State Russian Museum shows “Life Scenes of the 19th Century?

Wednesday, 25 April 2007 22:14

St. Petersburg, Russia - Genre painting has always been popular with the collectors and the audience.  It is true, especially for Russia, where painterly art has often oriented itself to national literature with its wide scope of social problems.  Suffice it to say that the collections of Pavel Tretyakov and the Emperor Alexander III, forming the basis of the Russian Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery collections, started with purchasing genre paintings.  Even now, following the old tradition, the collectors hunt for genre paintings by Vladimir and Konstantin Makovsky, Konstantin Savitsky, Nikolai Sverchkov, Leonid Solomatkin, Stepan Bakalovich and other outstanding masters, represented at the exhibition.

In the 1830s–40s Pavel Fedotov, Alexei Venetsianov and Karl Brullov determined three main lines in the development of Russian genre painting.  Their conceptual characteristics allow us to designate them as realistic (critical), sentimental-idyllic and salon-academic lines.  Later these lines existed not in their pure forms, but rather like tendencies, often intertwined in complex symbiosis.  It is this symbiosis that implements the main idea of the complex, turbulent and unique period of the mid-19^th – early 20^th centuries, the heyday of the Russian genre painting.  Now there is no need to divide artists into the “hostile camps” as it was once when their position in the value hierarchy was determined by the ideological and civic position of the artist rather than by the quality of their works.

The current exhibition comprising the works from private collections painted by the masters of different generations and creative predilections – from Pimen Orlov, the follower of Karl Brullov, to Arnold Lakhovsky and Kiriak Kostandi, the masters of plein air – presents a rare opportunity to see their works regardless their academic and speculative systems, which all museum expositions, unavoidably, submit to.  Perhaps, this general artistic context, like an artist’s palette, enables various colors and shades to freely coexist and to display Russian genre painting in all its thematic and stylistic diversity.

The choice of the exhibits for the show has been mainly predetermined by the nature of modern collecting and the current state of the antique market.  Moreover, this “random” selection revealing the little known works by the outstanding masters to the public and the experts testifies to the complexity and diversity of Russian genre painting.  The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.

Visit The State Russian Museum at : http://www.rusmuseum.ru/eng/museum/