29. Karl Briullov, Rider, Portrait of Giovannina and Amazillia Paccini, 1832. Oil on canvas, 291.5 × 206 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
30. Alexeï Venetsianov, Reaper, before 1827. Oil on canvas, 82.5 × 68 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
31. Karl Briullov, Portrait of the Artist with Baroness Yekaterina Meller-Zakomelskaya and her Daughter in a Boat, 1833–35. Oil on canvas, 151.5 × 190.3 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
32. Karl Briullov, Italian Midday, 1827. Oil on canvas, 64 × 55 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
33. Vassily Perov, Portrait of the Merchant Ivan Kamynin, 1872. Oil on canvas, 104 × 84.3 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
34. Vassily Perov, Portrait of the Writer Alexander Ostrovsky, 1871. Oil on canvas, 103.5 × 80.7 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Dmitri Levitsky differed from Rokotov in that he possessed a marvellous ability to interpret and express personality. Every detail is painted with care, yet a feeling of spontaneity is never absent from his work. The son of a priest who was a gifted engraver, Levitsky was born in the Ukraine. After studying with Antropov, he spent a few years producing icons for churches in Moscow, then taught portrait painting at the Academy from 1771 to 1788. Levitsky excelled at female portraiture, as can be seen from his paintings of the aristocratic Ursula Mniszech and Maria Diakova, the wife of architect, painter and poet Nikolaï Lvov. Between 1773 and 1776, at the request of Catherine the Great, he painted a series of portraits of her favourite pupils at Smolny Institute (the school she founded for the education of young noblewomen), showing them engaged in such activities as amateur dramatics, playing the harp or dancing the minuet. Thanks to his portraits of foreign visitors to Saint Petersburg – among them Diderot – Levitsky acquired a reputation outside Russia (his style was even compared with that of Boucher and Watteau). In 1788 illness forced him to retire from the Academy, where he had been the principal teacher of portraiture. During the last thirty years of his life he hardly painted at all.
A member of an old Cossack family, Vladimir Borovikovsky (1757–1825) was the son of an icon painter. He lived in Mirgorod until 1788, where he painted icons and portraits in the Ukrainian tradition. In 1790, after Catherine the Great expressed her delight at the allegorical decorations which he had been commissioned to paint in honour of her triumphal tour of the Crimea, Borovikovsky moved to Saint Petersburg, where he studied with Levitsky and the Austrian portrait painter Johann-Baptist Lampi. That same year he painted a portrait of Catherine the Great, looking more grandmotherly than regal, walking her favourite dog in the park at Tsarskoe Selo. Borovikovsky’s portraits of women – often attired in Grecian gowns and backed by a sylvan setting – have been likened to those by Gainsborough and Angelica Kauffmann. In many of them, the sitter is portrayed with the fingers of one hand delicately curled round an apple. As late as the 1790s, Borovikovsky’s work was tinged with sentimentalism. Then at the beginning of the nineteenth century he adopted a more classical style, producing works like the Portrait of Prince Alexander Kurakin that he completed in 1802.
This classical style adopted by Borovikovsky at the start of the nineteenth century led to Romanticism which was beginning to influence Russian portraiture. Painters began to express themselves more freely, and self-portraits became increasingly common. With its accent on individuality, Romanticism was a perfect match for the self-portrait – which was, after all, a vehicle for psychological probing and spiritual revelation. It also led to important changes of form. In order to focus attention on the face, the sitter’s clothes were given less prominence. For the same reason, a neutral background tended to be used.
35. Vladimir Borovikovsky, Portrait of Prince Alexander Kourakine, 1801–1802. Oil on canvas, 259 × 175 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
36. Orest Kiprensky, Portait of Life Guard Colonel Yevgraf Davydov, 1809. Oil on canvas, 162 × 116 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
37. Orest Kiprensky, Portrait of Alexander Pushkin, 1827. Oil on canvas, 63 × 54 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
38. Vassily Perov, Portrait of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1872. Oil on canvas, 99 × 80.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
39. Ivan Kramskoï, Self-portrait, 1867. Oil on canvas, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Romantic portraiture found its fullest expression in the art of Orest Kiprensky, who painted several self-portraits, including a very painterly one, with brushes stuck behind his ear. Kiprensky’s own life bore the hallmarks of Romanticism. The illegitimate son of an aristocratic army officer, he studied painting at the Academy (where he was enrolled at the age of six) and rapidly became a successful portrait painter. Then in 1805, he was awarded a travelling scholarship, and as soon as the Napoleonic Wars ended he departed for Rome. There he led a fairly bohemian life, and found himself the subject of scandal when an Italian model and a manservant died as a result of a fire at his house. In 1828, after four years back home in Russia, he returned to Italy, married the model’s daughter (whom he had entrusted to a convent school) and spent the next eight years roaming Italy with her, until his death from tuberculosis in 1836.
At the Academy, Kiprensky had learned to paint so flawlessly that his brush strokes are practically invisible and his pictures have an ivory-smooth finish. They also display an exceptional ability to convey character and to achieve subtle effects of colour and light. In them it is possible to see something of the spirit of the great Russian poets and novelists of the nineteenth century. Among his best-known works are the portrait of Pushkin that he painted in 1827 and the one of Colonel Yevgraf Davydov, an aristocratically nonchalant cavalry officer (and poet), who seems to have stepped straight out of the pages of War and Peace. When in Paris in 1822, Kiprensky was invited to exhibit at the Salon. He also had the distinction of being asked to provide the Uffizi Gallery with a self-portrait for their permanent collection.
The career of Vassily Tropinin was very different from Kiprensky’s. Born a serf, he was given to Count Morkov as part of his wife’s dowry and spent the first part of his life on the Count’s estate in the Ukraine. When Morkov discovered that Tropinin possessed artistic ability, he used him to make copies of famous works of art and also to paint portraits of his family. In 1799 Morkov sent Tropinin to Saint Petersburg to train as a pastry-cook. Tropinin seized the opportunity to attend classes at the Academy, at first secretly and then with Morkov’s approval. But in 1804, Morkov recalled him to the Ukraine to continue working on his estate, both as a servant and as an artist. Eventually, in 1823 – when he was nearly forty-eight – Morkov granted Tropinin his freedom.
The following year Tropinin received the title of academician and moved to Moscow, where he painted portraits of celebrities (including Pushkin and Karamzin) and numerous foreign visitors. In the 1820s he began painting “genre portraits” depicting women at work, with titles such as Lacemaker, Spinner and Embroidress, which are remarkable for their realism and directness. Masterpieces from the later part of his life include his refreshingly unaffected portrait of the writer Varvara Lizogub, and one of his most memorable works is the very natural portrait of his own son painted in 1818.
Like Tropinin, Alexeï Venetsianov was in his true element when painting ordinary people. The quiet realism of his work represented an important step in the development of Russian painting and had a clearly discernible influence for several decades. Until the age of thirty-nine, Venetsianov worked as a draughtsman and land surveyor in the civil service. After taking up residence in Saint Petersburg in 1802, he studied with Borovikovsky and ran a newspaper advertisement offering his services as a portrait painter. In 1811 he received a distinction from the Academy for his self-portrait,