Roots: Canadian and Russian Landscape Painting (1860 – 1940)

The Tunkinskaia Valley (Tunká) is located to the south of Lake Baikal. To the north, the valley is surrounded by the slopes of the Tunkinskaia mountain range, whose peaks are covered in snow ten months of the year. Extremely unusual shapes can sometimes be found among its crags, cliffs and crests. The mountainside is covered in a dense conifer forest and the valley is well known for its springs and medicinal herbs. Traces of human activity on this ancient land date back to the Palaeolithic era. The inhabitants are descendants of Russian Cossacks, who came from Central Russia in the 16th century, as did the Buriats, Russified nationals from the Lake Baikal region. These people, farmers, livestock farmers, hunters, and fishermen, also traded in grain. Vronsky created his monumental works by first painting numerous studies. The painting Tunká combines the academic traditions of the Polish landscape and the romantic vision of the exotic locals and their distinctive lifestyle.

Stanislav Yevgenievich Vronsky

The landscape Before the Storm is intensely dramatic. The solitary figure of a traveller with his walking stick, and nowhere to find shelter from the threatening elements, infuses the painting with a sense of anxiety. The romanticism with which the work is imbued, and the free mixture of intense colours, clearly illustrate the painter’s talent and originality. By the early 1870s, Vasiliev was already an accomplished master whose works introduced new features to realistic Russian landscape painting. In his own landscapes, the discordant density of his representation of nature could be taken as a prophecy of his own tragic destiny and death.

Fyodor Aleksandrovich Vasiliev

Cows at a Watering-Place is a copy by the painter of the landscape he submitted to the first travelling exhibition of 1871. The artist depicts a typical Central Russian landscape, opening up on a broad and distant perspective; in it, he has been able to render the slow pace of everyday rural life. The painter pays such special attention to details, that he comes close to naturalism. This overly careful attention to detail led to occasional criticism from some of his contemporaries.

Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt

The Neva and St. Petersburg were Bogoliubov’s favourite subjects. He did not aspire to the romantic beauty so typical of Aivazovsky’s work, and his impressive panoramas were solemn and sublime. In this canvas, the painter shows the Admiralty Coast near the mouth of the great Neva River where it flows into the Baltic Sea. In the centre of the composition is the cupola of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and on the left, one can just make out the gilded spire of the Admiralty in the distance. In the foreground are innocuous scenes of everyday life, including steamboats and sailing ships: for Bogoliubov, St. Petersburg is not only the imperial capital, but a young, modern and active city—the “Russian Manchester,” as the painter liked to call it.

Aleksey Petrovich Bogoliubov

For Shishkin and his contemporaries, the image of nature could not be separated from the idea of Russia, its people and their destiny. Nothing is happenstance in the painting Pine Forest, Mast Timber in the Viatka Province, including the time of day, which was not chosen randomly: noon is intended to evoke the image of a Russia whose inner forces are in full development. The famous critic Stassov described Shishkin’s paintings as “landscapes for heroes,” but at the same time, Shishkin attempted the most exact and scientific approach to the subject represented. This was noted by his friend, the painter Kramskoy: “The forest is wild, the ferruginous water of the stream is dark yellow, with the stream bed covered in rocks...”. Shishkin has been described as “a realist with deep inner convictions who knew how to feel deeply and to love nature with a passion...”. But with all of this in mind, it must be pointed out that the artist introduces contrasts into his landscape, making it theatrical and giving us a kind of “spectacle of nature.”

Ivan Iv Read More

This painting has been a favourite for many generations. Polenov painted a typical view of the old city of Moscow: the church of Spasse-na-Peskakh, located in one of the lanes near the old street. (The church still exists, but it is now in a completely urban setting.) The painting shows us a typical urban landscape of Moscow in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The main urban form in Moscow at the time consisted of houses and yards, not streets and squares. The old private mansions of Moscow, which sometimes covered a whole neighbourhood, were surrounded by gardens, fruit orchards and outbuildings. These “nests of gentlemen” were the traditional everyday model based on life in the countryside, and explain why Moscow was often described as a “big village.” Polenov was able to create an image of peace and tranquillity. The canvas, painted with bright colours, affirms the joy of everyday existence—something the painter Serov called “felicity”—and renders the painter’s radiant feelings.

Vasiliy Dmitrievich Polenov