Russian Painting. Peter Leek

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СКАЧАТЬ standing beside a wreath of flowers, painted when his own wife was mourning the death of their son.

      Vassily Perov, a warm-hearted man whose views commanded respect among his fellow Itinerants, almost invariably shows his models sitting in a quiet and dignified pose. With great subtlety, he conveys the haunted sensitivity of Dostoyevsky, the mental energy of the dramatist Alexander Ostrovsky, and the shrewdness of the merchant Ivan Kamynin – whose family refused to allow this portrait to be exhibited at the World Fair in Paris in 1878 because it did not present a sufficiently congenial image of him. Many of Perov’s liveliest genre paintings, such as Hunters at Rest, A Meal in a Monastery and The Angler, rely on character observation for their lively satire or humour.

      Ilya Repin (1844–130) has a style of portraiture that remains very much his own, despite being influenced by both Manet and Velazquez. Among his most enchanting portraits are the ones of his daughters Vera and Nadezhda and the idyllic group portrait On a Turf Bench (1876), all painted en plein air.

      Repin was a close friend of Leo Tolstoy. He made numerous paintings and sketches of the novelist, and it is interesting to compare the portrait reproduced here with the one painted by Kramskoï in 1872. An interval of fifteen years separates the two paintings, during which Tolstoy had become increasingly ascetic. No less revealing is Repin’s Portrait of Mussorgsky painted in hospital (hence the dressing-gown) shortly before the composer’s early death, hastened by alcoholism. One of Repin’s most memorable portraits is The Archdeacon (1877), which splendidly conveys the patriarchal robustness of this “lion among the clergy” who, he felt, embodied “the echo of a pagan priest”.

      The most demanding official commission undertaken by Repin was a painting of the formal session of the State Council held on 7 May 1901. In order to complete this gigantic group portrait, he prepared dozens of studies so he could accurately capture the character of each of the 100 councillors, and he enlisted the help of two of his pupils, Boris Kustodiev and Ivan Kulikov. The painting was commissioned to celebrate the Council’s centenary – but, whether intentionally or not, Repin succeeded in conveying its aura of implacable conservatism. One critic remarked that he had painted a vision of “Carthage on the eve of destruction”.

      Many of the other Itinerants were gifted portrait painters, among them Yuri Leman, Alexeï Kharlamov, Nikolaï Yaroshenko (1846–98) – dubbed “the conscience of the peredvizhniki”, who succeeded Kramskoï as leader of the Itinerants – and Nikolaï Gay, who painted a marvellously expressive self-portrait during the two years preceding his death. The portraiture of two of the most brilliant of the Itinerants, Serov and Surikov, will be discussed in the third part of this book.

      49. Alexander Golovin, Portrait of Stage Director Vsevolod Meyerhold, 1917. Tempera on panel, 80 × 67 cm, Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

      50. Boris Kustodiev, Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin, 1921. Oil on canvas, 215 × 172 cm, Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

      51. Alexander Golovin, Portrait of Dmitry Smirnov as Grieux in Jules Massenet’s “Manon”, 1909. Tempera on canvas, 210 × 116 cm, Bakhrushin Theatre Museum, Moscow.

      52. Alexander Golovin, Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin as Boris Godunov, 1912. Tempera and gouache on cardboard, 221.5 × 139.5 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

      53. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Savva Mamontov, 1897. Oil on canvas, 187 × 142.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      From the 1890s to the Post-Revolutionary Period

      Although the World of Art movement attracted many of the best artists, it did not have a monopoly on talent and had little appeal to the older Itinerants, many of whom were still producing interesting and innovative paintings. Surikov, for example, continued to paint until the year before his death, and during the 1880s and 1890s produced a magnificent series of “costume portraits”, often graced with a descriptive title, such as A Siberian Beauty or A Cossack Girl, in addition to the model’s name. In doing so, he aimed to portray “a special beauty, ancient, Russian”. According to Alexander Benois, Surikov was “the first… to discover the peculiar beauty of old Russian colouring”, and these costume portraits are remarkable for their rich, warm tones. But Surikov also painted portraits that were more “modern” in style and more concerned with the personality of the sitter, such as Unknown Girl Against a Yellow Background and Man with an Injured Arm.

      Among the “young peredvizhniki” who joined the World of Art group, the most brilliant portraitist was Valentin Serov. Like many of his contemporaries, he delighted in painting out of doors, and some of his most appealing portraits – such as Girl with Peaches, Girl in Sunlight and In Summer – owe their naturalness to their setting or to the interplay of sunlight and shadows. Indeed, Serov regarded them as “studies” rather than portraits, giving them descriptive titles that omitted the sitter’s name. The subject of Girl with Peaches – painted when Serov was only twenty-two – was in fact Mamontov’s daughter Vera. The model for In Summer was Serov’s wife.

      When only six years old, Serov began to display signs of artistic talent. Repin acted as his teacher and mentor, giving him lessons in his studio in Paris, at the age of nine, then letting Serov work with him in Moscow, almost like an apprentice. Eventually Repin sent him to study with Pavel Chistiakov – the teacher of many of the World of Art painters, including Nesterov and Vrubel, who was to become a close friend. Because Serov’s career spanned such a long period, his style and subject matter vary considerably – ranging from voluptuous society portraits (the later ones notable for their grand style and sumptuous dresses) to sensitive studies of children, like the one he painted of Mika Morozov in 1901. His portraits of Isaac Levitan and the actress Maria Yermolova demonstrate his genius for capturing his sitter’s personality. Utterly different from any of these is the famous nude study of the dancer Ida Rubinstein, in tempera and charcoal on canvas, which he painted towards the end of his life.

      54. Portrait of Sergei Diaghilev, 1904. Oil on canvas, 57 × 83 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

      55. Konstantin Korovin, Chorus Girl, 1883. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      56. Vassily Surikov, Unknown Girl against a Yellow Background, 1911. Oil on canvas, 51 × 44 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

      57. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Mika Morozov, 1901. Oil on canvas, 62.3 × 70.6 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      Although Serov’s early style has much in common with the French Impressionists, he did not become acquainted with their work until after he had painted pictures such as Girl with Peaches. In contrast, Konstantin Korovin was deeply influenced by the French Impressionists almost from the outset of his career, as can be seen from his Chorus Girl, which is regarded as one of the first Impressionist works by a Russian painter.

      Together with Korovin, Alexander Golovin designed the crafts section of the Russian Pavilion at the 1900 Paris World Fair. He then went on to design stage sets and costumes for a number of theatres, including the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg (where he became the principal decorator), the Bolshoi, the Moscow Arts Theatre and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Two of his most powerful paintings arose from his interest in the performing arts, namely his Portrait of the theatrical director СКАЧАТЬ