Benefit performance of etudes

In a series of exhibitions dedicated to the largest trends in Russian fine art of the 18th-20th centuries ("Romanticism in Russia", "Symbolism in Russia", "Russian Futurism"), an experiment with identifying impressionism (impression) in Russian painting seemed the most risky. Nevertheless, at first I rather liked the exhibition “Impressionism in Russia” in the Benois Wing of the Russian Museum - thanks not so much to the selection of works, but to the principles of the display. The exhibition, as always in the Russian Museum, is structured according to a chronological principle. In addition, the dramaturgy is clearly defined in it: there is a beginning, development, climax and denouement.

The discoveries of the impressionists did not leave indifferent even the realist battle painter Vasily Vereshchagin, who took advantage of their lessons in the “acutely impressionistic” - as it is written in the catalog - painting “A Boat Walk” (1903), created under the influence of Japanese art. The French impressionists, by the way, also adored the Japanese

The role of the plot is given to paintings from the 1820s-1830s. According to the plan, it is necessary to pay attention to how Sylvester Shchedrin, Mikhail Lebedev, Alexey Venetsianov, Alexander Ivanov solved the problem of conveying the color and air environment. Perhaps this is still too far from impressionism, which officially emerged fifty years later. But, for example, Oswald Spengler found the beginning of this trend in the sfumato (that is, “blurred outlines”) of Leonardo da Vinci.

What follows are paintings from the 1870s to the 1890s, and that's still the premise. On one side of the hall hang works by Russian artists who worked in Paris, on the other - in Russia, which had already heard rumors about a revolution in painting organized by the Impressionists, but they were understood in their own way. Among the “Russian French” are Konstantin Makovsky, Alexander Beggrov, Alexey Bogolyubov and the legendary Maria Bashkirtseva, who died at 24 and left a huge diary. Among those who repeated the development path of Monet and the company in Russia, first of all, Vasily Polenov (however, he also lived in Paris for several years and saw impressionist exhibitions). It was Polenov who was the author of the first proto-impressionistic Russian painting, “Moscow Courtyard” (1878). This painting is not included in the exhibition because it is stored in the Tretyakov Gallery, and the Russian Museum, as always, uses only its own funds. (By the way, I will have to repeat it once again - the Russian Museum needs to unite with other museums, share the idea at the stage of concept formation, so as not to be branded as an organization working on the principle of subsistence farming.)

The fact that Polenov, who put pure painting above all else, taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, became one of the reasons for the popularity of new art in the old capital. The famous collections of Shchukin and Morozov played a major role in the spread of impressionism. Thanks to them, already at the end of the 1890s, Moscow saw a number of impressionistic masterpieces from France.

The influence of the new movement was so great that the works of Russian painters can sometimes even be confused with the works of their French colleagues. For example, in the early paintings of the future symbolist Viktor Borisov-Musatov, who studied in Paris (Naked Boy in the Garden, Tree), shown at the exhibition, the impressionistic technique, color and plot are surprisingly accurately reproduced.

The exhibition suggests that until the 1900s, impressionism in Russian painting appeared sporadically, and only then did a breakthrough come: many artists, to one degree or another, began to paint in an “impressionistic manner.” In the central halls, dozens of studies of that time, often not worthy of special attention, are hung in five rows. Which is reminiscent of commercial exhibitions at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (for example, the so-called Paris Salon). Here, where there are no big names, a lot becomes clear. With such a cross-section, it is clearly visible that the overwhelming majority of domestic artists were unable to overcome the legacy of the Wanderers. They were looking for an opportunity to speak out about life rather than to enjoy it. The exhibition demonstrates that we did not have impressionism as a movement in the strict sense of the word, or almost none. There were various sketches, sketches and simply unfinished paintings, now shown to the general public under the brand of “Russian impressionism”. In addition, the sketches made in the open air were more or less successful: in fact, the exhibition should have been called “Russian plein airism”.

It is obvious at the exhibition that such artists, always considered classics of Russian realism, such as Ilya Repin ("Portrait of Count Alexei Ignatiev" - study for the "Great Meeting of the State Council") or Vasily Vereshchagin ("Walk in a Boat") used the impressionistic style as needed . For the great avant-garde artists (Mikhail Larionov, “Fishes at Sunset”, Natalya Goncharova, “Garden Corner”), impressionism with a strong expressive beginning was a stage in the formation of their aesthetics. In general, Russian artists often added Russian temperament to French technique. For example, in the painting “Away” by Abram Arkhipov, women in blazing colored clothes “burn” in a space flooded with light. For some reason, the exhibition does not include the most striking paintings by Philip Malyavin, in the words of Igor Grabar, who made “Russian girls and women fairies.”


Still, the only legitimate impressionist in Russia can only be considered Konstantin Korovin, who in 1922 left Russia forever for the homeland of his favorite movement. The photo shows one of ten of his paintings from an exhibition at the State Russian Museum - “Pier in Gurzuf” (1914)

A special subject for discussion is the work of Konstantin Korovin, whom Alexandre Benois considered the first Russian impressionist. The exhibition leaves the impression that Korovin was not only the first, but also the last. Unlike others who were just trying on the newfangled French dress, he was the only one who consistently and to the end adhered to this direction. It would be possible to make an exhibition on the principle of “Russian Impressionism and Konstantin Korovin” (by analogy with the exhibition “Russian Futurism and David Burliuk”, which is now open in the same Benois building, on the floor above).

According to the organizers, the apotheosis of impressionism was to be Alexander Yakovlev’s painting “Bathing” (1913). This huge canvas (286 by 348 cm), blocking one of the exhibition halls, should be considered as a kind of “Appearance of Christ” in the version of the Russian impressionists. But, unfortunately, this is far from a masterpiece. Impressionism - the art of an accurate sketch, a fleeting impression - avoids the completeness and pathos inevitable in a large canvas. Therefore, the usual academic approach, when the exhibition illustrates the movement from a sketch to a large painting, did not work this time.

The exhibition is completed by two halls of “Soviet impressionism” - from the 20s to the 80s. Here Arkady Plastov's landscape "Noon" (1961) is adjacent to Kazimir Malevich's "Summer Landscape" (1929). (It must be said that this is a rare case when the date corresponds to reality: Malevich in the 30s tried to supplement his biography with an impressionistic phase and put the dates 1902-1903 on the sketches he created from nature.) But the St. Petersburg self-taught Vladimir Sukov used the technique in 1930 pointillism to depict the Summer Garden in Leningrad. The nod to Soviet “academicians” looks even more unexpected: paintings by Alexei and Sergei Tkachev, Andrei Mylnikov, and Boris Ugarov are on display.

Those who criticized the exhibition “Impressionism in Russia” even before the opening turned out to be right. To make the stated concept convincing, the Russian Museum clearly did not have enough good works. The organizers of the exhibition failed to confirm the legitimacy of the phrase “Russian impressionism” and show that it was undeservedly deprived of its place in the history of Russian art between realism and the avant-garde.


Very Russian impressionism - “Away (on a spring holiday)” (1915) by Abram Arkhipov: from the beginning of the 10s, Arkhipov constantly painted sitting peasant women in bright clothes

Reproductions by Nikolai Tikhomirov