A Russian Luminist School? ARKHIP KUINDZHI’S "RED SUNSET ON THE DNIEPER" [1]

John E. Bowlt

Article: 
POINT OF VIEW
Magazine issue: 
#3 2018 (60)

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

One of the Metropolitan Museum’s important acquisitions in European painting is a large landscape by the Russian, or, strictly speaking, Ukrainian, painter, Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi (1842-1910): “Red Sunset on the Dnieper”. Despite its late date, 1905-08, the work is representative both of Kuindzhi’s own artistic career and of what might be called a Russian Luminist school. To those unfamiliar with the history of modern Russian art, this painting, reminiscent in its expressivity of the work of Western Luminists such as Albert Bierstadt, might seem to be a curious anomaly. But in the context of 19 th and 20th century Russian painting, “Red Sunset on the Dnieper” is a remarkable and important work. Its presence in the Museum helps focus attention on a field of aesthetic study still neglected and misinterpreted.

A peculiar conjunction of circumstances in Western scholarship of Russian art, not least the disproportionate emphasis on the Russian avant-garde and the accepted belief that Russian painting of the later 19th century was totally didactic and literary, has contributed to a comparative disregard, or at best, inaccurate conception of Russian Realism and Naturalism. Of course, Russian painting and literature of the second half of the 19th century were often tendentious and ideological; moreover, their execution tended to be mediocre, as the artists sometimes lacked the technical prowess of a Daumier or a Menzel. In addition, Russian painters were often inspired by the lesser works of the Barbizons or the mid-century German landscapists.

The emphasis on historical and socio-political relevance that is associated with a picture by Ilya Repin or a novel by Lev Tolstoy caused many of the Russian Realists to neglect the intrinsic painterly aspects of their work. Despite the tonal contrasts in Repin's “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan" (1885, Tretyakov Gallery; copy in the Metropolitan Museum), the Impressionist light effects in his “Annual Remembrance Meeting by the Wall of the Communards at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris" (1883, Tretyakov Gallery), or the linear sensitivity of Alexei Savrasov's landscapes, the work of many Russian painters of the second half of the 19th century was concerned more with story than technique. The Realists rarely conceived of the picture as a hermetic unit, but instead tried to place it within a social and historical framework. The pictorial devices of inserting figures pointing to, or looking at, something beyond the frame or introducing a sequence of buildings or interiors leading from the pictorial to the external world, give such pictures a sense of movement or continuum.

However, it also means that figures and objects tend to become mere parts of a narrative progression. It was because of this that many Realist portraits, however precise and concrete, lacked psychological depth, prompting the critic and artist Alexandre Benois to speak of their “materialism".[2] This concentration on physical appearance was stimulated in part by the Positivist ideas supported by so many intellectuals and by the dicta of Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobrolyubov. Chernyshevsky, writing about aesthetics in 1855, stated that an “object is beautiful which displays life in itself or reminds us of life".[3] These literary theories are parallelled visually by the works of Vasily Perov, Repin, Nikolai Yaroshenko, and other Realists.

From 1860 to 1880 this coincidence of views occasioned uncommon sympathy and unity between writers and artists, culminating in several memorable portraits of writers, for example, Repin's portrait of Vsevolod Garshin. Although the colours have faded considerably, as they have in many of the Realists' works, it is obvious that Repin was little interested in colour itself, the sombre browns extending the melancholy of “The Red Flower", Garshin's best-known story. Despite the energetic brushwork and the intense expression of the eyes, the value of Repin's work is now primarily historical rather than artistic.

Whatever their defects, the Russian Realists were the avant-garde of their time and they exerted a decisive influence upon the evolution of Russian art. Even when we place them in the larger context of Western European painting and see their achievement eclipsed by the more exciting works of artists such as Daumier, Gavarni, and Menzel, we should not forget their cultural contributions in Russia. In their reaction against stagnant academic traditions, in their concern with great moments of Russia's past, and in their pictorial commentaries on the “accursed problems" of Russian society, the Russian Realists helped to awaken a new national identity.

The sympathy and patronage of collectors such as Nikolai, Ivan and Fyodor Tereshchenko and Pavel Tretyakov and of critics such as Vladimir Stasov did much to further the Realist cause, as did the establishment of the Society of Wandering Art Exhibitions (the Wanderers, or “Peredvizhniki") in 1870 which held sway until the 1890s. The purpose of the Society was to disseminate its members' art not only in the major cities, but also in the provincial centres. Through this powerful apparatus of propagation, the works of artists such as Ivan Kramskoi, Grigory Myasoedov, Perov and Repin became a cultural experience no longer limited to a social elite.

But this is not to say that a “non-Realist" tendency did not also exist. Kramskoi, for example, one of the leading members of the Wanderers, painted a number of “philosophical" and mystical paintings such as “The Sirens" (1871, Tretyakov Gallery). His illustrations for the 1874 edition of Gogol's “A Terrible Vengeance"[4] are as bizarre as any by Arnold Bocklin or Odilon Redon.

Arkhip Kuindzhi, although a member of the Wanderers from 1874 to 1879, hardly concerned himself with the Realist credo, favouring a more lyrical, subjective interpretation of life and art. Not surprisingly, therefore, his brief association with the Wanderers ended in a bitter quarrel with fellow-member Mikhail Klodt, and an air of distrust clouded his relationship with Repin. Because of his rejection of the narrative theme and his exclusive attention to mood and sensibility, Kuindzhi occupies a distinctive position in the history of 19th century Russian art.

Luminism is usually associated with the 19th century American and German schools of landscape painting rather than the Russian. While there was certainly no Russian equivalent of the Hudson River School, there were, however, a few isolated artists, among them Yuly Klever, Ivan Shishkin and, above all, Kuindzhi, who demonstrated an acute sensitivity to the effects of natural light. With the exception of Shishkin, the Russian Luminists did not transmit that aerial clarity and crystalline light that is associated with the work of Bierstadt, Frederick Church and Martin Heade; and they did not “dehumanize" the scene as, for example, John Kensett tended to do. The Russian Luminists expressed personal feelings through idiosyncratic composition, facture, and colour combinations. However, what John Baur has said of the American Luminist works - “we seem to be reading not the poetry of a poet about things, but the poetry of things themselves''[5] - is also true, to some extent, of the Russians, although their expressiveness is less impersonal than that of the American movement.[6]

It is, of course, hazardous to attempt to establish in retrospect the existence of a Russian Luminist school; many of those key elements that influenced the American Luminists - the general familiarity with Western European painting, and in particular with Dutch landscapes, the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson's transcendentalism, and the tradition of naive painting - were all missing, or at least secondary, in the development of 19th century Russian painting. On the other hand, the interest in photography in mid- and late 19th century Russia among both artists (for example, Nikolai Ge, Kramskoi, Kuindzhi, and Repin) and the public, the very topography of the Russian landscape with its pronounced horizontals and planes so beloved by the American Luminists, and the discoveries of Russian physicists such as Kliment Timiryazev, could not fail to affect the optical sense of the Russian artist. In painting, these factors generated qualities readily identifiable as “luminist" - brilliant and refractive light, strong horizontal structure, attention to detail, panoramic space - qualities manifest in the work of Kuindzhi. The audacious spectral contrasts and light effects of his epic landscapes both separate Kuindzhi from the usual tendentious work of so many of his contemporaries and at the same time anticipate the extraordinary experiments of the 20th century Russian avant-garde and, ultimately, point to “painting as an end in itself".

Arkhip Kuindzhi[7] was born in 1842 in the Ukrainian town of Mariupol. Greek by origin, with some Tatar blood, the Kuindzhi family was too poor to give their son a formal education. As an artist, therefore, he was initially self-taught. This is noticeable in his weakness in and avoidance of classical perspective and anatomy. From his youth, Kuindzhi was interested in the effects of light and space; the sweeping Ukrainian vistas that he had known as a young shepherd had a lasting influence on his art. About 1855, Kuindzhi went to Feodosia on the Black Sea to study with the maritime painter Ivan Aivazovsky, although according to some sources he was engaged merely to mix paints and received no formal instruction from the master.[8] Nevertheless, the elemental sense of light and form associated with Aivazovsky's sunsets, storms and surging oceans permanently influenced the young Kuindzhi, although he would later smile at that sleight of hand that could produce a stormy seascape in under two hours.

On his return to Mariupol in the autumn of 1855, Kuindzhi became a photograph retoucher, a trade he plied throughout the late 1850s and 1860s in Odessa and after 1862 in St. Petersburg. As in the case of Kramskoi and, to a lesser extent, of Perov and Repin, the influence of photography on Kuindzhi's sensitivity to light was considerable. It prompted his complex manipulation of images and refractions of the spectrum as if he were extending the black/white antithesis of photography. In 1868, after several unsuccessful attempts, Kuindzhi entered the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, concentrated on landscape, and graduated in 1872.

Although Kuindzhi joined the Society of Wandering Art Exhibitions in 1874, his artistic sensibility differed profoundly from that of his colleagues. Kuindzhi's use of contrasting primary colours - what one critic referred to as his “cosmic tones"[9] - distinguished him immediately from the sombre, conservative colour harmonies of Kramskoi, Repin and Yaroshenko. Unlike the Impressionists, with whom, after his first trip to Paris in 1875, he was well acquainted, he conceived light almost as a concrete entity and endeavoured to transmit to it a fullness and density quite alien to the analytical, fragmentary effects of Claude Monet or Alfred Sisley. Benois' description of Kuindzhi as the “Russian Monet"[10] was, therefore, a misleading one, although he was right to regard them both as exponents of “paint itself".

Kuindzhi's conception of light is embodied in “Ukrainian Night" (1876), one of his finest and most provocative works of the 1870s. Its very material rendition of nocturnal light and its immediate evocation of mood rather than story deeply impressed spectators both at the 5th Wanderers exhibition of 1876 and at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878. The atmospheric quality of “Ukrainian Night" is also present in “After the Storm" and “Morning on the Dnieper", both of which are foremost examples of the 19th century Russian landscape school. “Ukrainian Night" was followed in 1879 by the version of perhaps Kuindzhi's best-known painting, “A Birch Grove". This highly emotive picture, which caused some people to “stand open-mouthed before it and others to weep,"[11] combines a touchingly simple main theme and a complex, zig-zag composition. The progression from foreground to background through bands of shadow and light, the extreme contrasts in tone, as well as the abrupt truncation of the tree tops, invest the work with a peculiar, photographic quality - that “stereoscopic re- liefness’’[12] that contemporaries identified with Kuindzhi's Luminism.

This development culminated in the exquisite “Moonlight Night on the Dnieper" (1880, Russian Museum), a masterpiece of luminous effect which was exhibited in 1880 at Kuindzhi's first solo show. While including the stylistic principles of “A Birch Grove" - the central focus and rapid gradation of tones - Kuindzhi introduced a radical change in his construction of space, by presenting a bird's-eye view. Kuindzhi was intrigued by the notion of flying (his love of birds is legendary), and many of his later works rely on an aerial perspective similar to that of “Moonlight Night on the Dnieper". The picture caused a sensation; its magical charm caused “the whole of St. Petersburg ... to besiege the premises of the exhibition".[13] It was acquired immediately by Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich and was given a special showing at the Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris, later in the year. Soon oleo- graphic reproductions of it abounded.

The impact of this painting on St. Petersburg society was decisive: “This is not just a move forward for painting, it is a leap, a vast leap. This painting has an unprecedented potency of colours. The impression it gives is a decidedly magical one; it is not a painting, but nature herself... The moon is a real moon and it is really shining. The river is a real river, it really does glitter and gleam; you can see the ripple and you can almost guess whither, in which direction, the Dnieper is bearing its waters. The shadows and half-shadows, the lights, the air, the faint mist - everything is expressed in such a way that you wonder how paints could express it... Nowhere in the world is there such a painting as this."[14]

Unfortunately, “Moonlight Night on the Dnieper" today creates a lesser impression, since, as Kramskoi predicted, the chemicals in the pigments have caused the painting to darken,[15] something true of many other Kuindzhi works. Other versions of “Moonlight Night on the Dnieper" and “A Birch Grove" were included in Kuindzhi's second solo show in 1882, after which he retired from public life, never exhibiting again.

What led to Kuindzhi's sudden retreat is difficult to establish, the more so since he left almost no diaries, correspondence or notes. Perhaps Kuindzhi was afraid of failure after the success of pictures such as “A Birch Grove"; perhaps he felt that his sudden fame would prove to be an encumbrance; perhaps he wished to devote himself entirely to research and experimentation. He may have also wished to avoid the suspicion and hostility of critics and artists, who had already cast aspersions on his name and had even inspired the rumour that while a shepherd in the Crimea, Kuindzhi had murdered an artist and seized all his paintings.[16]

It was not until 1892 that Kuindzhi accepted the post of professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, taking charge of the landscape studio at the so-called Higher Art School within the Academy in 1894. Kuindzhi was one of the Academy's most popular teachers and many artists who were to become famous visited his studio: Konstantin Bogaevsky, Alexander Borisov, Nicholas Roerich, Arkady Rylov. Borisov, in particular, proved a worthy successor to Kuindzhi and used the Luminist style to good effect in his many scenes of the Arctic regions. Rylov, a foremost landscapist in Soviet times, recalled that Kuindzhi commanded both their affection and respect:

“On Fridays Kuindzhi's studio was crowded with students: Arkhip Ivanovich would inspect the homework of anyone who wanted his advice... I did not like the familiarity of certain pupils toward their professor: they would interrupt him, interfere in the discussion of my work and sometimes did not agree with Kuindzhi's opinion. At that time I was still a soldier. I found this attitude to the ‘boss' unusual and disturbing. Later on I realized that this was not a boss with his underlings, but a father with his children."[17]

Although the dismissal insulted Kuindzhi, he did not sever his ties with the Academy, but remained a member of its Council and even made the institution a gift of 100,000 rubles in 1904. Such magnanimity, part of Kuindzhi's sincere desire to help students, culminated in his ambitious proposal to organize a benevolent society for artists. Eventually, this led to the establishment of the “Kuindzhi Society” in St. Petersburg, opened officially in February 1908, to render “both material and moral support to all art societies, groups, and also individual artists; to co-operate with them, to organize exhibitions both in St. Petersburg, other cities and abroad; to provide continuous support by purchasing the best works at them so as to organize a national gallery of art."[18]

Suffering from a heart condition, Kuindzhi drew up his will in March 1910, leaving all remaining works and money to the Society. He died in St. Petersburg on II July 1910 and tribute was paid to his achievements by a large retrospective of his works in St. Petersburg the following year.

With the dissolution of the Kuindzhi Society in 1930, most of the painter's work made its way to the Russian Museum in Leningrad. Among the paintings Kuindzhi bequeathed to his society was “Red Sunset on the Dnieper".[19] It contains typical Kuindzhian elements - large dimensions, low horizon, aerial perspective, and, of course, the same dramatic luminous contrasts as in his once better-known “Moonlight Night on the Dnieper". The success of the “Sunset", its gradations of light and refractions, depends very much on the central position of the light source, just as many of Kuindzhi's nocturnal landscapes rely on the presence of a full moon in the centre of the canvas. Other Luminists of the time tended to “avoid showing the moon itself in their paintings, or, if they do show it, then they do so by enveloping it lightly in transparent clouds."[20]

Undoubtedly, Kuindzhi's treatment of light and space was encouraged by his interest and experiments in the chemical ingredients of paints and by his close friendship with the scientist Dmitry Mendeleev.[21] But at the same time, it is tempting to suggest that Kuindzhi possessed a more innate, even national conception of space and light for, as his fellow southerner, the Armenian Georgy Yakulov, would later point out,[22] each nation tends to see the sun in a different way and thus to interpret space and light according to distinctive artistic principles. There is no doubt that the peculiar weather and atmosphere of the Ukraine, its aerial clarity and refractivity, flatness and vast expanse of sky, occasions a unique perception of light. Unlike the clearly delineated light and space of, for example, large cities or of the intimate English countryside, the light of the Ukrainian steppes is curiously dense and omnipresent. Kuindzhi attempted to transmit this quality, and his “Red Sunset on the Dnieper" becomes a picture of space as much as of a crepuscular landscape. There is no recession of trees or buildings to provide the illusion of perspective and no definite outlines to delineate objects. Moreover, unlike a Realist work, “Red Sunset" makes no overt reference to the world beyond the frame; no gesture, glance, or pointed finger, no arabesque of trees, no crowds of people, no windows link the picture to the viewer's three-dimensional reality. Our attention is focused only on the interchange of colour and light that achieves an almost cosmic force, a grand tension between physical and abstract, matter and spirit, “here" and “there".

Although democratic by nature, Kuindzhi was little concerned with the social or political dimensions of a given scene, attempting to use the scene as an emotional and psychological stimulus. In eliciting nature expressively rather than narratively, Kuindzhi imbued his work with a sense of timelessness and, somewhat like his contemporaries, the poets Afanasy Fet and Konstantin Fofanov, he anticipated the highly subjective, oneiric tendencies of the Russian Symbolist movement of the late 1890s and early 1900s. However, there is no reason to assume that Kuindzhi went so far as to imagine, as did the Symbolists, that art could act as a medium of communication with the “essence" or the “absolute". Like the landscapist Isaak Levitan, Kuindzhi reacted against the Positivist interpretation of reality common to the Realists, and he “abstracted" or “synthesized" the natural world, so that his epic panoramas, devoid of human figures, seem to be the ultimate distillation of nature herself. Even so, Kuindzhi's juxtaposition of such abstraction with his concrete presentation of space and light invests his work, particularly “Red Sunset", with a peculiar tension that is associated with so many examples of Symbolist art and literature - and which is also especially identifiable with Russian Modernism as a whole.

As one of Kuindzhi's last major works, “Red Sunset on the Dnieper" was a step towards abstraction, just as were Monet's “Haystacks" or Paul Serusier's “Talisman". It was this promise of new aesthetic principles that Kuindzhi's biographer identified with “Red Sunset" as early as 1913: “This piece has already presented us with a certain new sensation, it has given us something important... This painting does not gladden the eye, in my opinion, it is not at all ‘pretty'... But a kind of vastness, an elementalness dispersing into infinity, can be felt from the straight, parallel lines of the horizon, the banks of the river, the lower edge of the cloud..."[23]

While Kuindzhi can lay little claim to universal fame, he deserves to be remembered for two important achievements, both of which are implicit in “Red Sunset on the Dnieper". On the one hand, it is clear that he stood outside those socio-political conventions of Russian Realism that we have accepted as all-encompassing for too long, and thus he offers us an alternative criterion for our study of 19th century Russian art. On the other hand, Kuindzhi's attention to the intrinsic properties of painting, especially to colour, anticipated some of the most exciting trends of 20th century Russian art, not least the colour experiments of Wassily Kandinsky and Mikhail Matyushin. In this respect, Kramskoi was well justified in calling Kuindzhi “a man of the future".[24]

First published in 1975 in the “Metropolitan Museum Journal". John E. Bowlt:
"Arkhip Kuindzhi: A Russian Luminist School?" “Metropolitan Museum Journal", New York, 1975. Vol. 10. Pp. 119-129.

 

  1. The system of transliteration used here is that used by the University of Glasgow journal Soviet Studies, except in the case of hard and soft signs, which have not been rendered. The spelling of Kuindzhi as Kuindji or Kuindjii, which occurs in some Western sources, is not phonetically valid.
  2. Benois, A. “History of Russian Paintig in the 19th Century". St. Petersburg, 1901-02. P. 185.
  3. Chernyshevsky, N. “The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality". Moscow, 1948. P. 10.
  4. This was the second of a three-part edition of Gogol’s “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", published in Moscow by Golyashkin in 1874-76.
  5. Baur, John I.H. ‘American Lumin- ism' // “Perspectives USA", no. 1, New York, 1954. P. 98.
  6. Barbara Novak uses the term “impersonal expressionism" in her “American Painting of the 19th Century" (New York, 1969. P. 98).
  7. Of the following publications relating directly to Kuindzhi, the two most recent are most accurate: M. Nevedomsky; I. Repin, “Kuindzhi" (St. Petersburg, 1913); A. Rostislavov, “A.I. Kuindzhi" (St. Petersburg, 1914); M. Nevedomsky, “Kuindzhi“ (Moscow, 1937); I. Repin, ‘Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi' // “Far Away, Close Up" (Moscow-Lenin- grad, 1937, pp. 405-420); V. Zimen- ko, “Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi" (Moscow-Leningrad, 1947); Z. Lukina, ed., “Kuindzhi and His Students" (Exhibition Catalogue, Academy of Arts, Leningrad, 1973); V. Manin, ‘Kuindzhi and the Kuindzhists'" // “Iskusstvo" (Art), no. 8 (Moscow, 1974, pp. 55-59).
  8. According to Nevedomsky and Repin (1913, p. 9), Rylov repeats this in his “Memoirs" (Leningrad, 1960, p. 41). The date of Kuindzhi's sojourn (or sojourns) in Feodosia is given as 1855 by Nevedomsky (1937, p. 9). Manin (p. 55) indicates, however, that Kuindzhi was with Aivazovsky in 1866-67. It is possible that Kuindzhi worked under Aivazovsky both in the 1850s and 60s.
  9. Nevedomsky and Repin (1913, p. 7).
  10. Benois, p. 205.
  11. Ilya Repin letter to Igor Ostroukhov, 25 November 1901. In I. Brodsky, ed., “I. Repin. Letters 1893-1930". Moscow, 1969. P. 167. Repin was referring to a copy of the original “A Birch Grove".
  12. Rylov, p. 45.
  13. Rylov, p. 43.
  14. Alexei Suvorin, quoted in Rylov, p. 43.
  15. Kramskoi wrote to Alexei Suvorin, 15 September 1880: "The following thought worries me: will that combination of paints which the artist has discovered last for very long? Perhaps (consciously or unconsciously - it does not matter) Kuindzhi put paints together which are organically antagonistic to each other and which will either fade out or change after a certain time, and will disintegrate to the point where our descendants will shrug their shoulders, perplexed." Quoted in S. Goldshtein, ed. “Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi: Letters, Articles". In 2 volumes, Moscow, 1966. Vol. 2. P. 54.
  16. According to Nicholas Roerich in ‘My Meetings with Kuindzhi, Purvitis, Bogaevsky and Other Renowned Artists' // “Segodnya" (Today) 309, Riga, 1936. P. 4.
  17. Rylov, p. 38.
  18. Rylov, p. 141.
  19. The Museum purchased it in 1974 from a New York dealer who had bought it at Sotheby Parke-Bernet. It was formerly in the New York collection of Peter Tretyakov. “Red Sunset on the Dnieper" (in Russian, Krasnyi zakat - “on the Dnieper" was added by the Metropolitan) was painted between 1905 and 1908, and was owned by the Kuindzhi Society, according to the list of works in Nevedomsky and Repin (1913). Some 20 or 30 works were sold by the Society up to 1917; probably “Red Sunset" was one of these. All works that were the property of the Society were marked on the reverse with the Society's printed label, which included a red “K", with space for the handwritten title and two or three signatures of the Society's officials. No such label is on the reverse of the Metropolitan's picture, but one may have been removed when the painting was relined. The painting is not signed, but this is not uncommon for Kuindzhi. “Red Sunset" has been reproduced twice in publications: in Nevedomsky and Repin (1913, between pp. 36 and 37, in colour); Nevedomsky (1937, p. 91). A small study in oils, entitled “Red Sunset", is in the Russian Museum.
  20. A. Matushinsky in the newspaper “Golos" (Voice), quoted from Nev- edomsky, Repin (1913, p. 62).
  21. Kuindzhi, presumably, was therefore familiar with Mendeleev's chemical analyses of colour. He also knew the scientist Fyodor Petrushevsky and probably read his book “Light and Colour as Such and With Regard to Painting" (St. Petersburg, 1883).
  22. G. Yakulov, ‘Blue Sun' // “Altsiona", no. 1. Moscow, 1914. Pp. 235-239. Translated as ‘Le soleil bleu' in “Notes et documents" edites par la societe des amis de Georges Yak- oulov, no. 3. Paris, 1979. Pp. 15-17.
  23. Nevedomsky and Repin (1913, p. 164).
  24. Ivan Kramskoi letter to Ilya Repin, 5 April 1875, in S. Goldshtein, ed. “Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi: Letters, Articles". In 2 volumes, Moscow, 1966. Vol. 1. P. 294.
Ilustrations
Arkhip KUINDZHI. Red Sunset on the Dnieper. 1905–1908. Detail
Arkhip KUINDZHI. Red Sunset on the Dnieper. 1905-1908
Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1974.100. Detail
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Albert BIERSTADT. Among the Sierra Nevada, California. 1868. Detail
Albert BIERSTADT. Among the Sierra Nevada, California. 1868
Oil on canvas. Smithsonian American Art Museum Washington, D.C.: Bequest of Helen Huntington Hull. Detail
Ivan KRAMSKOI. The Mermaids (Night in May). 1871
Ivan KRAMSKOI. The Mermaids (Night in May). 1871
Oil on canvas. 88 × 132 cm. Tretyakov Gallery
Arkhip KUINDZHI. Ukrainian Night. 1876
Arkhip KUINDZHI. Ukrainian Night. 1876
Oil on canvas. 79 × 162 cm. Tretyakov Gallery
Arkhip KUINDZHI. A Birch Grove. 1879
Arkhip KUINDZHI. A Birch Grove. 1879
Oil on canvas. 97 × 181 cm. Tretyakov Gallery
Claude MONET. The Cliffs at Etretat. 1885
Claude MONET. The Cliffs at Etretat. 1885
Oil on canvas. 65.1 × 81.3 cm.
© Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA
Claude MONET. Haystack near Giverny. 1884–1889
Claude MONET. Haystack near Giverny. 1884-1889
Oil on canvas. 64.5 × 87 cm. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts
Arkhip KUINDZHI. Northern Sea in Moonlight. 1890–1895
Arkhip KUINDZHI. Northern Sea in Moonlight. 1890-1895
Oil on paper. 37 × 56 cm. Lithuanian Art Museum, Vilnius
Yuly KLEVER. Hut on the Edge of a Lake. Winter. 1891
Yuly KLEVER. Hut on the Edge of a Lake. Winter. 1891
Oil on canvas. 28.5 × 23.5 cm
Ivan SHISHKIN. A Pine Forest. 1878
Ivan SHISHKIN. A Pine Forest. 1878
Oil on canvas. 115 × 88 cm. Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn
Alfred SISLEY. Banks of the Seine at By. c. 1880-1881
Alfred SISLEY. Banks of the Seine at By. c. 1880-1881
Oil on canvas. 54.3 × 73.3 cm.
© Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA
Albert BIERSTADT. Among the Sierra Nevada, California. 1868
Albert BIERSTADT. Among the Sierra Nevada, California. 1868
Oil on canvas. 183 × 305 cm. Smithsonian American Art Museum Washington, D.C.: Bequest of Helen Huntington Hull
Arkhip KUINDZHI. Red Sunset on the Dnieper
Arkhip KUINDZHI. Red Sunset on the Dnieper
Oil on canvas. 134.6 × 188 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1974.100
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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