Nature of the Urals in Apollinary Vasnetsov's Oeuvre
In the early 1890s, Apollinary Mikhailovich Vasnetsov began work on one of his major landscape cycles dedicated to the nature of the Middle and Southern Urals.
To collect field material, the artist made two trips in 1890 and 1891. In the summer of 1890, at the invitation of his younger brother Arkady Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, he spent more than a month in the small factory town of Kushva in the Middle Urals. There he went on long journeys along the slopes of the nearby mountains, made pencil sketches and painted studies. The nature of the Urals reminded the artist of his native Vyatka land serving as a source of inspiration for many years[1].
Apollinary Mikhailovich VASNETSOV. Blagodat Mountain. Urals. 1890. Study
Oil on canvas on carton. 38 х 31 cm © The State Tretyakov Gallery, 2024
Apollinary Vasnetsov expressed his impressions of what he had seen in a short travel essay “From a Trip to the Urals”. He speaks about the power and immensity of the Urals nature: “Take the forests - they have grown here ominous and thick; the hills have risen to the clouds; and the rivers flow copious, deep to blackness, meandering in mighty curves and losing themselves on the horizon; and the distances spread for many dozens of versts [a Russian unit of distance equal to 1.067 kilometres], going far into the cold blue”[2].
Apollinary Vasnetsov described the details of the trip in his letters to his friends and brothers, but the evidence of it has only been preserved in the replies to the artist: “I read your rapturous description of the Urals with great pleasure and went into raptures myself. I understand it. No Crimea is a match for it!”[3].
The most interesting place in the vicinity of Kushva was Blagodat Mountain, from which one could see the panorama of the Kushva pond and Blue Mountain in the distance. Local legends linked the history of Blagodat Mountain with the name of Vogul Stepan Chumpin[4], who was killed there by his fellow-countrymen. A monument and a chapel of the Transfiguration of the Lord were erected on the place of his death, on the top of the mountain, which many a time became a subject for artists and photographers. Apollinary Vasnetsov also addressed this theme in the small work “Blagodat Mountain. Urals” (1890, State Tretyakov Gallery). He depicted a chapel with a pavilion on the top of the mountain. The silhouettes of the buildings elaborated in great detail stand out clearly against the bright blue sky. The massive stone cliff, which rises upwards in steps, is painted generalised, in broad free strokes. The composition elongated upwards is balanced by tall fir trees framing the mountain. Light colours of the sky and strokes of golden ochre on tree trunks and cliff faces create a joyful mood. In the “Forest on Blagodat Mountain” study (1890, State Tretyakov Gallery), the Kushva pond and the blue distant mountains can be seen through the gaps between the fir trees flooded with sunshine. Vasnetsov presented the “Blagodat Mountain” study (1890, M.V. Nesterov Bashkir State Art Museum, Ufa) remarkable for a detailed elaboration of the landscape, to Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov who highly valued the artist’s Urals landscapes.
The collection of the Tretyakov Gallery contains several panoramic studies with views of the mountains and valleys in the vicinity of Kushva (“Twilight. Kushva”, “Blue Mountain and Kushva Pond", “Kachkanar Mountain”, all - 1890).
The material collected in Kushva was used by Vasnetsov to create illustrations for his essay “From a Trip to the Urals”. Eleven black-and- white drawings were combined into two compositions of 5 and 6 drawings decorated with additional decorative elements and sent to the “World Illustration” magazine[5] in the autumn of 1890. Illustrated travelling notes were becoming quite popular at that time, and, apart from that, the artist had several times published his works in that magazine, so he counted on a positive response. His correspondence with his close friend Nikolai Nikolayevich Khokhryakov has been preserved, and it shows that during the winter of 1890-1891 Apollinary Vasnetsov repeatedly asked him to inquire whether his works had been accepted[6].
However, despite the fact that the artist had from the very start adapted the sketches and studies to the requirements of the magazine[7], only the essay was accepted for publication. Having failed, he wrote to Khokhryakov: “Probably you received the letter where I told you to offer to “Illustration” to cut out at least some drawings from the vignettes, and those that cannot be - for you to redraw. If this is also rejected, could you send them to the “Pictorial Review”?”[8] . Only in 1892 was the essay with the drawings published in the Moscow magazine “Tsar Bell” (No 2). Of the published drawings, two are almost exact repetitions of the studies “Blagodat Mountain. Urals” (State Tretyakov Gallery) and “Blagodat Mountain” (1890, M.V. Nesterov Bashkir State Art Museum, Ufa). But in general, the illustrations are rather topographical in nature.
In the summer of 1891, at the invitation of the writer Vladimir Ludvigovich Kign[9], who served as an officer of special duties at the Resettlement Administration in the city of Orenburg, Apollinary Vasnetsov travelled to the Southern Urals. The first part of the trip - to the Preobrazhensky Works in the Orenburg province - is described by Kign in a series of essays entitled “Around Russia. - Poland. - Bessarabia. - Crimea. - Urals. - Finland. - Nizhny. Portraits and Landscapes” published in 1895. With subtle humour and observation, he shows the difference in the perception of the world by an artist and a person not much versed in fine arts. Views that seemed very picturesque to the writer, left his friend indifferent, and, on the contrary, a nondescript landscape could be seen by the artist as full of beauty and worthy of being rendered on the canvas.
Apollinary Vasnetsov’s travelling album for 1891 contains several drawings with views of the valleys of the Southern Urals, the Ika and Suren rivers, and the environs of the Preobrazhensky Works (all - 1891, State Tretyakov Gallery). In sketching the neighbourhood of the works, the landscapist was attracted by spectacular rock formations and buildings. These are the only drawings of the Southern Urals where he shows close-ups of specific objects rather than a wide panorama.
On one of the sheets of the album (State Tretyakov Gallery) with images of the Urenga mountain range and views of the city of Zlatoust the names of the palette colours are preserved written down by the author for further work in oil.
One of the most interesting studies of the Urals - “Mound” (1891, State Tretyakov Gallery) - was also done during that trip. The much-elongated horizontal composition, the high horizon line and the close-up view of a mound covered with a scattering of flowers create an unusual colourful image that contrasts with the more laconic and harsh landscapes of the Middle Urals.
Drawings and studies from the two trips to the Urals became the main material for the creation of monumental epic canvases in the 1890s, which made Apollinary Vasnetsov known and largely determined further development of his work.
The first major work of the Urals cycle was “Taiga in the Urals. Blue Mountain” (1891, State Tretyakov Gallery). When developing the composition, the painter used the “Blue Mountain and Kushva Pond” study, as well as drawings prepared by him for publishing in the magazine, but there are no direct compositional or plot borrowings from field materials either in the first or in the subsequent paintings of the cycle.
It is already in the first monumental landscape that a set of features typical of most of the Urals cycle works are revealed - panoramic and top views, the contrast between the detailed close-up foreground and the generalised background shrouded in a misty haze, also, the motif of a fallen tree. These features, in this or that combination, can be traced in the landscapes of the Middle Urals (“The Northern Land”, 1899, State Russian Museum of Fine Arts; “Mountain Lake. Urals”, 1892, National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk).
The landscapes “Morning in the Ural Mountains” (1891), “Taiga in the Urals. Blue Mountain” were shown at the 19th exhibition of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions and received good reviews. For the artist himself, the most valuable were the warm letters of his brothers, especially Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, who liked his paintings “immensely”[10].
In 1892, the artist painted “Mountain Lake. Urals” (National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk), which was shown at the 21st exhibition of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions. The epic image of harsh northern nature made a huge impression on Vasily Mikhailovich Nesterov: “This painting should turn the whole landscape world over, it will, as an event, shake and renew this world. It is a requiem, where human passions are quietly sleeping, the souls of the deceased are roaming, waiting for the greatest creative genius to call upon and point them to another world...”[11]. Inspired by Nesterov’s high praise, Apollinary Vasnetsov continued to develop this subject and created two more versions: “Lake in Mountainous Bashkiria” (1895, State Russian Museum) and “Ballad. Urals” (1897, Odessa Art Museum, Ukraine).
Based on his memories of the Southern Urals, the master painted “The Orenburg Steppes” (1893, Vasnetsovs Vyatka Art Museum, Kirov). The laconic peaceful image of open space is poetically described by Vladimir Kign: “Spaciousness, desertedness, silence, overwhelming silence; boundless plains, among which large rivers seem no bigger than a stream of rain; huge hills on which cities lie like splashes; mountains imperceptibly turning into plains; plains imperceptibly rising to great heights; the white-hot sun; the occasional blue little cloud whose wings cast a shadow over endless space, - that is Russian Central Asia, monotonous as submission, endless as nothingness!”[12].
The Ural landscapes made the name of Apollinary Vasnetsov widely known. People begin to show interest in him, his paintings are bought more and more often. The 23rd exhibition of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions featuring two landscapes from the Urals cycle - “River Kama” (1895, State Tretyakov Gallery) and “Siberia” (1894, State Russian Museum), - became especially important. Both paintings received excellent reviews in the press. Igor Emanuilovich Grabar in his article about the exhibition notes “Siberia”: “Vasnetsov stands somehow apart, almost aloof from all other landscape painters. He has gone farther than others, his flight is higher, his sweep is wider, the nature is more original, more individual <...> “Siberia” is mysterious, too. As if something terrible nests behind the dark forest, blue in the distance, the wind is roaring through the dell, and the rider is racing as fast as he can, afraid to look back”[13]. Both paintings were acquired from the exhibition. “River Kama” was bought by Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov for his collection, “Siberia” - by Nikolai Karlovich von Meck.
After the 23rd exhibition of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions Apollinary Vasnetsov was actively invited to participate in other exhibitions, new orders were appearing. For example, in 1896 Alexander Nikolayevich Benois invited him to take part in a watercolour exhibition, saying that “Urals views” were preferable[14]. In 1897, the editor of the “Children’s Leisure Time” magazine approached him with a proposal for illustrating Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak’s story “In the wilderness”, adding in the letter: “...who else is capable of illustrating Urals stories but you?”[15].
The paintings of the Urals cycle embodied many themes that were iconic in Apollinary Vasnetsov’s creative and philosophical pursuits - the loneliness of man in the world and wandering as a way of life (“Twilight Wind”, 1910s, Vyatka Art Museum, Kirov), the mystical state of nature (“Dusky Day. Urals”, 1919, State Tretyakov Gallery; “Urals Landscape”, 1891-1897, Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts). In the process of working on the cycle, he discovered style techniques manifested in the painting “The Lake” (1902, State Tretyakov Gallery) imbued with the moods of symbolism.
Throughout the 1900-1910s, Apollinary Vasnetsov regularly showed Urals landscapes at exhibitions, including exhibitions abroad. Thus, the painting “Siberia” participated in the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, in 1907 was exhibited in Munich. New paintings were created as well, but they did not seem to attract as much attention (“From Urals Memories”, 1907, whereabouts unknown).
Many works of the Urals series were reproduced in postcards in the 1910s. The Vasnetsov family archive has the artist’s draft lists with the subjects proposed for printing: “B[olshoi] Taganai Mountain”, “Blue Mountain and Kushva Pond”, “Kachkanar Mountain”, “Southern Foothills of the Urals”, “Road to Blagodat Mountain]” “Forest on Blagodat M[ountain]”[16] .
In the 1920s, Apollinary Vasnetsov created autolithographies based on his paintings. There he turns to the Urals materials as well, but this time he uses genre subjects that were not represented in the paintings. In 1929, the State Publishing House GIZ[17] commissioned to the artist “four folk paintings for further replication”.[18] The series included “A Small Settlement in the Southern Urals”, “Wintering of the Fur Trappers”, “Mushroom Picking”, and “Sawmill”. Also, in 1930 a colour autolithography “Resettlers in the Southern Urals” was printed. These works in the style of folk pictures became the last ones where the artist used the theme of the Urals.
The Urals nature captured the artist’s imagination for forty years, starting from 1890, and allowed him to express his thoughts on the essence of art and the role of the artist.
- Vasnetsov Ap. M. How I Became an Artist and How I Worked. Excerpt from Autobiography. 1929. // Echo of the Past. Moscow, 2006. P. 41.
- Vasnetsov Ap. M. From a Trip to the Urals”. 1892. // Echo of the Past. Moscow, 2006. P. 110.
- Khokhryakov N.N. to Vasnetsov Ap. M. 4 November, 1890 // Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 87. Sheet 1.
- Stepan (Stefan) Anisimovich Chumpin discovered an iron ore field on the right bank of the river Kushva where it flows into the river Tura; later, the mountain where Chumpin found outcrops of ore was named Blagodat. He pointed the place out to a representative of the Urals Mining Administration. Chumpin was a Vogul (old name for the ethnic people of Mansi) by origin; according to the unconfirmed legend, he was burnt by his fellow countrymen for revealing to the Russians the place of the iron ore.
- Illustrated art and literature weekly magazine published in St. Petersburg by Hermann Hoppe Publishers from 1869 to 1898.
- Vasnetsov Ap. M. to Khokhryakov N.N. 4 December 1890. // Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 244. Sheet 1. Vasnetsov Ap. M. to Khokhryakov N.N. 22 December, 1890. // Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 245. Sheet 1.
- Vasnetsov Ap. M. to Khokhryakov N.N. 4 December 1890. // Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 244. Sheet 2.
- Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 246. Sheet 1. Pictorial Review is an illustrated weekly magazine published in St. Petersburg from 1872 to 1905 with a break in 1900-1902.
- Kign V. L. to Vasnetsov Ap. M. 16 May 1891. Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 593.
- Vasnetsov V. M. to Vasnetsov Ap. M. 28 April, 1891. // Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 458.
- Nesterov M.V. to Vasnetsov Ap. M. 8 November, 1982. // M.V. Nesterov. Letters. Leningrad, 1988. P. 97.
- Kign V.L. Around Russia. - Poland. - Bessarabia. - Crimea. - Urals. - Finland. - Nizhny. Portraits and Landscapes. St. Petersburg, 1895. P. 338-339.
- Niva magazine. No 9. 1895. P. 220.
- Benois A.N. to Vasnetsov Ap. M. 20 July, 1896. // Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 9. Sheet 1.
- Barsky Ya. to Vasnetsov Ap. M. 14 January, 1897. // Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 349. Sheet 1.
- State Tretyakov Gallery. Archive of the Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum, Vasnetsov Memorial Flat-Museum, Museum Fund Archive-272.
- GIZ - State Publishing House of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1919-1930).
- Dpt. of Manuscripts, State Tretyakov Gallery. Fund 11. Storage item 338. Sheet 1.
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