Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov (1844-1927)

Since the late 1870s. art and the personality of VDPolenov were surrounded not only fame, but downright ecstatic worship of young artists. Paint his paintings seemed to contemporaries sparkling and charming, picturesque perceived as a revelation. Now, these delights are difficult to separate completely, but it was ...

Polenov was born in an intellectual and aristocratic noble family. My father - a high official and yet the historian and archaeologist. Mother amateur engaged in painting. Son inherited both talent - the scientific and the artistic. In the parent's estate on the banks of the river Imochentsy Ojat in Olonetsk province met the young Russian Polenov with beautiful nature. And in 1858 he first saw "The Appearance of Christ to the people" A. Ivanova . As will be seen later, these two meetings will be critical to the fate of Polenova artist.

Polenov was a multi-talented and well-educated man. He studied in parallel at St. Petersburg University and the Academy of Arts. In 1871, he received a law degree and, at the same time I. Repin , a gold medal for the competition film "The Resurrection of Jairus's daughter." But it took several more years before Polenov really found myself as an artist.

He goes to Germany, Italy, France (as a pensioner AH) wrote the historical and genre paintings and portraits. But the more he is attracted to his landscape painting outdoors - plein air, pure colors. It examines the work of the great French landscape, particularly the Barbizon school. Learns directly, not through academic schemes to see and understand nature, to comprehend its great harmony.

In 1876 Polenov returned to Russia. In 1878, at the XII exhibition TPHV appears now famous "Moscow Yard". In this sun-filled picture of the artist managed to combine the immediacy and freshness of perception with plein air so characteristic of the Russian landscape tradition of holistic and simultaneously intimate and warm feeling in the world. "Moscow Yard" - indeed the whole world, in which every detail looks infinitely meaningful and native, in which "converge" the manor and the home of the poor, which is the figure of a child begins in the foreground and the like grows into the bottomless sky glistening in the sun onion-domed church. The human world here - part-boundless harmony of the natural world.

Subsequent work Polenova - "Grandmother's Garden" (1878), "Overgrown Pond" (1879), sketches 1881-82 gg., Made during a trip to Greece and the Middle East - have strengthened his fame as one of the best Russian landscape painters. He is in the minds of contemporaries, the first in this volume introduced in Russian painting "European influence" ( A. Vasnetsov ), that is, the principles of plein air painting: clean and more open paint, colored shadows, free swab.

In the years 1882-94. Polenov leads MUZHVZ landscape painting class. His pupils were I. Levitan , to Korovin , A. Arkhipov , A. Golovin and other famous masters later. In many later landscapes artist persistently repeated motif of the river, the current slowly away among the boundless space of the Russian plain ("Early Snow," 1891 "Golden Autumn", 1893, etc.). This - Motherland. This Polenov remembered her from childhood. Landscapes - the best of his legacy.

But the artist wants to go further. He cherishes a grand plan - wants to continue the work of A. Ivanova : "... Christ, not only to create the future, but it has come into the world and making his way among the people." Ivanov failed to go to Palestine. Polenov twice visited there. He studies the landscape, architecture, human types.

See also: http://vasily-polenov.ru - site of the artist Vasily Polenov.