Landscape has played an integral role in shaping Russia and its people. Napoleon’s defeat outside Moscow in 1812 was due in large part to the fact that his soldiers were unaccustomed to the harsh winter across the open plains. Tolstoy and his contemporaries were all drawn to the land as a backdrop for their work. “Wonderful walk across the fields,” wrote Tolstoy in his diary. “Came back home and was seized with the desire to write ‘The Cossacks’.” The role of terrain in landscape painting is the theme of a spectacular new exhibition, “Russian Landscape in the Age of Tolstoy” at London’s National Gallery (through Sept. 12). The exhibition is a treat not only because many of the works on display have never appeared together under the same roof, but also because most have never been seen outside of the former Soviet Union.
Though these works inspired plenty of Russian writers and musicians who became household names worldwide, the painters themselves were never international stars. Exhibition curator Christopher Riopelle says that the landscapes hold their own against their European contemporaries but never made it out of Russia–partly because they were physically difficult to transport. “Music and literature were easily absorbed by a very ready audience in the West, but the paintings never came out so we never took them into our consciousness,” he says.
Until now. The exhibition offers a rare glimpse into the 19th-century vision of Mother Russia from the painters’ perspective. Tsarist Russia was a vast swathe of contiguous land stretching from the Central European plains through the forested Siberian steppe to the Pacific Ocean, offering a rich source of inspiration. From the serfs who farmed the fields of golden rye to the aristocrats who fled to the country to escape the city’s dizzying social whirl, most Russian lives revolved around land. In “Anna Karenina,” it is Konstantine Levin’s love of the land that helps him get over his rejection by the silly young Kitty. Ivan Shishkin’s “Mast-Tree Grove” (1898) illustrates how land could revitalize the spirit. The canvas is large and mesmerizing, and the pebbled-bottomed creek and sunny forest look inviting and peaceful. Shiskin, who deftly coupled attention to detail with immense panoramic views, succeeds in making the overly familiar come refreshingly alive.
Though there was no tradition of landscape painting prior to 1870, within a decade the genre became the most popular in Russian art. This new interest grew partly out of the tremendous attention suddenly accorded to the lives of serfs. Emancipated in 1861, they were seen to represent the true spirit of Russia. “Through understanding their lives, you got closer to the reality of Russia,” says Riopelle. The growing interest in landscape art also owed much to a group of artists who rebelled against the mythological subjects and neoclassical style being taught at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. This group, known as “the Wanderers,” traveled across Russia to exhibit their art to the common people. “The stories they tell are interesting and important because you see a huge nation stopping to investigate itself really for the first time,” says Riopelle. Aleksei Savrasov’s “The Rooks Have Returned” (1879) depicts the nationalist myth that the land, despite its gloom, holds the promise of renewal; although the snow is dirty and the trees are bare, spring has returned and with it, a sense of hope.
This could be a metaphor for Russia itself. For all the death and destruction of the last century, there is still a sense today of its vast power and undying hope: smoking nuclear plants and abandoned gulags juxtaposed with virgin birch forests and freshly ploughed fields. For those not lucky enough to see the landscape firsthand, this show is a wonderful substitute.
