The Russian Museum - The Mikhailovsky Palace

Important changes occurred in Russian art life in the 1820s and 1830s. The conservatism of the Academy of Arts had long impeded many of the vital requirements of society. Pupils of the Academy spent up to ten and fifteen years within its walls, from their very earliest childhood, and so knew little of the real world. Another of the Academy’s shortcomings was the limitations it set on the admittance of pupils. Serfs, for example, were deprived of an art education in those years.

The answer was Russia’s first private school of art, founded by Alexei Venetsianov (1780–1847). Parallel to his job as a civil servant, he studied painting under Borovikovsky and attended classes at the Academy of Arts as an external student. In 1811, he was accorded the title of academician for a programme assignment for the Academy of Arts.

In 1821, stunned by the “natural” colours and aerial environment in one of the paintings exhibited in the Hermitage, Venetsianov resolved to attain an analogical effect in his own canvases. He left for the countryside, where he painted nature and peasants directly from life. One of the first pictures shown by him at an exhibition in St Petersburg was Threshing Barn (1822–23). This work was of paramount significance for Russian art. For the first time in a Russian painting, peasants were depicted in their natural environment.

The artist drew not only from life, but also from ancient and Renaissance sources. His slightly idealised representations of peasant types, clearly not portraits, are often transformed (Reaper, Reapers, both 1820s) into images not unlike icons or the works of the Renaissance masters. Regarding peasant life as the natural unity of man and nature, Venetsianov created a cycle of metaphorical pictures. One of them is Sleeping Shepherd (between 1823 and 1826), personifying spring and the awakening of nature.

The artist left St Petersburg for the countryside, where he taught budding young artists, including serfs. Just as unique are the pictures of Grigory Soroka (1823–1864). The quiet life of the Russian provinces, with its squires and peasants, are the themes depicted in the canvases of this talented serf artist. Yet the main thing in them is more than just their subjects and motifs, landscapes and interiors. Melancholy states of sadness and joie de vivre constitute the emotional fabrics of Soroka’s works.

The Mikhailovsky Palace

Room 13