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Ivan
Kramskoy (1837 – 1887)
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Ivan
Nikolayevich Kramskoy is an outstanding representative of the
democratic culture in Russia of the second half of the 19th century.
He is known as a wonderful painter and draughtsman, a remarkable art
critic and theoretician of art, a talented teacher. Besides, he was
an originator and ardent inspirer of the first independent artistic
organizations, namely the Itinerants’ Society of Traveling
Exhibitions and St. Petersburg Team of Artists, which had played an
important part in the development of art in Russia.
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Born into the
family of a provincial state clerk, Kramskoy had no opportunity to
study art during childhood. At the age of 15 he became an apprentice
to an icon-painter, a year later a photographer took him as a
retoucher. Only in 1857, he managed to come to St. Petersburg and
enter the Academy of Arts. There he soon became a popular leader
among the students. In 1863, he was among the 14 best graduates who
refused to fulfill the diploma work on a given mythological theme.
All 14 were dismissed from the Academy, and Kramskoy headed the St.
Petersburg Team of Artists, a commune where artists shared studios
and household. The young wife of Kramskoy, Sophia Nikolayevna,
born Prokhorova, took care of their mutual household.
Ivan Kramskoy is famous mainly as a portraitist; his portraits of
the 60s are not large, and very often monochrome, reminding of
photographs. At the same period (1863-68) Kramskoy taught in The
Drawing School of the Society for Promoting of the Artists; his
pupils, among others, were
Iliya
Repin and Nicolay Yaroshenko.
Since 1869, Kramskoy started to receive regular commissions from the
collector of Russian art
Pavel
Tretyakov. Tretyakov commissioned portraits of personalities of
Russian culture and science. These portraits have become an innate
part of the Russian art and social history. For Kramskoy it was a
feat to preserve, for the generations to come, the likeliness of his
outstanding contemporaries.
Portrait
of the Author Ivan Goncharov.
Portrait
of the Sculptor Mark Antokolsky.
Portrait
of Dmitry Mendeleyev.
In 1869, St. Petersburg Academy chose him an academician. The same
year he made his first trip abroad: he visited Berlin, Dresden,
Munich, Düsseldorf, Antwerp, Paris, and Vienna, where he studied
famous art collections. After his return to Russia he started
organizing the Itinerants’ Society of Traveling Exhibitions. The
aim of the Society was:
1) to give the opportunity to everybody in Russia to get acquainted
with its contemporary art;
2) to develop love for art in Russian society;
3) to make selling their works easier for the artists.
In 1872 Kramskoy painted his masterpiece
Christ
in the Desert, a traditional topic, yet, in Kramskoy’s work it
acquired new social interpretation and deep philosophical meaning.
Christ in the Desert carried the idea of man’s moral duty to
society and therefore it greatly impressed the painter’s
contemporaries, who found a definite affinity to their attitudes and
feelings in it in the crucial period of Russian history, which
demanded personal heroism and sacrifice for the sake of people.
“The best Christ I ever saw”– Leo Tolstoy.
In 1873 Tretyakov commissioned the
Portrait
of Leo Tolstoy for his gallery. Tolstoy had refused several
times. "Please use all your charm to persuade him", wrote Tretyakov to Kramskoy. And Kramskoy managed to do this, the writer
and the artist were both impressed by each other’s personalities.
Kramskoy painted one of the best of all Tolstoy’s portraits.
Tolstoy was working on Anna Karenina at the time and he used
Kramskoy’s character as one of the secondary personages in the
novel – the artist Mikhailov.
Kramskoy always understood the capturing charm of color, admired
Alexander
Ivanov, his younger contemporaries – Repin, Vasiliyev,
Polenov,
French Impressionists - “…Just a small group of laughed at
painters, but the future belongs to them…”, he wrote in the 70s
about his French colleagues. But he himself was a poor colorist.
Once during the work on the portrait of
Adrian
Prakhov, the mother of the sitter saw the portrait after the
first day of painting and impressed by it, took it away and did not
allow Kramskoy to finish it, she said that if the artist went on
working he would dry it as usual. Kramskoy himself understood his
drawbacks and limits, but was afraid to change his manner.
The artist died on 24 March 1887 during his work on the portrait of
Doctor
Rauhphus with brush in his hand. |
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Unknown
Woman is the title of the picture, which the artist
gave to it. Many contemporaries were indignant with the
painting, “Coquette in a carriage”, “Women of her
sort”, “Product of big cities”, critics said. Tretyakov
refused to buy the depiction of “immoral woman” for
his gallery. The artist was sad that his viewers did
not understand him and never gave explanations to
the painting. The later viewers saw in the |
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woman Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the more later - the
Unknown Woman of Block. |
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Many thanks to
www.abcgallery.com
www.russianartgallery.org
www.elibron.com |
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