Portrait of the Singer Angelo Mazini, 1890.
Oil on canvas, 89 × 70 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Portrait of Konstantin Korovin, 1891.
Oil on canvas, 111.2 × 89 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Portrait of Ivan Zabelin, 1892.
Oil on canvas, 80 × 67 cm.
The State Historical Museum, Moscow.
Portrait of Nikolai Semionovich Leskov, 1894.
Oil on canvas, 64 × 53 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
The rigid formality that prevailed in the Academy was alien to Serov, and the only consideration that kept him from resigning was his faith in Chistiakov. He was extremely critical of the established system of teaching. In a letter to his fiancée (1885) he wrote: “I am very happy to be able to disregard their medals (you have no idea how pernicious are all these stratagems, all this chasing after medals). I can work on my own in any way I please, entrusting myself only to Repin and Chistiakov.”
The first flowering of Serov’s talent relates to the 1880s. Such an early rise to the top is almost unparalleled in the history of art. The two works that brought Serov into the limelight, Girl with Peaches and Sunlit Girl, were painted when he had barely turned twenty. The master later spoke of them with special affection and, according to Igor Grabar, considered these early canvases unexcelled by any of his subsequent works. This was, of course, an exaggeration, but one has to admit that Serov’s Girls were imbued with an absolutely unique quality, one that the artist never captured again. The period when Serov was carefree and happy, searching for and painting “only the joys of life”, did not last long.
These were Serov’s words, and in recent times they have come to define an entire school of Russian, and especially Moscow, painting. The early Korovin was a typical representative of this school; in the 1880s a joyful perception of nature came to characterise the art of Levitan; a tender lyricism marks the early paintings of Arkhipov and Alexei Stepanov, also of the Moscow school. All these artists sought to divorce their art from preconceived notions, from an analytical approach to life. Lyricism was becoming the main tendency in Moscow painting, and Serov with his program of the “joys of life” was its most consistent spokesman.
Of course, the common objectives pursued by the new generation of artists cannot alone explain the creation of Serov’s early masterpieces. An exceptional sequence of events had to occur for them to have been produced at all. Serov left the Academy, and this filled him with an exhilarating sense of freedom from all manner of rules and regulations. He went abroad, and there saw for himself the unfading beauty of the Old Masters, forever succumbing to their irresistible influence.
His absorption with the painting of the great Dutchmen, Spaniards, and Italians bred in Serov a desire to portray the beauty of man and express a love of life. At the same time the young artist began paying more and more attention to the problem of skill, to the “high craftsmanship” that characterised the Old Masters. Venice, with its divine architecture and fairy-tale canals, simply went to Serov’s head. He felt himself at the height of his powers. He was surrounded by friends and loved ones. Finally, he had recently, in 1885, done an inconspicuous little study in Odessa entitled Bullocks: the harmony achieved in the colour scheme of that piece filled him with satisfaction and led him to understand what an artist should aspire to.
Portrait of Maria Lvova, 1895.
Oil on canvas, 87 × 58 cm.
Private collection.
Alexander Pushkin on a Park Bench, 1899.
Graphite, watercolour, and whitewash on paper, 35 × 29.3 cm.
All-Russian Pushkin Museum, St Petersburg.
Also conducive to the young artist’s joyful mood was the environment he moved in, the friends he associated with, and the creative atmosphere that prevailed in Abramtsevo, the country estate of Savva Mamontov, the famous patron of the arts. This remarkable house in the picturesque Moscow countryside was where many innovations in late 19th-century art were conceived. Serov had stayed here with the Mamontov family for long periods as a child; it was an ideal place for bringing his outstanding talents into play. Amateur theatricals were a favourite pastime in Abramtsevo, and Serov himself played a variety of roles. Under the benevolent guidance of his elders – Repin, Victor Vasnetsov, Vasily Polenov – and the beneficial influence of communion with his coevals – Vrubel, Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov – the young Serov’s gift for painting blossomed and matured. It was also here that he came to love the central Russian landscape, the rural scene, the homely peasant horses, and the plain peasant faces.
Another haven of refuge for the young artist was Domotkanovo in Tver province, the country estate of Vladimir Derviz, an Academy friend who had married one of Serov’s cousins, Nadezhda Simonovich. Serov spent many happy days here, lulled by the unhurried rhythm of rural life, inhaling the musty smells of autumn and admiring its even, grey hues.
The joyful mood which Abramtsevo and Domotkanovo engendered in Serov helped the artist create his most significant early pieces. Almost all of Serov’s works of this period, from the studies of the mid-1880s to the masterpieces, the Two Girls and Overgrown Pond, painted at about the same time in Domotkanovo, are imbued with the same feeling. Serov immerses himself, as it were, in the beauty of the world, his colours are saturated with light and air, soaked by the sun, and radiating joy. He contemplates this beauty with quiet admiration. Each picture is long in the making; he has his models pose for long hours, yet what is revealed on canvas is the very first impression of what he sees.
The model for Girl with Peaches was Mamontov’s twelve-year-old daughter Vera, who sat for the artist in Abramtsevo, for Sunlit Girl, the artist’s cousin Maria Simonovich in Domotkanovo. The two girls turned out to resemble one another, but most of the “blame” for that must go to Serov himself who wanted, above all, to see in them the beauty of youth. He sought in these pictures a gentle, contemplative expressiveness. He did not intend the portraits to provoke thoughts on the contradictions and complexities of life, “only the joys of life”. And it is this that sets Serov apart from his predecessors and his teachers. Repin’s portrait of Modest Moussorgsky, done six years before Girl with Peaches, is also suffused with light, but in this case, it only serves to render with the utmost veracity the aspect and condition of the composer going through a terminal illness. Behind the fleeting moment of human existence captured by the artist there looms a world choked by insoluble problems, a world whose only promise to man is suffering and perdition. With Serov, though, light, air, joy, and youth are beautiful per se; they are the ultimate purpose of the creative act, and it is in this above all else that the novelty of Serov’s approach and the originality of his artistic concept manifest themselves.
The Girls were painted from living persons, yet Serov did not refer to the paintings as portraits or give them the names of the models. This was hardly accidental, because the decisive factor was not the uniqueness of the image, not the individuality of the sitter, but rather Serov’s overall program. In addition, these were not portraits in the customary meaning of the word. Serov’s models are inseparable from their environment. One girl merges into a single entity with the old house and the garden visible through the windows, the other has settled down, as if for good, in the shade of a tree in a sleepy corner of an old, unkempt park. Neither