At times Serov’s art closely resembled that of another group of Moscow painters, nicknamed the junior Itinerants. Continuing in the realist traditions of the 1870s and 1880s, these artists, each in his own way, diversified their painting either by turning to modern themes and heroes, as did Nikolai Kasatkin and Sergei Korovin, or by perfecting their painting techniques. Sergei Ivanov, for instance, lent expressiveness to his images through composition, precise draftsmanship, and subtle colour gradations. Abram Arkhipov integrated genre and landscape painting into contemplative, lyrical compositions: his peasant scenes are devoid of conflict or human collisions, reflecting the beauty of everyday life – a beauty perceived by the artist where others had never even sought it. It is this quality that particularly impressed Serov.
Old Bath-House in Domotkanovo, 1888.
Oil on canvas, 76.5 × 60.8 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
St Mark Square in Venice (study), 1887.
Oil on canvas, 22 × 31 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice (study), 1887.
Oil on canvas, 22.5 × 31.5 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Overgrown Pond. Domotkanovo, 1888.
Oil on canvas, 70.5 × 89.2 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Sunlit Girl. Portrait of Maria Simonovich, 1888.
Oil on canvas, 89.5 × 71 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Other facets of Serov’s art link him with other lines of development in the Russian painting of those years. In the late 1890s, Repin’s pupils in the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, particularly Boris Kustodiev and Philip Maliavin, emulated their teacher, and they cultivated a free painterly manner and a sweeping, resolute brushstroke that set the stage for the decorative trend in early 20th-century painting. This was the style seemingly adopted by the Serov of the 1890s and early 1900s, who enriched it with his own striking individuality.
Serov joined the World of Art group when it was created in the late 1890s, and soon gained undisputed authority among its members. What united them all was a predilection for style, monumental scope, and consummate craftsmanship.
Serov’s art was an organic blend of tradition and innovation. That is why those who cherished the traditions of 19th-century Russian painting were gratified by his deeply realistic, at times almost Repinesque, approach to portraiture. As for the innovators, they accepted him as one of their own because he constantly sought that which had yet to be achieved. These two facets of Serov’s work do not, however, indicate any eclecticism on his part. He was a versatile artist because he stood at the intersection of differing trends, because at that decisive turning-point in the evolution of art, he did not forget the heritage of the past and tried to utilise that heritage, to lend it new life and give it a new interpretation.
It is precisely this addressing himself “to all” that made Serov the leader of an art trend, a scrupulous guardian of the interests of true art, and an artist who championed the new without discarding the old, thus easing the way for others. In this lies the secret of the role played by Serov as leader of the Moscow school of painting. Among his pupils at the Moscow Art School were such dissimilar masters as Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Nikolai Ulyanov, Pavel Kuznetsov, Martiros Saryan, Ilya Mashkov, Mikhail Larionov, and Konstantin Yuon. Each could profit by Serov’s experience, his wise advice, his example, and his characteristic awareness of an artist’s lofty mission.
Serov was immersed in an artistic environment from childhood. He was born in 1865 into the family of a famous Russian composer and music critic. His mother was also a composer and a pianist. Sharing the democratic ideals of the revolutionary writers of the 1860s, Chernyshevsky and Nikolay Dobrolyubov, she worked hard to popularise musical culture among the masses.
Until 1871, when his father died, the Serovs’ apartment in St Petersburg was a popular meeting place for famous painters and sculptors – Nikolai Ge, Mark Antokolsky, and Ilya Repin. These contacts continued abroad too.
Serov began to draw and to take drawing lessons at a very early age – first in Munich, where the family went after his father’s death, then in Paris, where, on Antokolsky’s advice, he was “delivered into the hands” of Repin, who not only taught, but also befriended his young colleague. Repin was in France at the time on a postgraduate assignment from the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, and Serov began attending his studio. Repin made the boy draw from gypsum models and paint in colour from nature.
Portrait of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, 1893.
Oil on canvas, 60 × 49 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
Self Portrait, 1901.
Watercolour and gouache on paper, 49 × 35 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
On the family’s return to Russia in 1875, Serov’s studies with Repin were broken off. They were renewed after a few years, in 1878, when Repin settled in Moscow, and became especially serious and systematic. Several sketches have survived which show how the teacher strove to foster a painter’s spontaneous perception of nature in his pupil by training his hand and eye to capture various objects differing in form, texture, or colour on canvas. Repin did not attempt to mould Serov’s talent with a system of forcible rules. Serov simply worked side by side with Repin; he would often sit near his teacher and watch him paint. At times they worked on one and the same model.
Repin was doing several large compositions at the time and Serov assisted him in those ventures. He drew the barn that can be seen in the background of Repin’s Send-off of Recruit, painted an oil portrait of the famous hunchback, one of Repin’s favourite models and the central figure in his Religious Procession in Kursk Province. Finally, in 1880, Serov accompanied his teacher to Zaporozhye to gather material for the Zaporozhye Cossacks and did many pencil sketches of typical local scenes with Repin.
Soon, however, their joint work came to an end. Repin concluded that he had nothing more to offer to the young Serov and decided to send him on to the St Petersburg Academy, to Pavel Chistiakov. The latter, in the opinion of many contemporaries, was the only man in the Academy capable of teaching a novice the basic principles of art.
Serov enrolled in the Academy in 1880. This was the beginning of an eventful existence for him: studies in the Academy, painting together with Vrubel and Derviz, his fellow pupils from Chistiakov’s class, in a jointly rented studio, and discussing art and its mission during evenings spent at the house of his maternal aunt, Adelaida Simonovich, an educationist and advocate of kindergartens in Russia; Serov maintained a long-standing friendship with her daughters.
Chistiakov was a brilliant and systematic interpreter and teacher of the laws of form in painting and drawing. He tried to show his pupils how the three-dimensional world can be transformed on a two-dimensional piece of canvas into an artistic phenomenon. He instilled in Serov the strict, demanding, and loving attitude to professional skill that was to become the bedrock of Serov’s art.
The young student worked tirelessly. He painted nude models, his friends, scenes of nature – in a word, everything that surrounded him. He devoted much effort to the perfection of his drawing, combining the strict, constructive system of draftsmanship taught by Chistiakov with the pictorial quality of Repin’s graphic works. Serov’s self-portrait of 1885 was an attempt to create an artistic image through the expressiveness of line and hatching. The barely designated figure, the white background,