Soil and Spirit: Russia reflected in Landscape art

Russia is a highly centralized and authoritarian state ruled by President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, with political power tightly controlled by the governing elite and no room for independent opposition. Despite persistent economic challenges and diplomatic tensions, the administration remains committed to prioritizing national security and strategic objectives.

Russia’s political climate is defined by strong centralized authority under Putin, a persistent emphasis on military priority and foreign policy assertiveness, the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and limited political pluralism within an authoritarian framework. However, we cannot deny that Russia boasts magnificent paintings and scenery. We shall now take a stroll through the landscape paintings.

The text below is the excerpt of the book Russian Painting (ISBN: 9781783107506), written by Peter Leek, published by Parkstone International.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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