Russian landscape. From study to painting

Twelve works about observation, travel and artistic choices, from Savrasov and Shishkin to Levitan and Nesterov.

A woodland edge, a road after a thaw, a grassy courtyard: these places may have no famous history. Light, the shape of trees or changing weather can be enough for a landscape painter. Putting the scene on canvas still requires many decisions.

Across twelve works, we examine how Russian artists of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries studied nature, learnt in France and developed studies into exhibition paintings. We compare springs, forests and stretches of water. Their differences reveal the painter’s choices even when a view seems faithfully recorded.

Observing nature

Compare an exhibition canvas with a small study. In both, the painter chooses a motif, viewpoint and degree of detail.

The Rooks Have Returned

Alexei Savrasov · 1871

Savrasov chooses a village in early spring. We consider how wet snow, crooked birches and nests could become the central subject of an exhibition painting.

The Thaw

Fyodor Vasilyev · 1871

Vasilyev painted The Thaw in 1871, the same year as Savrasov’s Rooks. Comparing these two springs reveals a different emphasis: a road and small figures make the weather part of human experience.

Pine Forest. Mast Timber in Vyatka Province

Ivan Shishkin · 1872

Shishkin closely studied tree species and woodland structure. Here we examine how precise observation combines with a chosen viewpoint and the distribution of light across a large canvas.

Oaks. Evening

Ivan Shishkin · 1887

This small, unfinished study brings us closer to the painter’s work. Areas receiving different degrees of attention reveal his brushwork and let us compare a study with a finished painting.

Travels and teachers

Landscape painters learnt from one another and worked in different countries. We trace connections between the French coast and the surroundings of Moscow.

Auvers near Paris

Alexei Bogolyubov · 1881

Bogolyubov worked in France and knew French landscape painters. His view of Auvers helps us examine what an artist could learn from another school and apply to his own observations.

Fishing Boat. Étretat, Normandy

Vasily Polenov · 1874

On Bogolyubov’s advice, Polenov went to work on the Normandy coast. Compare how the two artists paint water, overcast light and life along the shore.

Moscow Courtyard

Vasily Polenov · 1878

From the French coast we return to Moscow. Polenov combines buildings, grass and daily activity in Moscow Courtyard. A lived-in city becomes a setting for landscape painting.

Spring in the Forest

Isaac Levitan · 1882

The young Levitan studied with Savrasov and painted around Moscow. Compare his woodland edge with the spring landscapes at the start of this tour. Which small changes reveal the season?

Light and mood

We examine how lighting and the placement of figures alter the impression made by familiar motifs.

After the Rain

Arkhip Kuindzhi · 1879

Kuindzhi builds his painting around a strong contrast between lit ground and dark sky. After the intimate studies, we can see how deliberately a painter may organise a brief impression of weather.

Evening Bells

Isaac Levitan · 1892

Levitan’s evening light brings river, banks and monastery together. The title invites us to imagine the sound of bells. We explore how a visible place and the memory of bells work together.

Above Eternal Peace

Isaac Levitan · 1894

Compare two Levitan landscapes with church buildings. The scale of the sky, the position of the bank and the scale of the buildings change our experience of space, despite some shared motifs.

Silence

Mikhail Nesterov · 1903

We end with Nesterov’s two boats on still water. Figures and landscape are conceived together. This returns us to the tour’s central question: what does a painter select from what they see to make a painting?

What the painter selected

Detailed observation, an unfinished study and dramatic light served different purposes. One painter concentrated on the structure of woodland; another on the air or on small figures within an immense space.

At the next landscape, imagine changing the viewpoint or time of day. What would disappear with that change? This can help you identify the decisions on which that particular painting depends.