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In Russia, the eighteenth century was the century of the portrait. Other than icon painting, the patronage of the tsars, wealthy nobles or merchants was virtually the only source of income available to Russian painters. Perfecting their skills as portraitists was therefore high on the agenda of the five painters sent to study abroad, in 1716, by Peter the Great.

One of the five was Ivan Nikitin. The son of a priest, he began his artistic career by studying drawing and arithmetic at an artillery college. Noticed by the tsar, he was dispatched to Italy, together with his brother Roman, an able though more conventional painter. In the portrait of Peter the Great that Ivan painted in 1721, the emperor is shown without attributes of power and with a degree of intimacy rarely encountered in royal portraits. Four years later, he painted an emotionally charged portrait of the tsar on his deathbed. Ivan’s last years were overshadowed by tragedy. After the death of Peter the Great, he opposed the regime of Anna Ivanovna and in 1736 was deported to Siberia, together with his brother. By the time they were pardoned, Ivan was critically ill, and he died on the way back from Siberia.

Another of the artists sponsored by Peter the Great was Andreï Matveyev, who was sent to study in Holland. Obliged to paint battle scenes, ceilings and panels for the palaces of the tsars, he lacked freedom to fully develop the talent for portraiture evident in works such as The Allegory of Painting (1725) and the portrait that he painted of himself and his wife in 1729. Matveyev was a fine colourist, and his works are full of pleasing nuances. They also hint at his desire to break new ground, to bring a more psychological approach to portraiture.

The 1730s saw appreciable changes in Russian society. Intent on strengthening their position vis-a-vis the State, the aristocracy strove to show their standing by displaying the superiority and sophistication of their tastes and lifestyle, especially through the embellishment of the interiors of their homes. Portraits offered a means of self-aggrandisement and of conveying status. By the 1760s they were in evidence everywhere – not only at the court in Saint Petersburg, but in remote parts of Russia too.

Some of the most accomplished portraits from the mid-eighteenth century were produced by Ivan Vishnyakov (1699–1761). Continuing Matveyev’s tendency towards lyricism, they possess the decorative qualities typical of the Rococo style then prevalent in Russia, without the frivolity generally associated with it. Instead, their static poses and facial expressions have an air of seriousness, focusing attention on the subject’s face. Vishnyakov was at his most sensitive when portraying children; their elaborate clothes and frozen poses underline the innocence and vulnerability of these diminutive lords and ladies. Despite the formality of his portraits, relatively few of them were commissioned by the Imperial court.

23. Fyodor Rokotov, Portrait of Alexei Bobrinsky in Childhood, c. 1763. Oil on canvas, 59.5 × 47 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

24. Alexeï Antropov, Portrait of Maria Rurnyantseva, 1764. Oil on canvas, 62.5 × 48 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

25. Dmitri Levitsky, Portrait of Maria Diakova, 1778. Oil on canvas, 72 × 57 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

26. Vladimir Borovikovsky, Portrait of Maria Lopoukhina, 1797. Oil on canvas, 72 × 53.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

27. Vassily Tropinin, Lacemaker, 1823. Oil on canvas, 74.7 × 59.3 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

This adoration of portraiture continued during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, when Russia enjoyed a blossoming of the arts and sciences and an expansion of education – thanks largely to the influence of Mikhaïl Lomonosov (1711–65), a man of immense learning and wide cultural interests who became a professor of chemistry at the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg in 1745. Russian sculpture in particular benefited from these stimuli – and so did portraiture, which developed in two ways. Although there was a greater demand for elaborate formal portraits, there was also an increased realism in the way people were portrayed.

This development in portraiture was clearly demonstrated in the work of Alexeï Antropov who first studied with Matveyev and then worked for nearly twenty years under the direction of Vishnyakov, concentrating primarily on learning to paint formal portraits. Flags, columns and other decorative accessories tended to be featured in these portraits, along with luxuriant robes and drapery, all painted in lively colours. In deference to convention, they were normally full-length. Despite the inhibiting nature of official portraiture, Antropov managed to achieve a remarkable degree of veracity. The portraits, both formal and informal, that he painted during the 1750s and 1760s show him at his best.

Antropov’s contemporary Ivan Argunov painted numerous portraits of artists and their families. By the middle of the eighteenth century he was already considered a leading portrait painter, and he received a great variety of commissions – probably greater than any other Russian artist of his time. His portraits range from the Empress and members of the court to the serfs and ancestors of his wealthy patron, Count Sheremetyev. While Antropov’s style – with its rather static quality and detached feeling – is sometimes reminiscent of the parsunas, Argunov’s work is generally more immediate and less austere.

In addition to Argunov, among the portrait painters of the second half of the eighteenth century, three stand out for the brilliance of their work: Rokotov, Levitsky and Borovikovsky. Their styles, however, are very different. Surprisingly, although highly regarded by his contemporaries, Fyodor Rokotov was completely forgotten during the period following his death and was only rediscovered at the beginning of the twentieth century. Initially he worked as a court painter in Saint Petersburg, where he produced portraits remarkable for their individuality and vivacity, among them his Portrait of the young Alexeï Bobrinsky. In 1767 Rokotov moved to Moscow, where he became the portraitist most sought after by Muscovite society. Once he was freed from the constraints of court painting, his portraits – especially those intended for the interiors of private houses – became more intimate. Particularly in his later works, he increasingly made use of sfumazo (almost imperceptible colour transitions), and a silvery tonal range to reproduce the delicate sheen of his sitters’ satins, silks and velvets.

28. Vassily Tropinin, Portrait of the Writer Varvara Lizogub, 1847. Oil on canvas, 82.5 × 68 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

29. Karl Briullov, Rider, Portrait of Giovannina and Amazillia Paccini, 1832. Oil on canvas, 291.5 × 206 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

30. Alexeï Venetsianov, Reaper, before 1827. Oil on canvas, 82.5 × 68 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

31. Karl Briullov, Portrait of the Artist with Baroness Yekaterina Meller-Zakomelskaya and her Daughter in a Boat, 1833–35. Oil on canvas, 151.5 × 190.3 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

32. Karl Briullov, Italian Midday, 1827. Oil on canvas, 64 × 55 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

33. Vassily Perov, Portrait of the Merchant Ivan Kamynin, 1872. Oil on canvas, 104 × 84.3 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

34. Vassily Perov, Portrait of the Writer Alexander Ostrovsky, 1871. Oil on canvas, 103.5 × 80.7 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Dmitri Levitsky differed from Rokotov in that he possessed a marvellous ability to interpret and express personality. Every detail is painted with care, yet a feeling of spontaneity is never absent from his work. The son of a priest who was a gifted engraver, Levitsky was born in the Ukraine. After studying with Antropov, he spent a few years producing icons for churches in Moscow, then taught portrait painting at the Academy from 1771 to 1788. Levitsky excelled at female portraiture, as can be seen from his paintings of the aristocratic Ursula Mniszech and Maria Diakova, the wife of architect, painter and poet Nikolaï Lvov. Between 1773 and 1776, at the request of Catherine the Great, he painted a series of portraits of her favourite pupils at Smolny Institute (the school she founded for the education of young noblewomen), showing them engaged in such activities as amateur dramatics, playing the harp or dancing the minuet. Thanks to his portraits of foreign visitors to Saint Petersburg – among them Diderot – Levitsky acquired a reputation outside Russia (his style was even compared with that of Boucher and Watteau). In 1788 illness forced him to retire from the Academy, where he had been the principal teacher of portraiture. During the last thirty years of his life he hardly painted at all.

A member of an old Cossack family, Vladimir Borovikovsky (1757–1825) was the son of an icon painter. He lived in Mirgorod until 1788, where he painted icons and portraits in the Ukrainian tradition. In 1790, after Catherine the Great expressed her delight at the allegorical decorations which he had been commissioned to paint in honour of her triumphal tour of the Crimea, Borovikovsky moved to Saint Petersburg, where he studied with Levitsky and the Austrian portrait painter Johann-Baptist Lampi. That same year he painted a portrait of Catherine the Great, looking more grandmotherly than regal, walking her favourite dog in the park at Tsarskoe Selo. Borovikovsky’s portraits of women – often attired in Grecian gowns and backed by a sylvan setting – have been likened to those by Gainsborough and Angelica Kauffmann. In many of them, the sitter is portrayed with the fingers of one hand delicately curled round an apple. As late as the 1790s, Borovikovsky’s work was tinged with sentimentalism. Then at the beginning of the nineteenth century he adopted a more classical style, producing works like the Portrait of Prince Alexander Kurakin that he completed in 1802.

This classical style adopted by Borovikovsky at the start of the nineteenth century led to Romanticism which was beginning to influence Russian portraiture. Painters began to express themselves more freely, and self-portraits became increasingly common. With its accent on individuality, Romanticism was a perfect match for the self-portrait – which was, after all, a vehicle for psychological probing and spiritual revelation. It also led to important changes of form. In order to focus attention on the face, the sitter’s clothes were given less prominence. For the same reason, a neutral background tended to be used.

35. Vladimir Borovikovsky, Portrait of Prince Alexander Kourakine, 1801–1802. Oil on canvas, 259 × 175 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

36. Orest Kiprensky, Portait of Life Guard Colonel Yevgraf Davydov, 1809. Oil on canvas, 162 × 116 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

37. Orest Kiprensky, Portrait of Alexander Pushkin, 1827. Oil on canvas, 63 × 54 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

38. Vassily Perov, Portrait of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1872. Oil on canvas, 99 × 80.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

39. Ivan Kramskoï, Self-portrait, 1867. Oil on canvas, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Romantic portraiture found its fullest expression in the art of Orest Kiprensky, who painted several self-portraits, including a very painterly one, with brushes stuck behind his ear. Kiprensky’s own life bore the hallmarks of Romanticism. The illegitimate son of an aristocratic army officer, he studied painting at the Academy (where he was enrolled at the age of six) and rapidly became a successful portrait painter. Then in 1805, he was awarded a travelling scholarship, and as soon as the Napoleonic Wars ended he departed for Rome. There he led a fairly bohemian life, and found himself the subject of scandal when an Italian model and a manservant died as a result of a fire at his house. In 1828, after four years back home in Russia, he returned to Italy, married the model’s daughter (whom he had entrusted to a convent school) and spent the next eight years roaming Italy with her, until his death from tuberculosis in 1836.

At the Academy, Kiprensky had learned to paint so flawlessly that his brush strokes are practically invisible and his pictures have an ivory-smooth finish. They also display an exceptional ability to convey character and to achieve subtle effects of colour and light. In them it is possible to see something of the spirit of the great Russian poets and novelists of the nineteenth century. Among his best-known works are the portrait of Pushkin that he painted in 1827 and the one of Colonel Yevgraf Davydov, an aristocratically nonchalant cavalry officer (and poet), who seems to have stepped straight out of the pages of War and Peace. When in Paris in 1822, Kiprensky was invited to exhibit at the Salon. He also had the distinction of being asked to provide the Uffizi Gallery with a self-portrait for their permanent collection.

The career of Vassily Tropinin was very different from Kiprensky’s. Born a serf, he was given to Count Morkov as part of his wife’s dowry and spent the first part of his life on the Count’s estate in the Ukraine. When Morkov discovered that Tropinin possessed artistic ability, he used him to make copies of famous works of art and also to paint portraits of his family. In 1799 Morkov sent Tropinin to Saint Petersburg to train as a pastry-cook. Tropinin seized the opportunity to attend classes at the Academy, at first secretly and then with Morkov’s approval. But in 1804, Morkov recalled him to the Ukraine to continue working on his estate, both as a servant and as an artist. Eventually, in 1823 – when he was nearly forty-eight – Morkov granted Tropinin his freedom.

The following year Tropinin received the title of academician and moved to Moscow, where he painted portraits of celebrities (including Pushkin and Karamzin) and numerous foreign visitors. In the 1820s he began painting “genre portraits” depicting women at work, with titles such as Lacemaker, Spinner and Embroidress, which are remarkable for their realism and directness. Masterpieces from the later part of his life include his refreshingly unaffected portrait of the writer Varvara Lizogub, and one of his most memorable works is the very natural portrait of his own son painted in 1818.

Like Tropinin, Alexeï Venetsianov was in his true element when painting ordinary people. The quiet realism of his work represented an important step in the development of Russian painting and had a clearly discernible influence for several decades. Until the age of thirty-nine, Venetsianov worked as a draughtsman and land surveyor in the civil service. After taking up residence in Saint Petersburg in 1802, he studied with Borovikovsky and ran a newspaper advertisement offering his services as a portrait painter. In 1811 he received a distinction from the Academy for his self-portrait, which rivals Chardin’s for its frankness, and it was for a portrait of Golovachevsky (one of the professors) that he was nominated as an academician. Nevertheless, in March 1823 he decided to devote his energies primarily to genre painting, and wrote “Venetsianov hereby relinquishes his portrait painting” on the back of a portrait he had just completed.

40. Karl Briullov, Self-Portrait, 1848. Oil on board, 64 × 54 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

41. Ilya Repin, Portrait of Leo Tolstoy, 1887. Oil on canvas, 124 × 88 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

42. Ilya Repin, Portrait of Modest Moussorgski, 1881. Oil on canvas, 69 × 57 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

43. Ilya Repin, Autumn Bouquet: Portrait of Vera Repina, the Artist’s Daughter, 1892. Oil on canvas, 111 × 65 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

With, Venetsianov, however, the distinction between portraiture and genre painting is often blurred, as can be seen from his Girl with a Birch-Bark Jar and Reaper, both painted after 1823. And, he clearly did not take his “relinquishment” of portraiture very seriously, since he afterwards painted affectionate portraits of his wife, daughter and young serfs and peasants – including a series in which he portrayed various peasant girls with face and hair framed by a shawl. In 1834 he painted a portrait of Gogol, whose progressive ideas he greatly admired.

Venetsianov’s declared aim was “to depict nothing in any way different from how it appears in nature… without recourse to the style of any other artist, that is, not to paint à la Rembrandt, à la Rubens and so forth, but simply, so to speak, à la Nature”. In 1819 he resigned from the civil service and went to live at Safonkovo, the country estate to the east of Moscow that he had bought a few years earlier. At Safonkovo, he started teaching some of his neighbours and their serfs to paint. In the end, more than seventy pupils had absorbed his approach to art, including several who became popular teachers and transmitted his ideas to the next generation.

Among Venetsianov’s contemporaries, the most popular Russian portrait painter was undoubtedly Karl Briullov, whose fashionable clients in Rome and Saint Petersburg were very different from the shepherds and dairymaids that sat for Venetsianov in Safonkovo. Briullov was taught to paint by his father, a Huguenot woodcarver, before going to the preparatory school of the Academy at the age of ten. Then in 1822 he was awarded a grant which enabled him to travel to Italy, where he stayed until 1835. Briullov’s portraits from the 1820s are unmistakably Romantic in spirit, and some of his outdoor portraits from that period, such as his watercolour of Cyril and Maria Naryshkin, have an Italian setting. In 1827 he painted one of his most delightful and best known works, a picture of a girl gathering grapes (intended as part of a series of genre portraits), to which he gave the title Italian Midday.

Towards the end of the 1820s and during the 1830s he produced increasingly large and elaborate compositions, such as The Portrait of the Artist with Baroness Yekaterina Meller-Zakomelskaya and her Daughter in a Boat.

As Briullov’s art developed, his style evolved beyond Romanticism. His portraits began to exhibit more psychological preoccupations, often giving the impression of being unaffected and placing a greater emphasis on the sitter’s personality. The ultimate development of his style can be seen in the remarkable self-portrait that he painted in 1848.

44. Ivan Kramskoï, The inconsolable Grief, 1884. Oil on canvas, 228 × 141 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

45. Ilya Repin, Archidiacre, 1877. Oil on canvas, 124 × 96 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

46. Ilya Repin, Portrait of Pavel Tretyakov, 1883. Oil on canvas, 98 × 75.8 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

47. Vassily Surikov, Man with an Injured Arm, 1913. Oil on canvas, 68.5 × 53.9 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

48. Valentin Serov, Portrait of the Artist Isaac Levitan, 1893. Oil on canvas, 82 × 86 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.