{"id":1280,"date":"2016-05-26T18:08:13","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T17:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2016-05-27T16:52:36","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T15:52:36","slug":"russians-at-the-national-portrait-gallery-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/?p=1280","title":{"rendered":"Russians: National Portrait Gallery, London"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mussorgsky
Detail of Mussorgsky by Ilya Repin, 1881. \u00a9 State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An unprecedented cultural exchange between the National Portrait Gallery\u00a0in\u00a0London and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow\u00a0\u2014\u00a0marking\u00a0the 160 anniversary of the foundation of both galleries\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Russia and the Arts<\/em>\u00a0 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see masterpieces that rarely leave Russia.\u00a0Presenting\u00a0celebrated portraits of key figures from a golden age of the arts in the country, it is\u00a0one of\u00a0the most important Russian exhibition ever to take place at a British museum.<\/p>\n

\"Fyodor
Fyodor Dostoevsky by Vasily Perov, 1872. \u00a9 State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

This exhibition features iconic portraits of 26 Russian cultural heroes, painted between 1867 and 1914, the 50 years leading up to the first world war. These writers, artists, philosophers, actors, composers and patrons between them created an\u00a0extraordinary cultural upheaval and the angst\u00a0of this particular\u00a0political turmoil is reflected\u00a0in these portraits. The writers, such as\u00a0Dostoevsky, Tolstoy\u00a0and\u00a0Chekhov, are even today seen as radical and visionary creators, the fore fathers of modern culture. In parallel to this upheaval in writing, Russian painting was developing a self-scrutiny and self-confidence with a penetrating realism. Ilya Repin is perhaps the best known of this group outside of Russia, as he played a major role in bringing Russian art to the attention of Europe. But artist like Perov,\u00a0Kuznetsov and Della-Vos-Kardovskaia were all new to me in the flesh, as their works\u00a0are rarely seen outside of their country. The\u00a0Perov portrait of the ghostly pale\u00a0\u00a0Dostoevsky is astonishing. Surrounded by darkness, he\u00a0stares downwards\u00a0into the darkness, away from the viewer and self absorbed. Through\u00a0his thin,\u00a0taut skin\u00a0you feel you could\u00a0touch his\u00a0skull. His\u00a0downcast attitude, his scruffy oversized coat and too firmly clasped hands\u00a0present\u00a0him as\u00a0an epitome of\u00a0one of his own characters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These are the most intense and revealing portraits. Somehow, they use\u00a0the exterior\u00a0to reveal the interior of the human; and this\u00a0interior\u00a0is\u00a0presented to us for our intimate scrutiny. For me, these paintings offer the illusion, strangely, that we are actually meeting the person. The controlling but\u00a0frail Tchaikovsky,\u00a0the vulnerability\u00a0of mortality in the portrait of\u00a0\u00a0Vladimir Dal, these works have a painful\u00a0sensitivity. It must have been an extraordinary time to be an artist, as these paintings\u00a0are a counterpoint to\u00a0the searching in the works of the writers and composers that are the subjects of the paintings, but they are presenting the human frailty, vulnerability and self-knowledge in a way that is almost overwhelming.\u00a0This show, although small, forcefully \u00a0reminds us of\u00a0the delights the psychological, insightful\u00a0painted portrait can give,\u00a0which at its best can represent all of humanity. This is not \u00a0something that is found in abundance today. However,\u00a0there are a\u00a0few exceptions, and, more importantly, there is a growing interest in learning how to create realistic, revealing portraits, especially in the USA.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky by Nikolai Kuznetsov, 1893. \u00a9 State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All of these artists went\u00a0through\u00a0thorough strict academic training. Repin himself went to the\u00a0The\u00a0Russian Academy of Arts\u00a0in\u00a0Saint Petersburg before breaking away from the constraints imposed by the state teaching with a group called\u00a0the Wanderers. They\u00a0were strongly committed to individual psychological drama, portraiture, and scenes of Russian history, but they also had a\u00a0profound interest in contemporary life.<\/p>\n

These masterpieces have come from an original collection put together by Pavel Tretyakov, which\u00a0became the core of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. This Gallery is now firmly on my list of places to visit.<\/p>\n

The Russian\u00a0part of this cultural exchange is in the Tretyakov Gallery and entitled From Elizabeth to Victorian: English Portraits from the collection of the National Gallery.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Russian and the Arts is\u00a0in London until the 26th June 2016.<\/p>\n

For more information on both please go to:<\/p>\n

National Portrait Gallery in London<\/a><\/p>\n

State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All images:\u00a0\u00a9 State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An unprecedented cultural exchange between the National Portrait Gallery\u00a0in\u00a0London and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow\u00a0\u2014\u00a0marking\u00a0the 160 anniversary of the foundation of both galleries\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Russia and the Arts\u00a0 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see masterpieces that rarely leave Russia.\u00a0Presenting\u00a0celebrated portraits of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,15,13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-exhibitions-and-events","category-inspiration","category-museums","category-portraits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":66,"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1349,"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions\/1349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}