Luminism

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.