DOI issue:
Nr. 211 (October 1910)
DOI article:Studio-talk
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20971#0102
Studio-Talk
“ KONGSSATER ” THE FOREST RESIDENCE OF THE KING AND QUEEN OF NORWAY KR. BIONG, ARCHITECT
(See Christiania Studio- Talk on next page)
artists forming the “ Soyouz,” and was in fact
one of its most conspicuous members.
Possessed of a genuine gift for pictorial expres-
sion, in the display of which he employed the
brush almost exclusively, only rarely resorting
to graphic media, Ivanoff was before all else a
genrist and derived his motives almost entirely
from the life of the Russian people, always,
whether portraying the present or the past, suc-
ceeding in discovering the characteristic note, the
traits that are typical. The works belonging to
the first half of his career as an artist reflect the
milieu of the Russian peasant of to-day in all his
poverty and misery. Ivanoff here found a new
field not yet explored by other Russian artists—
the emigrant world with its families of land-tillers
driven from their homes through lack of land and
forced to wander for hundreds of leagues to distant
Siberia and there form themselves into new
colonies on a virgin soil. In a series of studies
and pictures the artist has portrayed these emi-
grant figures in the midst of the treeless steppe
with the glare of the sun full upon them, and apart
from the shrewd characterization which these pic-
tures reveal, their plein-air qualities have given
them an enduring place in the history of Russian
impressionism. Nor, in spite of his undeniable
predilection for social motives, does the artist at
any time sink to the mere chronicler; light, colour
and form are with him never simply a background
for a touching anecdote. In later years some
dramatic episodes in connection with labour
troubles engaged him, but in general he turned
more and more to historic genre. The picturesque
architecture and the gay costumes of Russia fur-
nished the painter with a fund of material that was
naturally more congenial to his temperament. Yet
Ivanoff never confined himself to a merely external
reconstruction of the past seen through the rose-
coloured spectacles of the “ good old times.” On
the contrary, a sarcastic light is often shed upon the
Russian nature, the Russian “ soul,” and the bar-
baric elements in it are pointedly emphasized.
Readers of this magazine may recall some paint-
ings by Ivanoff which have, in recent years, been
reproduced in its pages—such as A Sixteenth
Century Russian Military Expedition (vol. xxxi.,
p. 217); Masliauitsa (xxxv., 116), and The Arrival
0] the Boyar (xlvi., 327). These works tell the
spectator more of old Russia than many pages
of descriptive narrative. The portrait of Ivanoff,
reproduced opposite, was painted by his colleague,
81
“ KONGSSATER ” THE FOREST RESIDENCE OF THE KING AND QUEEN OF NORWAY KR. BIONG, ARCHITECT
(See Christiania Studio- Talk on next page)
artists forming the “ Soyouz,” and was in fact
one of its most conspicuous members.
Possessed of a genuine gift for pictorial expres-
sion, in the display of which he employed the
brush almost exclusively, only rarely resorting
to graphic media, Ivanoff was before all else a
genrist and derived his motives almost entirely
from the life of the Russian people, always,
whether portraying the present or the past, suc-
ceeding in discovering the characteristic note, the
traits that are typical. The works belonging to
the first half of his career as an artist reflect the
milieu of the Russian peasant of to-day in all his
poverty and misery. Ivanoff here found a new
field not yet explored by other Russian artists—
the emigrant world with its families of land-tillers
driven from their homes through lack of land and
forced to wander for hundreds of leagues to distant
Siberia and there form themselves into new
colonies on a virgin soil. In a series of studies
and pictures the artist has portrayed these emi-
grant figures in the midst of the treeless steppe
with the glare of the sun full upon them, and apart
from the shrewd characterization which these pic-
tures reveal, their plein-air qualities have given
them an enduring place in the history of Russian
impressionism. Nor, in spite of his undeniable
predilection for social motives, does the artist at
any time sink to the mere chronicler; light, colour
and form are with him never simply a background
for a touching anecdote. In later years some
dramatic episodes in connection with labour
troubles engaged him, but in general he turned
more and more to historic genre. The picturesque
architecture and the gay costumes of Russia fur-
nished the painter with a fund of material that was
naturally more congenial to his temperament. Yet
Ivanoff never confined himself to a merely external
reconstruction of the past seen through the rose-
coloured spectacles of the “ good old times.” On
the contrary, a sarcastic light is often shed upon the
Russian nature, the Russian “ soul,” and the bar-
baric elements in it are pointedly emphasized.
Readers of this magazine may recall some paint-
ings by Ivanoff which have, in recent years, been
reproduced in its pages—such as A Sixteenth
Century Russian Military Expedition (vol. xxxi.,
p. 217); Masliauitsa (xxxv., 116), and The Arrival
0] the Boyar (xlvi., 327). These works tell the
spectator more of old Russia than many pages
of descriptive narrative. The portrait of Ivanoff,
reproduced opposite, was painted by his colleague,
81