Russian landscapes in painting. Landscape in Russian painting. How did the landscape century end?

In Russian art, landscape as a genre of painting appeared at the end of the 18th century. Its founder is considered to be Semyon Shchedrin (1745-1804). Shchedrin's landscape works are built on the stylistic canons of classicism (the use of scenes in the composition, three-plane color distribution, smoothed texture of the letter). In their still conventional beauty, they nevertheless differ significantly from the previously existing “picturesque views” of cities and places of interest in their artistic and emotional expressiveness. It is achieved in a variety of ways by the depth and breadth of distances, the contrasts between the large masses of the foreground and the green-blue expanses opening behind them, which overall gives his landscapes an impressive airiness.

Other pioneers of this genre were the artists Fyodor Matveev (1758-1826), Fyodor Alekseev (1753/55-1824) and other artists, like Shchedrin, who were trained in academic painting in Western Europe.

Classicism continued to occupy a dominant position in the Russian art of landscape painting at the beginning of the 19th century. Matveev (heroic landscapes) and Alekseev (elegiac views of St. Petersburg and Moscow) continue to work; urban views also attract Andrei Martynov (1768-1826).

This direction, however, was gradually increasingly replaced by romanticism. Here it should be noted Sylvester Shchedrin (1791-1830), Vasily Sadovnikov (1800-1879), Mikhail Lebedev (1811-1837), Grigory Soroka (1823-1864), and, of course, Alexei Venetsianov (1780-1847), one of the first which showed the charm of the dim nature of the Central Russian strip.

The art of Russian landscape painting of the second half of the 19th century developed into an extremely diverse artistic direction. Landscape works in the spirit of romanticism were still widely created by such masters as Maxim Vorobyov (1787-1855) and his students: the brothers Grigory (1802-1865) and Nikanor (1805-1879) Chernetsov, Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900), Lev Lagorio (1826-1905), Alexey Bogolyubov (1824-1896).

Pyotr Sukhodolsky (1835-1903), Vladimir Orlovsky (1842-1914), Efim Volkov (1844-1920) and other painters of that time also worked in the landscape genre.

Narrative and concrete artistic tendencies are clearly reflected in the works of many painters, primarily Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898), fairy-tale-poetic ones - in the works of Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926), emotional and dramatic ones - in the works of another classic of Russian landscape painting paintings by Fyodor Vasiliev (1850-1873) and other lesser-known masters - for example, Lev Kamenev (1833/34-1886). Mikhail Klodt (1832-1902) became famous for his epic landscapes.

Some painters were passionate about the search for a generalized image, the colorfulness and decorativeness of the landscape - Viktor Borisov-Musatov (1870-1905), Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910), Boris Kustodiev (1878-1927), etc.

Around the middle of the 19th century, plein air was finally established in Russian landscape painting. In the further evolution of the landscape, impressionism played a major role, influencing the work of almost all serious painters in Russia. At the same time, a special aesthetic concept of perception and display of nature was formed - the lyrical landscape.

Alexei Savrasov (1830-1897), who became the founder of this direction of landscape painting, managed to show the unostentatious beauty and subtle lyricism of discreet Russian nature. Its breadth and power were reflected by Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942). Arkhip Kuindzhi (1841-1910) was attracted by the picturesque play of light and air.

Russian landscape painting of the 19th century reached its true peaks in the work of Isaac Levitan (1860-1900), a student of Savrasov. Levitan is a master of calm, but piercingly poignant “mood landscapes”. Many of his masterpieces depict views of Plyosan on the upper Volga.

Vasily Polenov (1844-1927), Konstantin Korovin (1861-1939), Ilya Repin (1844-1930), Nikolai Ge (1831-1894) also made a significant contribution of the highest achievements to the development of the Russian landscape of the 19th century, unique in its versatility and social significance. , Valentin Serov (1865-1911), Kiriak Kostandi (1852-1921), Nikolai Dubovskoy (1859-1918), etc.

The fate of “Russian impressionism” subsequently turned out to be difficult. The negative attitude towards “sketching” that emerged in the 30s and gained long-term inertia crippled many artists’ destinies, and forced art critics to “retroactively” “save” I. Repin, V. Serov, I. Levitan from it, with omissions to evaluate creativity of K. A. Korovin and other remarkable masters of landscape.

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Landscape has won its place as one of the leading genres of painting. His language has become, like poetry, a way of expressing the artist’s high feelings, a field of art in which deep and serious truths about the life and destinies of mankind are expressed, in which a contemporary speaks and recognizes himself. Looking at the works of landscape painting, listening to what the artist is talking about, depicting nature, we learn knowledge of life, understanding and love for the world and man. The largest Russian researchers of Russian painting in general, and landscape painting in particular, note the outstanding role of landscape in the high flowering of Russian painting in the 19th century. The conquests and achievements of Russian landscape painting of the 19th century are of global significance and lasting value. A. Fedorov-Davydov, in his work “On Our Landscape Painting” (1956), spoke about Russian landscape painters of the 2nd half of the 19th century: “These landscape painters reflected different aspects of contemporary Russian life, responded to its various pressing interests. /…/ These qualities of classical landscape painting - its deep ideological and emotional content, the harmonious combination in it of objective cognition with subjective lyricism, its organic modernity, manifested both in the plot and in its interpretation, permeating the entire internal figurative structure of the works - these its qualities are a legacy of Soviet landscape painting."

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We are glad to welcome you to the blog about contemporary art. Today I want to talk about painting, so this post is entirely dedicated to landscapes by Russian artists. In it you will find the most complete information about the work of Alexander Afonin, Alexey Savchenko and Viktor Bykov. All of them are not just talented, but divinely gifted individuals. Their creativity is multifaceted, original and skillful. They attract the attention of not only citizens of the Russian land, but also representatives and collectors from far abroad countries. Writing about them briefly is quite a difficult task, but we will try to summarize the information in order to present to your eyes only the most interesting and important things from the lives of artists and their work. Well, let's move on to the landscapes of Russian artists?

Landscapes of the true Russian artist Alexander Afonin

The period from 1982 to 1986 became a turning point for the artist for the rest of his life. In addition to the fact that during this time period Afonin received his education at the Zheleznogorsk Art School, it was then that he learned professionalism. Today Alexander considers this school one of the best in Russia.

Nature landscapes of different seasons from Alexey Savchenko

Landscapes by Russian artist Alexey Savchenko They take it not by color, but by some capricious northern mood. , maximum color realism - perhaps this is what is very clearly visible in the author’s paintings.

“Forest as if alive” by Russian artist Viktor Bykov

To complete the post, watch a wonderful video about classical landscapes by Russian artists:

This list of famous landscape painters was compiled by our editor Neil Collins, MFA, LL.B. It represents his personal opinion of the ten best representatives of genre art. Like any such compilation, it reveals more about the personal tastes of the compiler than about the place of landscape painters. So, the top ten landscape painters and their landscapes.

No. 10 Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)

There are two American artists in tenth place.

Thomas Cole: The greatest American landscape painter of the early 19th century and founder of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole was born in England, where he worked as an apprentice engraver before emigrating to the United States in 1818, where he quickly achieved recognition as a landscape painter, settling in the Catskill village of the Hudson Valley. An admirer of Claude Lorraine and Turner, he visited England and Italy from 1829 to 1832, after which (thanks in part to the encouragement he received from John Martyn and Turner) he began to focus less on natural landscapes and more on grand allegorical and historical themes. . Largely impressed by the natural beauty of the American landscape, Cole imbued much of his landscape art with great feeling and an obvious romantic splendor.

Famous landscapes of Thomas Cole:

- “View of the Catskills - Early Autumn” (1837), oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

- “American Lake” (1844), oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts

Frederic Edwin Church

Frederic Edwin Church: Cole's student, Church perhaps surpassed his teacher in monumental romantic panoramas, each of which conveyed some kind of spirituality of nature. Church painted impressive views of natural landscapes throughout the American continent from Labrador to the Andes.

Famous landscapes of Frederic Church:

- “Niagara Falls” (1857), Corcoran, Washington

- “The Heart of the Andes” (1859), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

- "Cotopaxi" (1862), Detroit Institute of Arts

No. 9 Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

Thoughtful, melancholy and a bit of a recluse, Caspar David Friedrich is the greatest landscape painter of the Romantic tradition. Born near the Baltic Sea, he settled in Dresden, where he focused exclusively on spiritual connections and the meaning of landscape, inspired by the silent silence of the forest, as well as light (sunrise, sunset, moonlight) and the seasons. His genius lay in his ability to capture a hitherto unknown spiritual dimension in nature, which gives the landscape an emotional, never-before-matched mysticism.

Famous landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich:

- “Winter Landscape” (1811), oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

- “Landscape in Riesengebirge” (1830), oil on canvas, Pushkin Museum, Moscow

- “Man and Woman Looking at the Moon” (1830-1835), oil, National Gallery, Berlin

No. 8 Alfred Sisley (1839-1899)

Often called the “forgotten impressionist,” the Anglo-French Alfred Sisley was second only to Monet in his devotion to spontaneous plein airism: he was the only Impressionist to devote himself exclusively to landscape painting. His seriously underrated reputation rests on his ability to capture the unique effects of light and the seasons in sweeping landscapes and sea and river scenes. His image of dawn and an unclear day is especially memorable. Nowadays he is not very popular, but is still considered one of the greatest representatives of impressionist landscape painting. Might well be overrated since, unlike Monet, his work never suffered from a lack of form.

Famous landscapes of Alfred Sisley:

- “Foggy Morning” (1874), oil on canvas, Orsay Museum

- “Snow at Louveciennes” (1878), oil on canvas, Orsay Museum, Paris

- “Morette Bridge in the Sun” (1892), oil on canvas, private collection

No. 7 Albert Cuyp (1620-1691)

Dutch realist painter, Aelbert Kuip is one of the most famous Dutch landscape painters. His magnificent scenic views, river scenes and landscapes of calm cattle, show a majestic serenity and a masterful handling of bright light (early morning or evening sun) in the Italian style is a sign of Klodeev's great influence. This golden light often catches only the sides and edges of plants, clouds or animals through impasto lighting effects. Thus, Cuyp turned his native Dordrecht into an imaginary world, reflecting it at the beginning or end of an ideal day, with an all-encompassing sense of stillness and security, and the harmony of everything with nature. Popular in Holland, it was highly prized and collected in England.

Famous landscapes of Albert Cuyp:

- “View of Dordrecht from the North” (1650), oil on canvas, collection of Anthony de Rothschild

- “River Landscape with Horseman and Peasants” (1658), oil, National Gallery, London

No. 6 Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875)

Jean-Baptiste Corot, one of the greatest landscape painters of the Romantic style, is famous for his unforgettable picturesque depictions of nature. His particularly subtle approach to distance, light and form depended on tone rather than on drawing and color, giving the finished composition the atmosphere of an endless romance. Less constrained by pictorial theory, Korot's work nevertheless ranks among the world's most popular landscapes. A regular participant in the Paris Salon since 1827 and a member of the Barbizon School led by Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), he had a huge influence on other plein air artists such as Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). ) and Alfred Sisley (1839-1899). He was also an extraordinarily generous man who spent much of his money on artists in need.

Famous landscapes of Jean-Baptiste Corot:

- “Bridge at Narni” (1826), oil on canvas, Louvre

- “Ville d'Avrey” (ca. 1867), oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York

- “Rural Landscape” (1875), oil on canvas, Toulouse-Lautrec Museum, Albi, France

No. 5 Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682)

The work of Jacob Van Ruisdael, now considered the greatest of all Dutch realist landscape painters, had an enormous influence on later European landscape art, despite the fact that during his lifetime he was less popular than the Italian style painters. His subjects included windmills, rivers, forests, fields, beaches and seascapes, depicted with an unusually moving feeling, using bold shapes, dense colors and energetic thick brushstrokes, rather than the usual focus on tone. Jacob, a student of his uncle Salomon van Ruisdael, in turn taught the famous Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709), and greatly admired English masters such as Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable, as well as members of the Barbizon School.

Famous landscapes of Jacob van Ruisdael:

- “Landscape with Shepherds and Farmers” (1665), oil on canvas, Uffizi Gallery

- “Mill in Wijk near Duarsted” (1670), oil on canvas, Rijksmuseum

- “Jewish cemetery in Ouderkerk” (1670), Gallery of Old Masters, Dresden

No. 4 Claude Lorrain (1600-1682)

French painter, draughtsman and engraver, active in Rome, who is considered by many art historians to be the greatest painter of the idyllic landscape in the history of art. Since pure (that is, secular and non-classical) landscape, like ordinary still life or genre painting, lacked moral gravity (in 17th century Rome), Claude Lorrain introduced classical elements and mythological themes into his compositions, including gods, heroes and saints. Moreover, his chosen environment, the countryside around Rome, was rich in ancient ruins. These classic Italian pastoral landscapes were also imbued with a poetic light that represents his unique contribution to the art of landscape painting. Claude Lorraine particularly influenced English artists, both during his lifetime and for two centuries after it: John Constable called him "the finest landscape painter the world has ever seen."

Famous landscapes of Claude Lorrain:

- “Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino” (1636), oil on canvas, Louvre

- “Landscape with the Wedding of Isaac and Rebecca” (1648), oil, National Gallery

- “Landscape with Tobias and the Angel” (1663), oil, Hermitage, St. Petersburg

No. 3 John Constable (1776-1837)

He ranks alongside Turner as one of the finest English landscape painters, not least because of his exceptional ability to recreate the colours, climate and rural landscape of the romantic English countryside, and because of his pioneering role in the development of plein airism. In contrast to Turner's distinctly interpretive style, John Constable focused on nature, painting the landscapes of Suffolk and Hampstead that he knew so well. However, his spontaneous, fresh compositions were often careful reconstructions, which owed much to his close study of Dutch realism, as well as Italianized works in the spirit of Claude Lorrain. Renowned artist Henry Fusli once commented that Constable's lifelike, naturalistic depictions always made him call for their protection!

Famous landscapes of John Constable:

- "Building a Boat at Flatward" (1815), oil, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

- “Hay Wagon” (1821), oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

No. 2 Claude Monet (1840-1926)

The greatest modern landscape painter and a giant of French painting, Monet was a leading figure in the incredibly influential Impressionist movement, whose principles of spontaneous plein air painting he remained faithful to for the rest of his life. A close friend of the Impressionist artists Renoir and Pissarro, his pursuit of optical truth, primarily in the depiction of light, is represented by a series of canvases depicting the same object in different lighting conditions, and at different times of day, such as Haystacks (1888). ), Poplars (1891), Rouen Cathedral (1892) and The River Thames (1899). This method culminated in the famous Water Lilies series (among all the most famous landscapes), created from 1883 in his garden at Giverny. His final series of monumental drawings of water lilies with shimmering flowers have been interpreted by several art historians and painters as an important precursor to abstract art, and by others as the supreme example of Monet's search for spontaneous naturalism.

In Russia, landscape as an independent genre of painting established itself in the 18th century; before that, artists depicted only elements of landscapes in icon painting compositions and book illustrations. The pioneers of this genre were artists who studied in Europe - Semyon Shchedrin, Fyodor Alekseev, Fyodor Matveev. Semyon Shedrin (1745-1804) was famous in his time as a painter of imperial country parks. F.Ya. Alekseev (1753-1824) was known as the Russian Canaletto, depicting architectural monuments of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Gatchina and Pavlovsk (Fig. 20). F.M. Matveev (1758-1826), who spent most of his life in Italy, worked in the spirit of his teacher, Hackert, whom M.M. also imitated. Ivanov (1748--1828).

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The development of Russian landscape painting of the 19th century is conventionally divided into two stages, distinguishable quite clearly, although organically connected with each other - the romantic direction and the realistic. The time boundary between them can be drawn in the mid-1820s. Romantic direction of the Russian landscape. In the first quarter of the 19th century, Russian landscape painting was liberated from the rationalistic principles of 18th-century classicism. Romanticism plays a significant role in this process. The development of romantic landscape painting took place in three directions: urban landscape based on work from life; the study of nature on Italian soil and the discovery of the Russian national landscape. Among city views, views of St. Petersburg must be given first place in terms of quantity, artistic quality and significance. The image of St. Petersburg continued to excite artists and poets; the city revealed its new sides to the people who lived in it. Petersburg was depicted in large quantities and these views had great success and distribution. Among the painters who worked in this genre of romantic landscape painting, the work of M. Vorobyov, A. Martynov, S. Galaktionov, Gnedich, Delarue especially stands out. For the leading artists of the beginning of the century, St. Petersburg was not only the magnificent “Northern Palmyra,” the majestic capital of the empire, but also the center of their intellectual activity. They not only glorify him in their works, but also express their personal love for him. In “Walk to the Academy of Arts” Batyushkov is original in the genre features of the lyrical perception of the city, showing it in everyday life. Interesting are the paintings of early Vorobyov in the spirit of romanticism, striking with the “monotonous beauty” of the images of “infantry troops and horses.” However, Maxim Nikiforovich Vorobyov also painted paintings with views of Moscow, which also enjoyed great success. In the painting “View of the Moscow Kremlin from the Ustinsky Bridge” (1818), dilapidated houses are depicted in the foreground - a sad reminder of the fire of Moscow in 1812 (Fig. 21). The panorama of the Kremlin, all the cathedrals and towers were drawn by Vorobyov with the greatest precision. The distant landscape was a favorite image of romantic painting, as it led the viewer’s gaze to the horizon into infinity, calling to rise above everyday life and be carried away to dreams.

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The other side of romanticism - its interest in the landscape as a characteristic portrait of the area can also be seen in the works of Sylvester Shchedrin. This artist occupied a special place in art. The features of romanticism were most reflected in his worldview, in his desire to realize his independence as an artistic personality. At the same time, in the person of Shchedrin, the Russian school joined the tradition of lyrical landscape, already widely mastered by artists from other countries. Shchedrin's early works - views of St. Petersburg - go back to the classical tradition of the city landscape of F. Alekseev, but are softened by a lyrical perception of the appearance of “Northern Palmyra”. Shchedrin’s main theme was the nature of Italy, where this artist, who died early, spent almost his entire creative life. The romantic beginning of Shchedrin's Italian landscapes is expressed in the poetic perception of Italy as a kind of happy world, where man merges with sunny, benevolent nature in the measured, leisurely flow of his everyday life, in his calm and free existence. In this interpretation of Italian nature, there is a lot from Russian lyric poetry of the first quarter of the 19th century, which depicted Italy as the promised land, the birthplace of art, a country with which, to a certain extent, the republican ideals of Ancient Rome are also associated. In an effort to get closer to nature, Shchedrin overcame the convention of alternating warm and cold tones of the 18th century landscape, taking a step towards plein air for the first time in Russian painting. He strives to lighten the palette; His landscapes everywhere contain cold and silvery reflections of the sky or greenish reflections of sun-pierced sea water. These features are visible in the large and complex landscape “New Rome. Castle St. Antella,” still relatively traditional in design, and become more distinct in the landscape “On the Island of Capri” (Fig. 22). Particularly interesting is the painting of the series “Small Harbors in Sorrento”, where the bare coastal cliffs are dotted with greenish-blue and greenish-ocher reflections of the sea. Shchedrin strove to find simple and natural pictorial motifs. Shchedrin was brought closer to them by his interest in “local color,” but his own art is characterized as more “sublime, permeated with a craving for the ideal of a free, natural life.”

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The romantic line of Italian views in the Russian landscape was continued by Mikhail Lebedev, a student of Vorobyov, who lived a very short life. In the 1830s he worked in Italy, in the vicinity of Rome. Lebedev painted the green masses of trees in a special manner and skillfully emphasized certain colors. Lebedev, as critics note, was able to sense the inner tension of natural life. The artist often painted views of roads and alleys that did not lead the viewer’s gaze far away, but turned, romantic, shaded by bushes. The space into which he introduces the viewer is small, but in it a person finds himself face to face with a simple but deeply felt motive (Fig. 23).

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The national Russian landscape was established in the genre works of A.G. Venetsianova. The artist created his own school, independent of the Academy, where peasants and commoners studied painting. This circle of artists depicted peasant life against the backdrop of meadows and fields of ripe rye. Contrasting his school of working from life with the academic trend, rejecting the accepted “manner,” Venetsianov managed to create works that “emanate warmth and mood.” What was told to them about the “simple and sincere nature” of the art of the artist, who knew how to bring a heartfelt feeling into the image of “native places, native settings, native types,” will forever remain in the treasury of Russian art history. A.G. Venetsianov taught how to paint figures and landscapes, bypassing the long stage of working from plaster and copying paintings, which was mandatory at the Academy. Venetsianov himself combined views of fields and meadows in his paintings with images of peasant girls and children.

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These reapers and shepherdesses embodied in his paintings the poetic collective image of peasant Rus'. The landscape backgrounds of his paintings introduce the theme of nature into Russian painting as a sphere of application of the labor of human hands. In this, Venetsianov breaks with the classical tradition of depicting ideal nature, the trimmed and smoothed nature of parks where people from the upper strata of society relax and enjoy. But for all the democracy of Venetian peasant lands, the figures of the girls themselves in his paintings are classically idealized (Fig. 24). To student A.G. Venetsianov A. Krylov owns perhaps the very first winter landscape in Russian painting. This painting depicts a snow-covered, gently sloping beach covered in bluish-gray snow, with a dark strip of forest in the distance and bare black trees in the foreground. The same river with steep clay slopes was painted in the summer by another student A.G. Venetsianova - A. Tyranov. One of the most gifted artists of this circle, G. Soroka, painted views in the vicinity of estates located in the Tver province. The bright, peaceful landscapes of Soroka are born from a naive and integral perception of the surrounding world. Analyzing the compositions of his landscapes, you can see that they are built on a simple balance of horizontal and vertical lines. The artist generally conveys clumps of trees, the outlines of the banks of the river, he constantly emphasizes the smooth rhythm of horizontals - the line of the coast, a dam, a long boat gliding on the water, elongated clouds moving across the sky. And in each picture there are several strict vertical columns, free-standing foreground figures, obelisks, etc. Another master of the Venetsian circle, E. Krendovsky, worked a lot in Ukraine. One of his most famous works is “The Square of a Provincial Town” (Fig. 25). Critics note the “naivety of the composition” combined with “the thoroughness of the characterization of all the characters, similar to the description of a person’s appearance through the lips of a provincial.”

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The provincial romantic landscape, just like other types of painting genre, developed in the 19th century regardless of what was happening at the “top” of art. Together with other genres, it is an area where the efforts of serf masters, former icon painters, and amateurs from the nobility and common ranks were applied. The authors of these works mostly remained anonymous, their artistic results reflected the lack of professional training or its insufficiency, but in general their work has the charm of sincere self-expression and a direct view of the world. The very conditions of life in Russia at that time did not allow talented people from among the people to reveal themselves in their entirety; Even educated artists had difficulty winning the right to create without the dictates of clients. It is necessary to note another movement of Russian romantic landscape - Marinism. The founder of this genre in Russian painting was Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky. I.K.’s own painting style Aivazovsky was already taking shape by the 40s of the 19th century. He departs from the strict classical rules of painting, uses the experience of Maxim Vorobyov, Claude Lorrain and creates colorful paintings that skillfully convey the various effects of water and foam, and the warm golden tones of the coast. In several large paintings - “The Ninth Wave”, “The Black Sea”, “Among the Waves” - majestic images of the sea were created using the shipwreck theme typical of a romantic painting. This is the impression Aivazovsky’s paintings made on his contemporaries: “In this painting (“Neapolitan Night”) I see the moon with its gold and silver, standing over the sea and reflected in it. . . The surface of the sea, onto which a light breeze blows a quivering swell, seems like a field of sparks or a lot of metallic sparkles on the mantle. . . Forgive me, great artist, if I was mistaken in mistaking nature for reality, but your work enchanted me and delight took possession of me. Your art is high and powerful, because you are inspired by genius” (Fig. 26). This is a prose translation of a poem by the outstanding English landscape painter Turner. He dedicated the poem to the 25-year-old artist Ivan Aivazovsky, whom he met in Rome in the 40s of the 19th century. Gradually, the art of the mid-19th century embarked on the path of realistic development. In this regard, in the landscape, masters are looking for a truthful image of reality.

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Even artists who, like Venetsianov, remain within the old pictorial system of romanticism, go towards the same goal as their pioneer contemporaries. A bold step in this direction was taken by one of the greatest artists of the first half of the 19th century, Alexander Ivanov. To convey light, air, and space, he needed all the complexity of colorful combinations. Not satisfied with the old academic system of painting, he created a new method of color scheme, which enriched the palette and provided ample opportunities for a more vital and truthful image of the surrounding world. A. Ivanov’s main work was the large painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People” and sketches for it, in which he very carefully depicted branches, streams, and stones by the road (Fig. 27). As the researchers note, they revealed “such a great truth about nature and people, such a deep knowledge of the internal laws of life and human psychology that all his mythological and historical pictures taken together could not contain.” The art of A. Ivanov is characterized by amazing completeness and capacity of multifaceted and deep content. The main quality that determined the significance of the works of this outstanding painter is a new knowledge of the life of nature, which made the art of A. Ivanov truthful in a new way.

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Thus, in the first quarter of the 19th century, the romantic direction of landscape painting actively developed, freeing itself from the features of the speculative “heroic landscape” of classicism, painted in the workshop and burdened with the burden of purely cognitive tasks and historical associations. Painted from life, the landscape expresses the artist’s worldview through the directly depicted view, a real-life landscape motif, although with some idealization, the use of romantic motifs and themes. However, given the fact that landscape painting from the very moment of its inception was closely connected with living life, it was this connection with practice that contributed to the development of realistic trends that formed a qualitatively new, realistic direction of Russian landscape painting. Realistic direction of Russian landscape. The paintings of landscape artists of the realistic direction clearly testify to the ardent interest and serious attention with which the most advanced masters treated the needs of the people, their suffering, poverty and oppression, how they sincerely strove with their art not only to expose the injustice of the social system, but also to defend "humiliated and insulted" people. In landscape painting, this desire was primarily expressed in the emphasized interest of the best painters in national Russian nature and in the depiction of their native land. The first period in the development of Russian realistic landscape, which included works of the 50s - paintings on a different ideological basis, they were characterized by a new aesthetic quality. And yet, what had been created earlier in the field of depicting Russian nature helped them to some extent. The creativity of A.G. was in tune with the aspirations of young people at that time. Venetsianov, representing a progressive phenomenon of great importance of his time. In his paintings, young artists of the 50s found truthfully conveyed poetic images of Russian nature. The landscapes of the 50s differ in many ways from what the art of the 60s produced. As researchers note, the point here is not only that the artists by that time had more mastered the professional skill of painting - the very content of their works, more deeply imbued with the breath of the life of nature and the ideas of the people, acquired greater internal integrity and was more closely connected with the general movement of ideological democratic art. By the beginning of the 60s, individual works of landscape painters could already easily stand alongside the paintings of genre painting, which was the most advanced art at that time. However, these gains turned out to be far from sufficient when the social conditions that developed in post-reform Russia demanded that all realistic art have a socially focused content. The beginning of the first period of development of Russian realistic landscape painting is conventionally considered to be the appearance in 1851 at a student exhibition at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture of Volga landscapes by Solov, paintings “View of the Kremlin in inclement weather”, “Winter Landscape” by Savrasov and landscapes by Ammon - three landscape painters who graduated from the School that year (Fig. 28). At the same time, other artists of the Moscow school began to paint landscapes: Hertz, Bocharov, Dubrovin and others.

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In the 60s, during the second period of the formation of realistic landscape painting, the ranks of artists depicting their native nature became much wider, and they became increasingly interested in realistic art. The question of the content of their art acquired a dominant role for landscape artists. Artists were expected to create works that would reflect the sentiments of the oppressed people. It was during this decade that Russian landscape painters showed interest in depicting such motifs of nature, in which artists could talk about people’s sadness through the language of their art. The dreary nature of autumn, with dirty, washed-out roads, sparse copses, a gloomy sky crying with rain, small villages covered with snow - all these themes in their endless variations, executed with such love and diligence by Russian landscape painters, received citizenship rights in the 60s. But, at the same time, in those same years, in Russian landscape painting, some artists developed an interest in other topics. Prompted by high patriotic feelings, they sought to show the powerful and fertile Russian nature as a source of possible wealth and happiness of the people's life, thereby embodying in their landscapes one of the most important requirements of Chernyshevsky’s materialist aesthetics, who saw the beauty of nature primarily in what is “connected with happiness and contentment of human life." It was in the variety of themes that the future versatility of content, characteristic of landscape painting during its heyday, was born. The theme of their native land was each developed in their own way by A. Savrasov, F. Vasiliev, A. Kuindzhi, I. Shishkin, I. Levitan. There were several generations of talented landscape artists: M. Klodt, A. Kiselev, I. Ostroukhov, S. Svetoslavsky and others. One of the first places among them rightfully belongs to V. Polenov. One of his features was the desire to combine landscape and everyday genres, not just to revive one or another motif with human figures, but to present a holistic picture of life in which people and the nature around them are fused into a single artistic image. Both in “Moscow Courtyard” and in the elegiac paintings “Grandmother’s Garden”, “Overgrown Pond”, “Early Snow”, “Golden Autumn” - in all his landscapes Polenov, through the means of painting, affirms an important and essentially very simple truth: poetry and beauty are found around us in the usual flow of everyday life, in the nature that surrounds us (Fig. 29).

Rice. 29.

The attitude towards the art of I. Shishkin was also ambiguous. Contemporaries saw him as the greatest master of realistic landscape painting. I. Kramskoy called him “a man-school”, “a milestone in the development of Russian landscape”, V. Stasov, I. Repin and others spoke of him with delight and respect. The works of I. Shishkin became known throughout Russia, and popular love for him has not diminished even today. “When Shishkin is gone,” wrote Kramskoy, “only then will they understand that a successor to him will not soon be found.” And the same Kramskoy, a strict and demanding critic, pointed out not the “lack of poetry” in many of Shishkin’s paintings, but the imperfection of the artist’s writing, meaning by this his painting style. Subsequently, some artists and critics, in polemical fervour, completely rejected the significance of Shishkin, declaring him a “naturalist”, a “photographer”, a hopelessly outdated “copyist of nature”. The work of Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin marks the most important stage in the development of this genre. Shishkin not only mastered new, typically Russian motifs in the landscape, he conquered the widest circles of society with his works, creating an image of his native nature, close to the popular ideal of the strength and beauty of his native land. Shishkin's forests in the history of painting have their predecessors in the trees in the paintings of the Swiss A. Calam, the oaks of Theodore Rousseau. Shishkin also learned a lot from the artists of the Dosseldorf school - the brothers Andreas and Oswald Achenbach. Regarding his predecessors, Shishkin was and remains one of the most characteristic and remarkable figures of realistic art of the second half of the 19th century, an artist and singer of the Russian forest, a major master of epic landscape, whose works have not lost their significance and attractiveness to this day (Fig. 30). Along with I. Shishkin, Alexey Kondratievich Savrasov was a prominent representative of Russian realistic landscape. He was attracted by rural views and distant Russian expanses; all his work was imbued with a deeply patriotic national spirit.

Rice. thirty.

The artist sought to find those landscape motifs that would be an expression of the typical Russian landscape, plains, country roads, low hills, river banks. His view of reality was akin to democratic poetry. Small paintings by A.K. Savrasov’s works are addressed to a lyrically inclined viewer; they do not contain the gigantic grandeur of I. Shishkin’s forest landscapes, but they have intelligibility, emotionality that sinks into the soul for a long time. Savrasov’s most famous landscape is his painting “The Rooks Have Arrived,” which first appeared at the first exhibition of the Association of Itinerants in 1871 (Fig. 31). “The spring of the Russian landscape” was called by its contemporaries. Meanwhile, in this landscape there are no stunning majestic panoramas or bright colors. The artist managed to transform an everyday motif into a poetic and lyrical picture, a deeply folk image of his native nature. “With Savrasov,” his student I. Levitan would later say, “lyricism in landscape painting and boundless love for one’s native land appeared.” Both the poetic sincerity of Savrasov’s landscapes and the epic epic nature of Shishkin’s forest paintings indicate that, unlike the Western one, the Russian landscape developed on ideas about native nature, the land-nurse.

Rice. 31.

After Shishkin and Savrasov, Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt was the third founder of realistic landscape in Russian painting. Klodt's paintings are reminiscent of Venetian genres; they continue the line of peasant landscapes in Russian painting. Klodt, in his own way, asserts in the landscape the beauty and power of his native nature (Fig. 32). Like Savrasov, he is close to the poetic experience of the world; he also has the features of a literary-descriptive approach to painting. Just like other landscape painters of his generation, Klodt was attached to precise drawing. In the painting “On the Plowed Field” he carefully draws the furrows in the foreground, the figures in the center of the picture and even in the distance.

Rice. 32.

An important step in the Russian landscape of the second half of the 19th century was the resurrection of the ideals of romantic painting in the general mainstream of realistic trends. Vasiliev and Kuindzhi each in their own way turned to nature as the ideal of romantic painting as an opportunity to pour out their feelings. Fyodor Alekseevich Vasiliev lived a short life, but still managed to have his say in the history of Russian painting. Vasiliev skillfully used the techniques of his predecessors in his work and achieved amazing results. His painting “The Thaw” echoes the mood of the works of genre painters; it skillfully conveys the atmosphere of that harsh winter to which Savrasov contrasted his optimistic and cheerful “Rooks” (Fig. 33). Another large painting by Vasiliev, “Wet Meadow,” speaks of the artist’s courageous position and the need to affirm a positive ideal in art. “A picture that is true to nature should not dazzle with any place, should not be divided into colored patches by sharp features,” the author himself said. Artist N.N. Ge said about Vasiliev that “he discovered the living sky.” This was a great achievement of the Russian landscape.

Rice. 33.

A landscape painter of a different kind was A. Kuindzhi, a bright and talented artist who occupies a special place. His paintings “Ukrainian Night”, “After the Rain”, “Birch Grove”, “Moonlit Night on the Dnieper” and others became sensations in their time, dividing his contemporaries into enthusiastic admirers of the artist and his opponents. The impression made on the audience by “Moonlit Night” was stunning (Fig. 34). Few people believed that such magical lighting effects could be achieved with ordinary paints. Researchers of Russian art note “the desire to surprise the viewer with an extraordinary effect, which is something alien to the very spirit and character of Russian realism,” on the other hand, “one cannot deny Kuindzhi the courage of an innovator, the unique expressiveness of his coloristic findings and decorative solutions.” Kuindzhi's traditions, and above all the decorative interpretation of the landscape motif, were continued in the works of his students and followers of talented painters of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.

Rice. 34.

The feeling of love for one's native country, sadness and anger for the suffering it endured, pride and admiration for the beauty of its nature among the greatest landscape artists of the last decades of the 19th century were embodied in works full of deep meaning. Serious thoughts about the fate of the homeland gave rise to images of great human depth and philosophical meaning. The continuator of the traditions in the Russian landscape of the late 19th century was Isaac Ilyich Levitan, “a huge, original, original talent,” the best Russian landscape painter, as Chekhov called him. Already his first, essentially student work, “Autumn Day. Sokolniki" was noticed by critics and bought by Tretyakov. The heyday of Levitan's creativity falls at the turn of the 80-90s. It was then that he created his famous landscapes “Birch Grove”, “Evening Ringing”, “By the Pool”, “March”, “Golden Autumn” (Fig. 35).

Rice. 35.

In “Vladimirka,” written not only under the impressions of nature, but also under the influence of folk songs and historical information about this highway along which convicts were led, Levitan expressed his civic feelings through landscape painting. Levitan's pictorial quests bring Russian painting close to impressionism. His vibrating brushstroke, permeated with light and air, often creates images not of summer and winter, but of autumn and spring - those periods in the life of nature when the nuances of mood and colors are especially rich. What Corot did in Western European (predominantly French) painting as the creator of a mood landscape, in Russian painting belongs to Levitan. He is first and foremost a lyricist, his landscape is deeply lyrical, even elegiac. Sometimes he is jubilant, as in “March,” but more often sad, almost melancholic. It is no coincidence that Levitan loved to depict autumn, autumn washed-out roads. But he is also a philosopher. And his philosophical thoughts are also full of sadness about the frailty of everything earthly, about the smallness of man in the Universe, about the brevity of earthly existence, which is a moment in the face of eternity (“Above Eternal Peace”). The last work, interrupted by the artist’s death, “Lake,” however, is full of sun, light, air, and wind. This is a collective image of Russian nature, the homeland. It is not for nothing that the work has the subtitle “Rus”.

In the second half of the 19th century, during the period of formation and development of the realistic landscape, it became completely inseparable from ideas about the historical events that took place at that time. Nature becomes, as it were, an arena of social and political activity of people, and all the most important changes taking place in the destinies of the country are reflected in pictures of reality. As the world changes, it absorbs the hopes, plans and aspirations of man. Thus, landscape painting, having entered its realistic stage, emerged from the category of minor genres and took one of the places of honor next to such genres as portraits and household painting. In the conditions of Russian social life of this period, the best democratic artists could not limit themselves to showing only the dark sides of reality and turned to depicting positive, progressive phenomena. And this greatly contributed to the flourishing of Russian landscape painting at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Conclusion: In the first half of the 19th century, the romantic direction of landscape painting actively developed. Painted from life, the landscape expresses the artist’s worldview through a real-life landscape motif, albeit with some idealization and the use of romantic themes. In the second half of the 19th century, a realistic landscape took shape. Nature becomes the arena of social and political activity of people, and all the most important events in the fate of the country are reflected in pictures of reality.

In the history of the development of Russian landscape painting one can find many parallels with European landscapes. And this is not surprising, but it is in Russian art, not only in painting, that landscape has always occupied a special place. For example, Russian artists tried to convey the image of their homeland through the landscape (A. Vasnetsov “Motherland”).

The first landscape motifs in Russian painting can be seen on ancient Russian icons. Almost always, the figures of saints, the Virgin Mary and Christ were depicted against the background of a landscape. But it’s difficult to call it a full-fledged landscape - low hills here signified rocky terrain, rare “mongrel” trees symbolized the forest, and flat buildings represented chambers and temples. The appearance of the first full-fledged landscapes in Russia dates back to the 18th century. These works were topographical views of St. Petersburg palaces and parks. During the reign of Elizaveta Petrovna, an atlas with views of St. Petersburg and the surrounding area was published; the engravings were made by M. I. Makhaev. But most historians agree that the founder of the Russian landscape is Semyon Fedorovich Shchedrin. It is with his name that landscape painting is identified as a separate independent genre. An important contribution to the development of the genre was made by S.F.’s contemporaries. Shchedrin - F. Ya. Alekseev and M. M. Ivanov. Alekseev’s work had a serious influence on a whole generation of young artists: M. N. Vorobyov, A. E. Martynov and S. F. Galaktionov. The works of these painters are dedicated primarily to St. Petersburg, its canals, embankments, palaces and parks.

The merits of M. N. Vorobiev include the creation of a national school of landscape painting. He trained a whole galaxy of talented landscape painters, including the Chernetsov brothers, K. I. Rabus, A. P. Bryullov, S. F. Shchedrin. In the mid-19th century, Russian landscape painting had already formed its own principles of perception of nature and methods of conveying it. From the school M.N. Vorobyov, the romantic traditions of the Russian landscape originate. These ideas were developed by his students M. I. Lebedev, who died at the age of 25, L. F. Lagorio and the master of seascape I. K. Aivazovsky. An important place in Russian landscape painting is occupied by the work of A. K. Savrasov, a man with a difficult fate. It was he who became the founder of the national lyrical landscape (the painting “The Rooks Have Arrived” and others). Savrasov influenced a number of landscape painters, primarily L.L. Kamenev and I.I. Levitan.

Simultaneously with the lyrical landscape, the epic landscape also developed in Russian painting. The most prominent representative of this subgenre is M.K. Klodt, who in each of his paintings sought to convey to the viewer a holistic image of Russia.
The second half of the 19th century is sometimes called the golden age of Russian landscape. At this time, such masters of landscape painting were working as: I. I. Shishkin (“Rye”, “In the Wild North”, “Among the Flat Valley”), F. A. Vasiliev (“Wet Meadow”, “Thaw”, “Village” ", "Swamp"), A. Kuindzhi ("Dnieper at Night", "Birch Grove", "Twilight"), A. P. Bogolyubov ("Le Havre", "Harbor on the Seine", "Vichy. Afternoon"), I . I. Levitan (“March”, “Vladimirka”, “Birch Grove”, “Golden Autumn”, “Above Eternal Peace”). Levitan's traditions of lyrical landscape were developed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries by artists I. S. Ostroukhov, S. I. Svetoslavsky and N. N. Dubovsky. Landscape painting of the early 20th century is associated, first of all, with the work of I. E. Grabar, K. F. Yuon and A. A. Rylov. Landscapes were created in the style of symbolism by P. V. Kuznetsov, M. S. Saryan, N. P. Krymov and V. E. Borisov-Musatov. After the October Revolution, the industrial landscape developed intensively, the most prominent representatives being M. S. Saryan and K. F. Bogaevsky. Among the domestic landscape painters of the 20th century, it is also worth noting G. G. Nissky, S. V. Gerasimov and N. M. Romadin.