Russian Painting. Peter Leek

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      Dmitri Levitsky differed from Rokotov in that he possessed a marvellous ability to interpret and express personality. Every detail is painted with care, yet a feeling of spontaneity is never absent from his work. The son of a priest who was a gifted engraver, Levitsky was born in the Ukraine. After studying with Antropov, he spent a few years producing icons for churches in Moscow, then taught portrait painting at the Academy from 1771 to 1788. Levitsky excelled at female portraiture, as can be seen from his paintings of the aristocratic Ursula Mniszech and Maria Diakova, the wife of architect, painter and poet Nikolaï Lvov. Between 1773 and 1776, at the request of Catherine the Great, he painted a series of portraits of her favourite pupils at Smolny Institute (the school she founded for the education of young noblewomen), showing them engaged in such activities as amateur dramatics, playing the harp or dancing the minuet. Thanks to his portraits of foreign visitors to Saint Petersburg – among them Diderot – Levitsky acquired a reputation outside Russia (his style was even compared with that of Boucher and Watteau). In 1788 illness forced him to retire from the Academy, where he had been the principal teacher of portraiture. During the last thirty years of his life he hardly painted at all.

      A member of an old Cossack family, Vladimir Borovikovsky (1757–1825) was the son of an icon painter. He lived in Mirgorod until 1788, where he painted icons and portraits in the Ukrainian tradition. In 1790, after Catherine the Great expressed her delight at the allegorical decorations which he had been commissioned to paint in honour of her triumphal tour of the Crimea, Borovikovsky moved to Saint Petersburg, where he studied with Levitsky and the Austrian portrait painter Johann-Baptist Lampi. That same year he painted a portrait of Catherine the Great, looking more grandmotherly than regal, walking her favourite dog in the park at Tsarskoe Selo. Borovikovsky’s portraits of women – often attired in Grecian gowns and backed by a sylvan setting – have been likened to those by Gainsborough and Angelica Kauffmann. In many of them, the sitter is portrayed with the fingers of one hand delicately curled round an apple. As late as the 1790s, Borovikovsky’s work was tinged with sentimentalism. Then at the beginning of the nineteenth century he adopted a more classical style, producing works like the Portrait of Prince Alexander Kurakin that he completed in 1802.

      This classical style adopted by Borovikovsky at the start of the nineteenth century led to Romanticism which was beginning to influence Russian portraiture. Painters began to express themselves more freely, and self-portraits became increasingly common. With its accent on individuality, Romanticism was a perfect match for the self-portrait – which was, after all, a vehicle for psychological probing and spiritual revelation. It also led to important changes of form. In order to focus attention on the face, the sitter’s clothes were given less prominence. For the same reason, a neutral background tended to be used.

      35. Vladimir Borovikovsky, Portrait of Prince Alexander Kourakine, 1801–1802. Oil on canvas, 259 × 175 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      36. Orest Kiprensky, Portait of Life Guard Colonel Yevgraf Davydov, 1809. Oil on canvas, 162 × 116 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

      37. Orest Kiprensky, Portrait of Alexander Pushkin, 1827. Oil on canvas, 63 × 54 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      38. Vassily Perov, Portrait of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1872. Oil on canvas, 99 × 80.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      39. Ivan Kramskoï, Self-portrait, 1867. Oil on canvas, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      Romantic portraiture found its fullest expression in the art of Orest Kiprensky, who painted several self-portraits, including a very painterly one, with brushes stuck behind his ear. Kiprensky’s own life bore the hallmarks of Romanticism. The illegitimate son of an aristocratic army officer, he studied painting at the Academy (where he was enrolled at the age of six) and rapidly became a successful portrait painter. Then in 1805, he was awarded a travelling scholarship, and as soon as the Napoleonic Wars ended he departed for Rome. There he led a fairly bohemian life, and found himself the subject of scandal when an Italian model and a manservant died as a result of a fire at his house. In 1828, after four years back home in Russia, he returned to Italy, married the model’s daughter (whom he had entrusted to a convent school) and spent the next eight СКАЧАТЬ