ENGLISH VERSION

The Perm State Art Gallery (the PSAG) keeps portraits, landscapes, sill lives, and rough drafts of many great painters like I. E. Repin, V. I. Surikov, V. M. Vasnetsov, A. K. Savrasov and others.

I'd like to tell you about the Wanderers who wrote landscapes at the end of the nineteen-century.

As you know the Wanderers are realistic painters who entered in the Russian Democratic Bloc of Painters. It was founded in 1870. The Wanderers had a method of critical realism. They appealed to the real picture of life, history of people and native nature. Pictures of the Wanderers differed by skill of social summarization. The Wanderers were so experts as I. N. Kramskoy, I. E. Repin, V. I. Surikov, V. E. Makovskiy, I. M. Prianishnikov, N. N. Ge, A. K. Savrasov, T. G. Miasoedov, N. A. Iaroshenko, V. D. Polenov, I. I. Shishkin, V. M. Vasnetsov, A. I. Kuindgi, I. I. Levitan and others. Also their structure include painters of Ukraine, Latvia, Armenia and others countries of the late USSR. In 1923-24 a part of the Wanderers joined in Association of Painters of Revolutionary Russia (APRR).

So, at the end of the nineteenth century the landscape painters devided in to two parts. Difference in understanding of landscape was shown in the 1890's. There were two positions: at first, landscape became greater, which showed itself newer, at second, landscape painted with its properties, and in something it subdued to itself other kinds of painting.

There are three varieties of the landscape of the Wanderers: natural or "shishkinski", lyric or "savrasovski", and decorative or "kuindgevski". 90's took and continued the lyric line.

Savrasov was a delicate lyric-man. His best pictures were like Russian poetry and pieces of P. I. Chaickovsky's music.

Savrasov called his disciples not to represent nature, and to learn to feel it and to show the feeling in the picture. You can see it in one of the masterpieces of the painter in the collection of the PSAG. This picture is called "Spring". Painter showed the beginning of spring, he showed how nature begins to make up, the air begins warmer, and he showed fragrance of spring. Also the picture of Savrasov carries in itself the beauty of the Russian nature and at the same time the poverty life in the place which is shown in the picture.

The pupils of Savrasov continued his lyric line. The greatest of them was I. I. Levitan.

I. I. Levitan, who due in 1900, is the most typical landscape painter of the 1890's. He made great influence to contemporaries. He had three main qualities. The First was that everybody could understand that he pictured the Russian nature. The Second was that everybody could understand the feelings the painter had when he painted his picture. And the Third was that he used typical ways of painting.

Even small etudes "In the village" and "Gumno" gives to see a look of painter to nature and ability to tell humans feelings and humour in the landscape.

V. D. Polenov, F. A. Vasilyev, I. S. Ostrouhov, the works of this painters are shown in the exhibition. Their pictures express their concern to nature, but everyone in one's own way.

V. D. Polenov is a great landscape painter. First of all he wanted to be the historical painter and he gave all his talent to it, but he wanted to do more then he could to do. The theme of Polenov's art was the theme of the Gospel. You can see it in the names of his pictures: "Jesus Christ on the Genisaretskoe lake" (in the PSAG you can see the sketch of this picture). In the Russian art Polenov is a well-known painter for whom secondary things were signiticaly ones. He is famous for his preparatory sketches from nature.

I. I. Shishkin is one of the greatest landscape painters. He pictured both Urals forests and sometimes only one big tree. Hereby he wanted to show the greatness of the Russian nature and forest.

At the same time the Shishkin's pictures contain simplicity and natural of composition. In his pictures Shishkin in detail showed the life of every bush, tree, grass, flower and gave a wide look to the Russian nature. Usually his heroes are the giver birth of the Russian land. There are oaks and pines.

A. I. Kuindgi is a great painter who worked with light. Usually he pictured the nature of Ukraine. In the collection of the PSAG you can see the picture (which name is) "Steppes in the evening". The painter tells us the beauty of steppes when the sun is falling. The romantic look to landscape and careful attitude to nature are treats proper to Kuindgi.

At the end, I'd to pay your attention to the collection of the PSAG. It has the pictures of those painters like the wanderers. And you have not to go to Moscow or to St. Petersburg because you can see pictures in our Art Gallery.

Vasilii Grigorievich Perov

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Vasilii Grigorievich Perov received his initial art training in the provincial Arzamass School of Art run by A.V. Stupin, who inculcated his students with his early, and in many ways still naive, realist skills. From 1853 until 1861, Perov studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. After that he lived in Paris (1862-1864), studying the works of the Old Masters while enjoying life in the outlying areas of the city. Perov returned to Moscow in 1864, where he headed a group of young artists-realists and became a founding member of and an active figure in the Circle of the Itinerants. In 1866 he received the title of member of the Petersburg Academy of Arts. A leading painter of genre scenes and portraits in the 1860s and 1870s, Perov exercised an enormous influence on the development of Russian realism in the second half of the nineteenth century.

"... What a talent! What an imposing, independent figure! What a marvelous choice of subjects! What an eye and a talent for observation! Such a rich gallery of types this original Siberian has brought into our art" (V. V. Stasov).

Vasilii Dmitrievich Polenov

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As a student at the Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1863 to 1871, Vasilii Dmitrievich Polenov took lessons in painting from E. E. Chistiakov and I. N. Kramskoi before he lived and worked in Paris (1872-1876) on a scholarship from the Academy. In 1876 he became a member of the Academy. Polenov lived in Moscow from 1877; later he moved to the Borok estate in the Tula Province. A member of the Circle of the Itinerants and a constant participant in their art exhibitions, Polenov was also associated with S. I. Mamontov's Abramtsevo Art Circle. He taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1882-1895) and organized the first Moscow Folk Theater in 1910. In addition to his many trips to countries in Western Europe, Polenov traveled to the Near East and Greece in his search for subjects and themes for his genre scenes and historical and biblical paintings. Of particular significance is Polenov's contribution to Russian landscape painting, which was enriched by his experimentations with plain air techniques.

'An unexpectedly festive occasion was the appearance ... of Polenov's first intimate landscape at the very end of the 1870s. I was exceptionally moved by his Courtyard in Moscow, Grandmother's Orchard, and Overgrown Pond... and a number of other 'Turgenev like' motifs; they appeared to me unexpectedly new and fresh, permeated with authenticity, subtle, musical lyricism, and a most delicate technique" (from the reminiscences of the artist I. S. Ostroukhov).

Vasilii Ivanovich Surikov

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As an outstanding representative of nineteenth century Russian realism, Vasilii Ivanovich Surikov is recognized for his brilliant and unique talent, and his powerful, creative temperament. He studied with E. E. Chistiakov at the Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1869 to 1875, receiving the title of member in 1895. Although he lived primarily in Moscow after 1877, Surikov traveled to Italy, Germany, and France in 1883-1884 and journeyed to Spain in 1910. Born into a long line of Siberian cossacks, he also took trips to Siberia regularly as well as to the river Don (1893), the Volga (1901-1903), and to the Crimea. He was a member of the Circle of the Itinerants and a frequent participant in their exhibitions after 1881. Surikov is best known for his large scale historical compositions, although he also painted portraits and was fascinated with watercolors.

"... Surikov is the most Russian of the Russian artists and the only historical painter among them to whom the label 'great' adheres" (A. Efros).

Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi

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Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi attended the Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1857 to 1863, but he left before graduation as one of the artists in the "Rebellion of the Fourteen" who protested against the stagnant rules governing competitions at the Academy. After his departure, Kramskoi supported the creation of the Petersburg Artel of Artists, and he subsequently became its leader, He was also a founding member and an active participant in the Circle of the Itinerants, acting as the group's moral conscience and ideological inspiration. In 1869 Kramskoi received the title of a member of the Academy and afterwards enjoyed tremendous authority and influence among Russian artists. An outstanding portraitist and a prominent figure in Russian realist painting, Kramskoi more over wrote art reviews in Petersburg, which today form a rich legacy on aesthetic issues and the history of Russian art.

"It is very likely that, were there no Kramskoi, there would not have been the ['Rebellion of the Fourteen'] on September 9, 1863, nor would there have been the manifestation of the new directions, nor, perhaps the very style since the talented young artists who were scattered and lacked firm convictions and a program would have dispersed and gone by unnoticed, and would have remained without influence, being constantly pressed and pursued by academism and every form of banality. Kramskoi's intellect and energy merged them all into a whole, giving their intentions a common, definite purpose..." (A. N. Benois, 1902).

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin

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After he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1852-1855), Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin attended the Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1856 to 1860, completing his studies with the highest honors and a gold medal. Five years later; in 1865, he attained the rank of member of the Academy, and then in 1873 that of professor He also headed in 1894-1895 and in 1897 the landscape painting class at the Higher Art School affiliated with the Academy of Arts.

Before he received these professional honors, Shishkin lived and worked abroad in Switzerland and Germany (1862-1865), spending half a year in the Zurich workshop of R. Roller and residing in Dusseldorf for one year, Upon his return to Petersburg, Shishkin became one of the founding members of the Circle of the Itinerants, and he joined the Society of Russian Watercolorists. Among the exhibitions in which his works were included were those at the Academy of Arts, the All Russian Exhibition in Moscow in 1882, the Nizhnii Novgorod in 1896, and the World Fairs held in Paris (1867 and 1878) and Vienna (1873).

A highly esteemed master of Russian realist landscape painting, Shishkin's creative method was based on exhaustive, analytical studies and on a kind of "portraiture" of nature that exposed its most typical features. Distinguished for his forest landscapes, Shishkin is known not only as a painter but also as an outstanding draftsman and printmaker.

Ilya Efimovich Repin

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Ilya Efimovich Repin ranks as the most prominent figure of nineteenth-century Russian realism. Son of a simple military settler (a peasant), Repin was naturally endowed with an uncommonly strong artistic talent. He studied at the Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1864 to 1871. While a student, Repin became friends with I. N. Kramskoi, who exerted a particularly powerful influence both on the young artist and on his fellow artists in Petersburg. On a scholarship from the Academy, Repin lived and worked in Paris from 1873 to 1876, at which time he became a member of the Academy. In 1877 he returned to his birthplace in Chuguevo, moved to Moscow the next year; and then lived in Petersburg from 1882 on. From 1878 to 1882 Repin, along with V. M. Vasnetsov and V. D. Polenov, comprised the nucleus of S. I. Mamontov's Abramtsevo Art Circle. Beginning in 1878 as well, Repin was a member of the Itinerants and a constant participant in their exhibitions. He served as a professor and as head of the studio affiliated with the Petersburg Academy of Arts (1894-1907) and as director of the Academy in 1898-1899. At about this same time, Repin taught at the studio-school of the Princess M. K. Tenisheva.

A painter of landscapes, genre scenes, and portraits, Repin often depicted themes from history in his works, especially in his landscapes. He was also an accomplished master of drawing, and he produced several lithographs. In 1900 Repin took as his permanent residence the estate Penaty in Kuokkala, a village in the vicinity of Petersburg. This estate soon became an established center of Russian artistic and literary activity in the early twentieth century.

"On the basis of his huge, and perfectly extraordinary talent, he deserves a prominent place in more than just the history of Russian art" (A. N. Benois, 1902).

Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge

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Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge, an artist of great and original talent, studied at the Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1850 to 1857, where he was strongly influenced by the work of K. P. Brullov. (He became a member of the Academy in 1863.) On a scholarship from the Academy, Ge lived in Italy for twelve years (1857-1869). There he became closely founding member and a constant participant in their exhibitions, where his works represented a new style of Russian history painting and portraiture. Ge's friendship with L. N. Tolstoy caused him to follow the religious, philosophical teachings of this great writer. From 1876, Ge lived on a homestead in the Ukraine, farming and practicing Tolstoy's call for simple living. During this time, Ge attempted to paint scenes from the gospels and tried, like Tolstoy, to create his own "gospels" with paints. When shown in exhibitions, these paintings both provoked heated debates and arguments, and won Ge a measure of authority and recognition.

Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindji

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Despite his lack of a formal art education, Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindji became a professor and head of the landscape studio (1894-1897) in the Higher Art School affiliated with the Petersburg Academy of Arts. Prior to this, he worked for a year (1865-1866) in the general art studio of I. K. Aivazovskii in Theodosia and joined the Circle of the Itinerants (1875-1879), exhibiting with the group from 1874. He also participated in the exhibitions held by the Academy, having become an active member in 1893, and organized a number of exhibitions of his own work. Later Kuindzhi urged the creation of the Association of Artists, which remained a vital artists' group from 1908 to 1931 and eventually bore his name.

As a landscape painter who lived in the Crimea and Petersburg, Kuindji was one of several outstanding artists who took part in the formation of a national school of Russian landscape painting during the second half of the nineteenth century; he represents its romantic line. An emotionally charged interpretation of nature, generalized forms, intense colors and their heightened contrast, a vividly expressed decorative composition, and a search for the pictorial are all characteristic features of his art. Kuindji the teacher nurtured a glittering group of landscape artists, which included Nikolai Roerich, Arkadii Rylov, and Konstantin Bogaevskii, among others.

Victor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov

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Son of a village clergyman, Victor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov prepared himself for the same career, but the passionate love for art brought the 19-year-old student of ecclesiastical seminary to St. Petersburg's Academy of Arts. During his years (1868-75) in the Academy Vasnetsov got a thorough professional training; an especially big role in his education was played by professor Pavel Tchistyakov.

Victor Vasnetsov started as a scene painter; the influence of Fedotov and Perov in his early works is evident Moving House (1876), At a Bookseller's (1876), News from the Front (1878), A Game of Preference (1879). In the late 1870s early 1880s, Vasnetsov tried himself in historical genre Battle of Slavs and Scythians (1881), After Prince Igor's Battle with the Polovtsy (1880). He borrowed the subjects from ancient history. He found another source of subjects in Russian mythology – legends, ballads, fairy-tales. Vasnetsov was born and grew up in a northern Russian village and almost to the age of 20 lived in an environment where the ‘folklore outlook’ was still alive; his very soul was steeped in the poetry of Russian epic literature. He wasn't only the first artist to use subjects from folklore, but also the first to borrow methods and techniques from national folk art. Thus he became the founder of new style in Russian painting.

Vasnetsov was an active member of the Abramtsevo circle (Abramtsevo is the estate of the well-known patron of arts Savva Mamontov), which sought to revive national traditions. Many undertakings by the Abramtsevo Colony, whether the construction of a church at Abramtsevo, where Vasnetsov, as the designer, first coped with the problem of creating a whole, integral ensemble, or the erection of the ‘Witch’s Hut” (also to his design), or the sets and costumes for the production of Alexander Ostrovsky’s lyrical fairy-tale The Snow Maiden and for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera of the same name, staged at Mamontov’s private Opera in 1885, were to become milestones not only for Vasnetsov but also for the Russian art in whole.

In 1882, Vasnetsov received a commission to produce a decorative panel for the rotunda of the Historical Museum in Moscow, which was his first big monumental project. Yet the most significant and time-consuming work of this type was the decoration of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir in Kiev, which Vasnetsov began in the autumn of 1885 at the invitation of the art historian Adrian Prakhov, who supervised the construction of the cathedral. Vasnetsov jumped at this offer as it gave him the opportunity to create an integral ensemble comparable to those done by ancient fresco-painters. Work on the decoration of the cathedral took over 10 years, during which Vasnetsov executed nearly 400 sketches and studies. The murals he painted with his assistants covered almost two thousand square meters. Fulfilling this assignment Vasnetsov relied on his favorite range of motifs and characters, painting the walls with the images of princes Vladimir, Alexander Nevsky, Andrey Bogoliubsky, Princess Olga, the chronicler Nestor, and other outstanding figures from Russian history.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Vasnetsov actively worked in different fields. He produced a number of architectural designs, including those for his own house in Moscow (1894), for a pavilion at the World Fair in Paris (1898), and for E. Tsvetkov’s house on the Moskva River (1901-03), as well as designs for decoration of the Great Kremlin Palace (1898), the Faceted Chamber (1901-03), and other buildings in the Kremlin. In 1904, he designed the facade of the Tretyakov Gallery.

During the last 20 years of his life Vasnetsov turned to his favorite lyrical subjects inspired by Russian fairy-tales. These include Three Bogatyrs (1898), The Frog Tsarevna (1918), The Tale of the Sleeping Beauty (1900-26), and the Unsmiling Tsarevna (1916-26). Thanks to his enchantment with Russian epos and history, thanks to his search for a genuinely Russian pictorial idiom, Vasnetsov was able, of the eve of the 20th century, to inspire many artists to reaffirm the moral and aesthetic ideals of the people, to revive Russian’s spiritual legacy.

His painting influenced greatly the development of modernism and symbolism in Russian painting and poetry.

Aleksei Kondratievich Savrasov

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After ten years of study (beginning in 1844) with K. I. Rabus at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, Aleksei Kondratievich Savrasov achieved the rank of member of the Academy in 1854. Although based in Moscow, Savrasov traveled frequently, taking trips to England, France, Germany, and Switzerland in 1862, to Paris in 1867, and to the Volga River and to the Ukraine several times between 1870 and 1875. He organized and headed (1857-1882) a landscape painting class at the Moscow School, where his followers included K. A. Korovin and I. I. Levitan. From 1861 Savrasov held membership in the Moscow Society of Art Lovers, and in 1870 he became a founding member of the Circle of the Itinerants. In addition to these groups, the artist participated in numerous exhibitions held at the Academy of Arts, in international exhibitions in Vienna (1873) and Paris (1878), and in 1882 the All Russian exhibition in Moscow, among others. Savrasov, an accomplished draftsman and landscape painter, is considered the originator of the lyrical landscape in late nineteenth-century Russian realist painting.

"Beginning with Savrasov, there was a lyricism in landscape painting as well as an endless love for One's own country..." (Levitan).

Isaak Ilych Levitan

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"What can be more tragic than to feel the boundlessness of the surrounding beauty and to be able to see in it its underlying mystery... and yet to be aware of your own inability to express these large feelings"

Isaak Levitan was born in 1860 in Kibarty, a small town in Lithuania, to the family of a blue-collar railroad worker. From 1873 to 1885 he attended the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow, Russia. He studied under the famous Russian painters Savrasov and Polenov. From 1884 he displayed his paintings with the Society for Circulating Art Exhibitions* and became a member of the Society in 1891. From 1898 Levitan taught landscape painting at the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 40 years of his life, Isaak Levitan painted many landscapes which were later recognized to be among the finest masterpieces of Russian art. Levitan never looked for exotic and pretentious subjects for his paintings but remained faithful to simple poetic motifs of his native land. The natural simplicity of motif and composition of Levitan's landscapes is a hallmark of his artistic genius. It was evident from the very outset of Levitan's career that he had an extraordinary ability to awaken deep human feelings by the means of landscape painting. Although people usually are not present on his canvases, his landscapes unfailingly speak of humanity. Levitan's paintings tell us something about ourselves, as they touch the chords of our inner spirit. Nature is always presented in them through the prism of very personal human experience. Therefore Levitan's landscapes are often called philosophical and psychological. The complexity of the human soul and the destiny of man can be rightfully considered the true subjects of his paintings. In his early years Levitan painted views of various places in the Moscow area. One of the best works from this period is "Autumn day. Sokolniky." This early canvas is the artist's elegy to the gray autumn day in one of the Moscow parks.

During the second period of his artistic career Levitan was drawing his inspiration from the Volga. The painter spent several summers in a row on the banks of the great Russian river. Plyos, a small town on the Volga, was undoubtedly Levitan's favorite spot. Levitan painted greatly multiform canvases which served as an invaluable contribution to the advancement of realistic landscape painting in Russia. From 1892 to 1895 Levitan divided his time between the towns of Vladimir, Vyshny Volochek, and the Tver region. The works of this period are considered to be the most powerful philosophical reflections of the painter on the destiny of man. The canvas "Deep Waters" conjures up images of folk tales about the drowned. "The Vladimirka Road" depicts the route which was customarily used for leading prisoners to exile in the Siberia. "The Eternal Rest" speaks of the irreconcilable dualism of life and death. But not all the paintings of this period present such a grim perspective on human destiny. A joyous hymn of life is heard in such works as "March," "The Fresh Wind. The Volga," and "The Golden Autumn."

The last large canvas by Levitan is titled "The Lake. Russ." Perhaps this monumental work finds a parallel in Rachmaninov's second piano concerto. The artist's goal in the painting was to create an image that would be a summation of all, that from the artist's point of view, was characteristically Russian: the great expanses of land and water, the white silhouettes of churches, the great clouds driven by the wind, and the rustling reeds. The canvas remained unfinished. The work on it was stopped by the painter's death. Isaak Levitan was buried at the Novodevichiye cemetery in Moscow.

The famous Russian opera singer Fyodor Shalyapin, a friend of Levitan's, spoke of the art of the painter: "It has brought me to realization that the most important thing in art is this feeling, this spirit, this prophetic word that sets people's hearts on fire. And this prophetic word can be expressed not only in speech and gesture but also in line and color."

Valentin Serov

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Valentin Serov (1865-1911), the son of the opera composer, had come as a small boy to live at Abramtsevo with his widowed mother in 1874. He grew up in the atmosphere of con-stant creative activity which characterised the Mamontov household. From a very early age Serov was given drawing lessons by Repin, who was very fond of the little boy, and he soon showed himself to be a remarkably precocious draughtsman. He would catch the likeness of a model often more quickly and surely than the older artists in the merry "drawing competitions" which were so much part of this gay, idyllic life of Abramtsevo. This talent for catching a likeness Serov later developed and he became the most successful and brilliant portraitist of the 1890's and first decade of this century. But before this he was a beautiful landscape painter in a'more sensuous and less nostalgic vein than his master Levitan. Serov, like Korovin, was a most beneficial influence in the Moscow College where he taught from 1900 up till 1909. He was a superb technical master of the many media in which he practised and that too did not fail to impress his students. Surikov had shown him the value of fine colours, a lesson which the revived interest in icons had helped to stress. It was from these ancient panels that Serov also became aware of the significance of the essential in a composition and the unimportance of the unnecessary, but it was undoubtedly Vrubel who showed Serov the value of responding to a personal emotional experience. Serov was thus able to make his mark at the age of twenty-two on exhibiting two paintings, "Girl with Peaches" and "Girl in Sunlight". At the time of painting them he was unfamiliar with the works of the French Impressionists, yet he came very close to Renoir in these luminous, sunny, splendidly composed portraits.