Repin, Shiskin and Kramskoi
Not long ago I had the opportunity to visit St. Petersburg, Russia, to see some of the less accessible treasures of 19th Century painting. These Russian works are very much a part of the traditions and achievements of that very fertile artistic period in Western art. The Hermitage Museum on the banks of the Neva River in Petersburg houses a vast collection of some of the greatest names in European painting, but it is the nearby Russian Museum where the finest achievements of Russian painting can be found.
The Academic style dominated European painting through the majority of the 19th Century. At the Petersburg Academy of Arts, Greek and Roman mythological subjects and Neoclassical style were the standards for artistic beauty, much as they were in Paris. But by the latter part of that century things began to change.
In France, the Impressionists began to move away from academic methods and historical themes and to find artistic possibilities in the world around them. In America, the Hudson River School painters were exploring the character of the American landscape and giving birth to a national style. And in Russia, the artistic talents of the day were exploring subjects with a distinctly Russian character.
It was the artists who were a part of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions or "Itinerants" who embodied and gave creative force to Russian art of the period. Ivan Kramskoi (1837-1887) was one of the founding members of the Itinerants and its ideological leader.Kramskoi was a powerful and highly influential figure in Russian art, both through his paintings and through his art reviews, which he wrote in St. Petersburg. He had attended the Petersburg Academy but he left before graduating in what was to be called "The Rebellion of the Fourteen." Kramskoi was one of the main instigators of the rebellion, which was a reaction to the Academy's insistence to adhere to Academic traditions in not allowing the students to choose the subject of their graduate work.
Alexander Benois, an art critic, said this of Kramskoi: "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 manifestations of the new directions, nor perhaps the very style...Kramskoi's intellect and energy merged them all into a whole, giving their intentions a common, definite purpose."
Barge Haulers on the Volga
Oil on canvas, 1870-3
State Russian Museum
The Rebellion of the Fourteen coincided with the arrival of Ilya Repin (1844-1930) as a fresh new student to the Petersburg Academy. Repin was to become the most significant Russian artist of his time. His picture Barge Haulers on the Volga, begun in his last year as a student, was a departure from the normal Academy subjects in its social commentary. Repin shows great feeling in his depiction of the haggard group of peasants straining against the ropes of the barge. The heat and toil are evident in their postures and in the expressions on their faces.
The picture garnered the young artist fame and helped launch his career. This kinship with the "simple folk," as depicted in this painting, was the underlying characteristic of Repin and his work. "Now it is the peasant who counts," he said, "it is necessary to represent his interests." Kramskoi and Repin became close friends, exhibiting together with the Itinerants after Repin became a member. Kramskoi once said, "Repin is capable of depicting the Russian peasant exactly as he is. I know many artists who have painted peasants, some very well, but none of them ever approached Repin's portrayal."
Portrait of Ivan I. Shishkin
Oil on canvas, 1880
Russian Museum
Kramskoi's own well-crafted portraits are more austere, far less robust than Repin's and possibly less insightful. They do, however, possess a unique dignified beauty which reflects Kramskoi, the man. One of Kramskoi's masterpieces is his portrait of the great landscape painter Ivan Shishkin , which could rank among the greatest of 19th Century portraits.
The standing figure of Shishkin is seen against a simple off-white background filled with light and an interplay of warm and cool colors. The figure stands out as work of the French painter William Bouguereau . The treatment of the hair and beard deserves special comment for its studied form — full of detail, yet overall presenting a very natural effect.
In all of his work, Kramskoi shows himself to be an excellent draftsman who also possesses a unique color sensitivity. Many years later Repin would write of his friend, "His main and his largest works are his portraits...He created many portraits of such seriousness and poise."
Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898), "The Poet of the Forest," was Russia's premier landscape painter who helped transform the genre into a more naturalistic style capable of expressing Russian character. He studied first at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture, then later at the Petersburg Academy, graduating just a few years before the arrival of Repin. Shishkin was not very much influenced by the training at the Academy, but it was there that his artistic outlook was formulated. He nevertheless did win a gold medal and a traveling scholarship that took him to Europe. Upon his return, he was also accepted as a member of the Itinerants with whom he would exhibit regularly for the next 30 years.
Like Shishkin, Repin had also won a traveling scholarship and spent three years in Italy and Paris where he saw the first exhibition of the Impressionists in 1876. It is interesting to note that at the time Repin was not strongly in favor of the new French school though some of his work of the period seems to evoke an impressionist look.
Religious Procession in the Province of Kursk
Oil on canvas, 1877
In 1876 Repin writes, "I have begun many pictures but they are not at all satisfactory and I feel I have not yet hit upon anything significant." The following year he conceived his grand painting Religious Procession in the Province of Kursk. In this work Repin brings all of his skills to bear in the completion of this monumental canvas.
Over a six-year period, Repin would work and rework the painting, collecting studies from Moscow and Kursk for the various components. The composition, perspective and atmospheric effect all give testimony to Repin's mastery. Here is a true panoramic depiction of the Russian peasant.
It is in large-scale works such as this that Repin successfully uses an impressionist method of recording a fragment of nature and then incorporates it into a finished work, rather than as an end in itself. Though the idea of preparatory studies is nothing new, in Repin's unique style he finds a pleasing synthesis of the academic and impressionist schools.
In the work of Ivan Shishkin there is an arresting naturalism not at all like the earlier "invented landscapes" of the Academy. It is evident in his work that here is a man who loves nature as it is. In his painting, Backwoods, 1872, the artist presents us with a view of a woodland interior complete with an almost overabundance of detail. A fox can be seen in the lower corner of the picture, but small and indistinct in the wealth of its surroundings. The painting is composed of but one predominant tone and little or no value contrast-precisely as the scene would have appeared. Honesty and realism are the picture's carrying force.
These woodland scenes are Shishkin's most powerful and interesting works, all remarkably complex in their detail and patterning of light. It is an example of his devotion and skill that he is not only able to portray the scenes with such realism, but also resolve them into a successful design.
With Shishkin, as well as his European counterparts of the period, the outdoor study gained increasing significance in the production of the finished piece and in some cases was considered a finished piece in itself. Kramskoi wrote in 1872: "Shishkin simply amazes us by his ability, doing two or three studies a day, and such complex ones, too... Out there face to face with nature, he is in his element, he is bold and clever and unhesitant; out there he knows everything...he is by himself a school...a milestone in the evolution of the Russian landscape."
Half a continent away the man who was to be the central figure in the movement toward outdoor painting, Claude Monet , was creating his own unique impressions of nature in the countryside of his native France. Devoted as they were to their on-site landscape work, these two kindred spirits, Monet and Shishkin, nevertheless achieved results that were stylistically at opposite ends of the spectrum. Monet's guiding aesthetic was to paint blobs and dashes of color which then fused visually into an impression of the scene. Shishkin, on the other hand, seemed to revel in the endless variety of nature. Shishkin once said, "One must seek nature in all its simplicity ... the drawing must follow it in every caprice of form." This love for nature's intricacies is also quite evident in the numerous ink drawings, lithographs and etchings that he made during his lifetime, which are marvels in themselves.
Amidst The Spreading Vale and Rye
Oil on canvas, 1878
By 1878 Shishkin's work was at its full maturity. In Amidst The Spreading Vale and Rye, Shishkin is able to blend a striking truth to nature with a deeper emotional impact without relying on a forced design or color harmony. It is truth through the eyes of a poet, one who had spent countless hours recording nature in study after study.
Shishkin regarded his studies well enough to organize a large exhibition in 1891 with Repin. Scores of these studies were hung at the Academy of Arts along with nearly 300 paintings by Repin. After the exhibition, Shishkin, Repin and other members of the Itinerants were offered teaching positions at the Academy.
Repin also enjoyed a career as a portrait painter. At the same time John Singer Sargent was immersed in his celebrated career as a portraitist of the fashionable elite, Repin was painting Russian officials, artists, writers and members of high society.
Repin even did a portrait of the Italian actress Eleanora Duse who also sat for Sargent two years later. But Sargent's handsome, elegant portraits are not at all like the penetrating depictions of Repin's. Sargent's pictures are gorgeous surfaces and glittering highlights, Repin's are more searching and intimate.
Repin did an entire series of portraits of the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Though regarded as a literary giant by the Russian people, Repin shows Tolstoy as a humble peasant walking in the woods and as a workman mowing down grass in the fields. He shows Tolstoy as a simple man very much a part of the natural world. Repin's portrait of the composer Modest Mussorgsky, done in a military hospital shortly before the composer's death, is a frank depiction of his condition. Here Repin's honesty is again accompanied by a great sensitivity.
Some of Repin's most powerful work deals with the social dilemmas that were part of Russian life. Many of these same themes ere also being explored by the great Russian authors of the period such as Tolstoy, Dostoievsky and others. In canvases such as Spurning Confession and Arrest of a Propagandist, Repin demonstrates his skill as a dramatist by his careful arrangement of the scene. Another of these works entitled They Did Not Expect Him depicts the return of an exile to his family. The tension of the scene is manifest in the different reactions of family members to the homecoming.
In 1901, Repin received an official commission to paint the Russian dignitaries of state in formal session. In this monumental task, he was aided by two of his pupils who assisted in painting the many head studies of these officials in preparation for the large canvas. Some 80 figures are represented in the final work, which Repin painted left-handed due to strain on his right hand. The immense canvas hangs along with several of the studies at the Russian Museum in Petersburg.
In the works of Ivan Shishkin we see all the power, grandeur and vastness of the Russian land without idealization, but with a tireless diligence for truthful rendering.
In the work of Repin, who for most of his career was the central figure in Russian painting, his religious, narrative and historical canvases show the Russian people from the comedic, to the sublime and to the tragic. These outstanding artists bring forth on canvas all the currents of 19th Century Russian feeling.
About the Author
Steven J. Levin spent six years of study at the Atelier LeSueur in Minnesota and was instructor of drawing and painting there from 1988 to 1995. His work incorporates a strength of drawing and form with an impressionist emphasis on true color and plein-air, or out-of-door, painting. His interests as a painter are somewhat diverse, ranging from portraits, still life, and landscapes, to figure paintings. In his pursuit of excellence, Levin has traveled to the major museums of Europe, as well as an extended stay in England to copy from the masters in London's National Gallery. His interest in landscape has taken him on painting excursions to Colorado, Switzerland, France and Italy. Repin, Shiskin and Kramskoi, by Steven Levin, Vol. II, Issue 2, Copyright 1995 by the Classical Realism Journal. Reproduced courtesy of the Classical Realism Journal and the American Society of Classical Realism. Further reference: Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy's gallery on ARC.
