RUSSIA AND THE ARTS at the NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON

RUSSIA AND THE ARTS at the NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON

The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky

The work presented at the National Portrait Gallery has been gathered from the collection of Pavel Tretyakov donated to the city of Moscow in 1892. In 1892 it was valued at 1.5 million roubles and comprised 2000 works of art. Today it forms the basis of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Russia's national gallery in Moscow.

Tretyakov was a textile industrialist and collector who sought to create a portrait collection of Russia's leading intellectuals, authors, actors, composers and patrons of the arts, commissioning Russia's leading painters to portray them. Tretyakov created a survey of a Golden Age of Russian portraiture. The painters he employed initially followed a traditional, realist approach to painting then, following the art tendencies of the day, embarking on the new Impressionist style. Other commissions followed even after Tretyakov's death in 1898. The period encapsulates the leading figures of the era between 1867 and 1914, ending with the outbreak of war and the decline and fall of the Romanovs.

The first painting in the collection is that of Tretyakov himself followed by portraits of Alexander Herzen, Feodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Tolstoy and Turgenev. Dostoevsky's portrait completed by Vasily Perov in 1872 is the most compelling work in this small exhibition. Dostoevsky, author of Poor Folk, Crime and Punishment and The Devils, is a seemingly diminished figure, emaciated, his face covered with a wispy red beard. In 1849 Dostoevsky, at the age of 28, survived a mock execution after his involvement in a liberal coup initiated by a group calling themselves the Decembrists. The Decembrists yearned for political representation and a Duma (parliament). Dostoevsky was broken by his experience and then spent harrowing years of imprisonment and forced labour in Siberia from which he fashioned his seminal account The House of the Dead. Dostoevsky is slumped over almost engulfed by his ill-fitting clothes, an intent, grim look and elaborately interlaced fingers implying his absolute seriousness. This is an image that resonates today, becoming a universal portrayal of suffering, summarising its period.

Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina painted by Nikolai Ge in 1884, appears to be a better fed subject, sitting poring over his papers with his customary intensity, bent over lined sheets filled with his scribblings. His attire is utterly plain because Tolstoy although an aristocrat was a practising Anarchist and dressed as a serf in order to identify with the lowest in society. Serfs would have done all the menial labour on Tolstoy's estate and had no rights whatsoever. It is plain, however, that Tolstoy's surroundings are plush and comfortable implying that Tolstoy enjoyed the rights of an aristocrat while also rejecting his class. The image contrasts with that of Dostoevsky which has no palpable context. Dostoevsky seems to be a person with nothing at all except his thoughts.

Turgenev, painted by Ilia Repin in 1874, became famous for his work A Sportsman's Sketches published in 1852. It is actually a critique of the practice of serfdom and coincided with the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe in America. Serfdom was soon to be abolished, slavery too in the US after the Civil War, and Turgenev's work was instrumental in building international sympathy and awareness of the plight of the serfs. For this reason, both Turgenev and Dostoevsky spent periods of time in the West, in Germany, away from Russia, emigres exiled for their writings and progressive views although they did eventually return.  Unlike Alexander Herzen who found a more liberal culture in England and stayed there.

A series of composer portraits form another set and the most compelling of these is that of Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) painted by Ilia Repin in 1881 just days before the composer’s death. At the time Mussorgsky was recuperating in hospital after a bout of alcoholism so he is clad in pyjamas and dressing gown. His wispy, unkempt hair and glowing red vodka nose humanises the subject bringing Mussorgsky to ground level where he appears like us, not as the historical figure and genius composer he was.

Piotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), painted by Nikolai Kuznetsov in 1893 is clad in black with dark, foliage-like background. Almost bereft of context his gaze implies confused terror rather than intensity. The portrait of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), painted by Valentin Serov in 1898, is of a business-like, engaged, creative mind yet it also implies a professorial scrutiny and pragmatic focus. The portrait lacks the psychological complexity and depth of suffering intimated by the portrait of Dostoevsky, the outstanding painting of this collection.

In the works “In the Summer” (1895) by Valentin Serov, “Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel” (1898) painted by Mikhail Vrubel and “Feodor Shalliapin” (1905) by Konstantin Korovin the influence of French Impressionism begins to surface. These works concern themselves with patrons of the arts and their estates and also indicate one of the key themes of this exhibition. How might a uniquely Russian music, literature and painting be created? How could Russian art free itself of Western inspiration? This had also been a feature of Russian society, for instance Peter the Greats instructions to the Boyars (nobility) to shave off their beards following his visits to the West.

There are also depictions of actors and playwrights. For instance, Alexander Ostrovsky, painted by Vasily Perov in 1871, appears to be a well-fed bourgeois. Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) by Iosif Braz (1898) was painted when the writer went to Nice to experience a mild climate that he hoped would ameliorate his tuberculosis. Chekhov gazes out of the canvas with a dispassionate, seemingly professorial lack of intensity. He died only a few years after the portrait was completed but it is hardly an image that conjures up mortality. Contemporary actresses like Ermolova appear conventional and distinguished, Strepetova is clearly in one of her roles.

The exhibition concludes with two portraits of poets, Nikolai Gumilev (1866-1921) by Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaia (1909) and Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) by the same artist (1914). Kardovskaia depicts the two poets in idyllic poses and surroundings utilising a post-impressionist technique. A reduced perspective and blocks of colour imply the work of Gaugin rather than the spontaneity and free brush work of the Impressionists.  Gumilev was married to Akhmatova before he was executed by the Bolsheviks for alleged counter-revolutionary activities but Akhmatova survived the purges even though she was under constant surveillance and unable to publish her work, Later, in the 1950s, after Stalin's death, she was rehabilitated and revered for speaking out against the atrocities of Stalin's mis-rule.

The exhibition was counter-pointed by the music of the era which provided a necessary ambience and the text provided gave enough contextual information without becoming overwhelming. Perhaps this could form the basis for a larger exhibition?  This is an excellent, yet petit, round up of Russian portraiture of an age of innocence before the Bolshevik takeover, and an unmissable treat.

Paul Murphy, National Portrait Gallery, London, June 2016