremennik magazine.
The central theme of art has become the people, not only the oppressed and suffering, but also the people - the creator of history, the people-fighter, the creator of all the best that there is in life.
The establishment of realism in art took place in a stubborn struggle with the official direction, whose representative was the leadership of the Academy of Arts. The academy's leaders instilled in their students the idea that art was higher than life, and they put forward only biblical and mythological themes for the artists' creativity.
But painting was already beginning to join modern aspirations - first of all in Moscow. The Moscow School did not enjoy even a tenth of the privileges of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, but it was less dependent on its ingrained dogmas, and the atmosphere in it was more lively. Although the teachers at the School are mostly academicians, the academicians are secondary and wavering - they did not suppress with their authority as much as at the Academy F. Bruni, the pillar of the old school, who at one time competed with Bryullov’s painting “The Copper Serpent”.
In 1862, the Council of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts decided to equalize the rights of all genres, abolishing the primacy of historical painting. Gold medal now they were awarded regardless of the theme of the picture, taking into account only its merits. However, the “liberties” within the walls of the academy did not last long.
In 1863, young artists participating in an academic competition submitted a petition “for permission to freely choose subjects for topics they wish, in addition to the given topic.” The Academy Council refused. What happened next is called the “revolt of the fourteen” in the history of Russian art. Fourteen students of the history class did not want to paint pictures on the proposed theme from Scandinavian mythology - “The Feast in Valgaal” and pointedly submitted a petition to leave the academy. Finding themselves without workshops and without money, the rebels united into a kind of commune - similar to the type of communes described by Chernyshevsky in the novel “What is to be done?” - the Artel of Artists, headed by the painter Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy. The artel workers accepted orders for the execution of various artistic works, lived in the same house, and gathered in a common room for conversations, discussing paintings, and reading books.
Seven years later, Artel disbanded. By this time, in the 70s, on the initiative of the artist Grigory Grigorievich Myasoedov, an association arose - the “Association of Artistic Mobile Inserts”, a professional and commercial association of artists who stood on similar ideological positions.
The Association of Itinerants, unlike many later associations, did without any declarations or manifestos. Its charter only stated that the members of the Partnership should manage their own financial affairs, not depending on anyone in this regard, and also organize exhibitions themselves and take them to different cities (“move” around Russia) in order to acquaint the country with Russian art . Both of these points were of significant importance, asserting the independence of art from the authorities and the will of artists to widely communicate with people not only in the capital. The main role in the creation of the Partnership and the development of its charter belonged, in addition to Kramskoy, to Myasoedov, Ge - from St. Petersburg, and from Muscovites - Perov, Pryanishnikov, Savrasov.
The Peredvizhniki were united in their rejection of “academicism” with its mythology, decorative landscapes and pompous theatricality. They wanted to depict living life. Genre (everyday) scenes occupied a leading place in their work. The peasantry enjoyed particular sympathy with the “Itinerants”. They showed his need, suffering, oppressed position. At that time - in the 60-70s. XIX century - the ideological side of art was valued higher than the aesthetic. Only over time did artists remember the intrinsic value of painting.
Perhaps the greatest tribute to ideology was paid by Vasily Grigorievich Perov (1834-1882). Suffice it to recall such of his paintings as “The Arrival of the Chief for Investigation”, “Tea Party in Mytishchi”. Some of Perov’s works are imbued with genuine tragedy (“Troika”, “Old Parents at the Grave of their Son”). Perov painted a number of portraits of his famous contemporaries (Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Dostoevsky).
Some of the paintings of the “Itinerants,” painted from life or inspired by real scenes, have enriched our ideas about peasant life. S. A. Korovin’s film “On the World” shows a clash at a rural gathering between a rich man and a poor man. V. M. Maksimov captured the rage, tears, and grief of the family division. The solemn festivity of peasant labor is reflected in the painting “Mowers” by G. G. Myasoedov.
Portraiture occupied the main place in Kramskoy’s work. He wrote Goncharov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Nekrasov. He owns one of the best portraits of Leo Tolstoy. The writer's gaze does not leave the viewer, no matter from what point he looks at the canvas. One of Kramskoy’s most powerful works is the painting “Christ in the Desert.”
The first exhibition of the “Itinerants”, which opened in 1871, convincingly demonstrated the existence of a new direction that took shape throughout the 60s. There were only 46 exhibits (in contrast to the cumbersome exhibitions of the Academy), but carefully selected, and although the exhibition was not deliberately programmatic, the overall unwritten program emerged quite clearly. All genres were represented - historical, everyday life, landscape portraiture - and the audience could judge what new the “Wanderers” brought to them. Only sculpture was unlucky (there was one, and even then a little remarkable sculpture by F. Kamensky), but this type of art was “unlucky” for a long time, in fact, the entire second half of the century.
By the beginning of the 90s, among the young artists of the Moscow school, there were, however, those who worthily and seriously continued the civil itinerant tradition: S. Ivanov with his cycle of paintings about immigrants, S. Korovin - the author of the painting “On the World”, where it is interesting and the dramatic (really dramatic!) conflicts of the pre-reform village are thoughtfully revealed. But they did not set the tone: the entry to the forefront of the “World of Art”, equally far from the Wanderers and from the Academy, was approaching. What did the Academy look like at that time? Her artistic previous rigoristic attitudes had faded away; she no longer insisted on the strict requirements of neoclassicism, on the notorious hierarchy of genres; she was quite tolerant of the everyday genre, she only preferred that it be “beautiful” rather than “peasant” (an example of “beautiful” non-academic works - scenes from the ancient life of the then popular S. Bakalovich). For the most part, non-academic production, as was the case in other countries, was bourgeois salon, its “beauty” was vulgar prettiness. But it cannot be said that she did not put forward talents: G. Semiradsky, mentioned above, was very talented, V. Smirnov, who died early (who managed to create an impressive large painting “The Death of Nero”); One cannot deny certain artistic merits of the paintings of A. Svedomsky and V. Kotarbinsky. He spoke approvingly about these artists, considering them bearers of the “Hellenic spirit.” later years Repin, they impressed Vrubel, just like Aivazovsky - also an “academic” artist. On the other hand, none other than Semiradsky, during the reorganization of the Academy, decisively spoke out in favor of the everyday genre, pointing to Perov, Repin and V. Mayakovsky as positive examples. So there were enough points of convergence between the “Itinerants” and the Academy, and this was understood by the then vice-president of the Academy I. I. Tolstoy, on whose initiative the leading “Itinerants” were called to teach.
But the main thing that does not allow us to completely discount the role of the Academy of Arts, primarily as an educational institution, in the second half of the century is the simple fact that many outstanding artists emerged from its walls. These are Repin, and Surikov, and Polenov, and Vasnetsov, and later - Serov and Vrubel. Moreover, they did not repeat the “revolt of the fourteen” and, apparently, benefited from their apprenticeship.
Respect for drawing, for the constructed constructive form, is rooted in Russian art. The general orientation of Russian culture towards realism became the reason for the popularity of the Chistyakov method - one way or another, Russian painters up to and including Serov, Nesterov and Vrubel honored the “immutable eternal laws of form” and were wary of “dematerialization” or subordination of the colorful amorphous element, no matter how much they loved color.
Among the Peredvizhniki invited to the Academy were two landscape painters - Shishkin and Kuindzhi. It was precisely at that time that the hegemony of landscape began in art both as an independent genre, where Levitan reigned, and as an equal element of everyday, historical, and partly portrait painting. Contrary to the forecasts of Stasov, who believes that the role of landscape will decrease, in the 90s it increased more than ever. The lyrical “mood landscape” prevailed, tracing its ancestry to Savrasov and Polenov.
The Peredvizhniki made genuine discoveries in landscape painting. Alexey Kondratievich Savrasov (1830-1897) managed to show the beauty and subtle lyricism of a simple Russian landscape. His painting “The Rooks Have Arrived” (1871) made many contemporaries take a fresh look at their native nature.
Fyodor Aleksandrovich Vasiliev (1850-1873) lived a short life. His work, which was cut short at the very beginning, enriched Russian painting with a number of dynamic, exciting landscapes. The artist was especially good at transitional states in nature: from sun to rain, from calm to storm.
The singer of the Russian forest, the epic breadth of Russian nature, became Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832-1898). Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi (1841-1910) was attracted by the picturesque play of light and air. The mysterious light of the moon in rare clouds, red reflections of dawn on the white walls of Ukrainian huts, slanting morning rays breaking through the fog and playing in puddles on a muddy road - these and many other picturesque discoveries are captured on his canvases.
Russian landscape painting of the 19th century reached its peak in the work of Savrasov’s student Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860-1900). Levitan is a master of calm, quiet landscapes. A very timid, shy and vulnerable man, he knew how to relax only alone with nature, imbued with the mood of his favorite landscape.
One day he came to the Volga to paint the sun, air and river expanses. But there was no sun, endless clouds crawled across the sky, and the dull rains stopped. The artist was nervous until he got involved in this weather and discovered the special charm of the lilac colors of Russian bad weather. Since then, the Upper Volga and provincial town of Ples have become firmly entrenched in his work. In those parts he created his “rainy” works: “After the Rain”, “Gloomy Day”, “Above Eternal Peace”. Peaceful evening landscapes were also painted there: “Evening on the Volga”, “Evening. Golden Reach", "Evening Ringing", "Quiet Abode".
In the last years of his life, Levitan drew attention to the work of French impressionist artists (E. Manet, C. Monet, C. Pizarro). He realized that he had a lot in common with them, that their creative searches went in the same direction. Like them, he preferred to work not in the studio, but in the air (in the open air, as the artists say). Like them, he lightened the palette, banishing the dark, earthy colors. Like them, he sought to capture the fleeting nature of existence, to convey the movements of light and air. In this they went further than him, but almost dissolved volumetric forms (houses, trees) in light-air streams. He avoided it.
“Levitan’s paintings require slow viewing,” wrote K. G. Paustovsky, a great connoisseur of his work. “They do not stun the eye. They are modest and precise, like Chekhov’s stories, but the longer you look at them, the sweeter the silence of provincial towns, familiar rivers and country roads becomes.”
In the second half of the 19th century. marks the creative flowering of I. E. Repin, V. I. Surikov and V. A. Serov.
Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930) was born in the city of Chuguev, into the family of a military settler. He managed to enter the Academy of Arts, where his teacher was P. P. Chistyakov, who trained a whole galaxy of famous artists (V. I. Surikov, V. M. Vasnetsov, M. A. Vrubel, V. A. Serov). Repin also learned a lot from Kramskoy. In 1870, the young artist traveled along the Volga. He used numerous sketches brought from his travels for the painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga” (1872). She made a strong impression on the public. The author immediately rose to the ranks of the most famous masters.
Repin was a very versatile artist. A number of monumental genre paintings belong to his brush. Perhaps no less impressive than “Barge Haulers” is the “Religious Procession in the Kursk Province”. The bright blue sky, clouds of road dust pierced by the sun, the golden glow of crosses and vestments, the police, ordinary people and cripples - everything fits on this canvas: the greatness, strength, weakness and pain of Russia.
Many of Repin’s films dealt with revolutionary themes (“Refusal of Confession,” “They Didn’t Expect,” “Arrest of the Propagandist”). The revolutionaries in his paintings behave simply and naturally, avoiding theatrical poses and gestures. In the painting “Refusal to Confess,” the man sentenced to death seemed to have deliberately hidden his hands in his sleeves. The artist clearly sympathized with the characters in his paintings.
A number of Repin’s paintings were written on historical themes (“Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan”, “Cossacks composing a letter to the Turkish Sultan”, etc.). Repin created a whole gallery of portraits. He painted portraits of scientists (Pirogov and Sechenov), writers Tolstoy, Turgenev and Garshin, composers Glinka and Mussorgsky, artists Kramskoy and Surikov. At the beginning of the 20th century. he received an order for the painting “The Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council.” The artist managed not only to place such a large number of those present on the canvas compositionally, but also to give psychological characteristics to many of them. Among them were such famous figures as S. Yu. Witte, K. P. Pobedonostsev, P. P. Semenov Tian-Shansky. Nicholas II is hardly noticeable in the picture, but is depicted very subtly.
Vasily Ivanovich Surikov (1848-1916) was born in Krasnoyarsk, into a Cossack family. The heyday of his work was in the 80s, when he created his three most famous historical paintings: “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution”, “Menshikov in Berezovo” and “Boyaryna Morozova”.
Surikov knew well the life and customs of past eras, and was able to give vivid psychological characteristics. In addition, he was an excellent colorist (color master). Suffice it to recall the dazzlingly fresh, sparkling snow in the film “Boyaryna Morozova”. If you come closer to the canvas, the snow seems to “crumble” into blue, light blue, and pink strokes. This painting technique, when two or three different strokes merge at a distance and give the desired color, was widely used by the French impressionists.
Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov (1865-1911), son of the composer, painted landscapes, canvases on historical themes, and worked as a theater artist. But it was primarily his portraits that brought him fame.
In 1887, 22-year-old Serov was vacationing in Abramtsevo, the dacha of philanthropist S.I. Mamontov near Moscow. Among his many children, the young artist was his own man, a participant in their noisy games. One day after lunch, two people accidentally lingered in the dining room - Serov and 12-year-old Verusha Mamontova. They sat at the table on which there were peaches, and during the conversation Verusha did not notice how the artist began to sketch her portrait. The work lasted for a month, and Verusha was angry that Anton (as Serov was called at home) made her sit in the dining room for hours.
At the beginning of September, "Girl with Peaches" was completed. Despite its small size, the painting, painted in rose-golden tones, seemed very “spacious.” There was a lot of light and air in it. The girl, who sat down at the table for what seemed like a minute and fixed her gaze on the viewer, enchanted with her clarity and spirituality. And the whole canvas was covered in a purely childish perception of everyday life, when happiness is not conscious of itself, and a whole life lies ahead.
The inhabitants of the Abramtsevo house, of course, understood that a miracle had happened before their eyes. But only time gives final assessments. It placed “Girl with Peaches” among the best portrait works in Russian and world painting.
The next year, Serov managed to almost repeat his magic. He painted a portrait of his sister Maria Simonović (“Girl Illuminated by the Sun”). The name is a little inaccurate: the girl is sitting in the shade, and the rays of the morning sun illuminate the clearing in the background. But in the picture everything is so united, so united - morning, sun, summer, youth and beauty - that it’s hard to come up with a better name.
Serov became a fashionable portrait painter. Famous writers, actors, artists, entrepreneurs, aristocrats, even kings posed in front of him. Apparently, not everyone he wrote had his heart set on it. Some high-society portraits, despite their filigree execution technique, turned out cold.
For several years Serov taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He was a demanding teacher. An opponent of frozen forms of painting, Serov at the same time believed that creative searches should be based on a solid mastery of the techniques of drawing and pictorial writing. Many outstanding masters considered themselves students of Serov. This is M.S. Saryan, K.F. Yuon, P.V. Kuznetsov, K.S. Petrov-Vodkin.
Many paintings by Repin, Surikov, Levitan, Serov, and the “Wanderers” ended up in Tretyakov’s collection. Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov (1832-1898), a representative of an old Moscow merchant family, was an unusual person. Thin and tall, with a thick beard and a quiet voice, he looked more like a saint than a merchant. He began collecting paintings by Russian artists in 1856. His hobby grew into the main business of his life. In the early 90s. the collection reached the level of a museum, absorbing almost the entire fortune of the collector. Later it became the property of Moscow. The Tretyakov Gallery has become a world famous museum of Russian painting, graphics and sculpture.
In 1898, the Russian Museum was opened in St. Petersburg, in the Mikhailovsky Palace (the creation of K. Rossi). It received works by Russian artists from the Hermitage, the Academy of Arts and some imperial palaces. The opening of these two museums seemed to crown the achievements of Russian painting of the 19th century.