Читать книгу Russian Painting - Peter Leek - Страница 6

Initially the staff of the Academy included a preponderance of foreign – mainly French and Italian – teachers. As a result, Russian painting during the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries owed a great deal to the fashions prevalent in other parts of Europe, which tended to reach Russia with some delay. Given the distance from Saint Petersburg and Moscow to the Western European capitals, this lag is hardly surprising. But Russian painters did have considerable opportunities to familiarize themselves with Russian and non-Russian art, both thanks to the circulation of reproductions (often in the form of engravings and lithographs) and to the art-buying habits of the ruling class. As well as funding the Academy (including travel scholarships for graduates), Catherine the Great bought masterpieces of French, Italian and Dutch art for the Hermitage. During the French Revolution, her agents – and Russian visitors to Paris in general – were able to pick up some handy bargains, as the contents of chateaux were looted and sold off.

7. Jean-Marc Nattier, Portrait of Peter the Great, 1717. Oil on canvas, 142.5 × 110 cm, Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

8. Victor Vasnetov, Ivan the Tsarevich Riding the Grey Wolf, 1889. Oil on canvas, 249 × 187 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.