Why did Russia forget the artist who was called the best landscape painter of his time: Nikolai Dubovskaya

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Once his name was known to all connoisseurs of Russian painting. During his lifetime, this artist gained much greater fame than Levitan, who himself treated Dubovsky's work with great respect and admiration. Now, not a single Russian museum has a hall dedicated to Dubovsky's paintings, his works are scattered in provincial galleries throughout the territory of the former USSR, and among them are the most real masterpieces of landscape painting.

How the son of a Cossack became an artist of the St. Petersburg Academy

Nikolai Nikanorovich Dubovskoy was born in 1859, in the city of Novocherkassk, the capital of the Don Army Region. Nikolai Dubovsky's father was a hereditary Cossack, and therefore a military career was also prepared for his son. From the age of ten, he was enrolled in the Vladimir Cadet Corps (gymnasium) in Kiev - an educational institution created to prepare the children of nobles for officer service. By that time, the young cadet was already drawing with might and main. This became his favorite pastime, Nikolai listened with pleasure to the advice of his uncle the artist and drew inspiration from the pages of illustrated magazines.

Nevertheless, his life was subordinated to military discipline - by the way, in the gymnasium where Dubovskoy studied, his other uncle, Arkady Andreevich, taught. But Nikolai did not give up his hobbies, he painted both in fine arts lessons and during extracurricular activities. In the morning Dubovskaya got up two hours before the general wake-up in order to be able to paint. The director himself drew attention to the boy's hobby and insistently recommended that his father give Nikolai the opportunity to study painting.

After graduating from high school in 1877, seventeen-year-old Dubovskoy went with the blessing of his father to St. Petersburg, where he became a volunteer, and then a student of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Dubovsky's teacher was, among others, Mikhail Klodt, who headed the landscape painting workshop. Even then, this genre, quite young, experiencing the influence of modernity, became the main one in the work of Nikolai Nikanorovich. As his friend, artist Yakov Minchenkov, later noted, in real life Dubovskoy was looking for inspiration for his works, and in painting he hid from the worries of everyday life, stepping over the line separating reality and the world where dreams reigned.

Dubovskoy - the best landscape painter of his time?

When a group of fourteen artists left the walls of the Academy, thus protesting against the rules of the competition for a large gold medal, Dubovskoy was still a child. But in 1881, he repeated this "rebellion", leaving this educational institution despite serious achievements in education: in four years of study, Dubovskaya had already received four small silver medals for his paintings, could claim a large gold medal, as well as a trip to Italy on a "pension". The artist organized further painting lessons himself, nature itself became his teacher.

Then those landscapes were born, from which, perhaps, the story of success and recognition of Dubovsky as an outstanding landscape painter began - "Before the Thunderstorm", "After the Rain". The artist sent these works to the exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, receiving prizes for them. In 1884 Dubovskoy first took part in the exhibition of the Itinerants, presenting to the audience, among his other paintings, "Winter".

This work could not remain unnoticed: the freshness of the colors, the accuracy of the transmission of light, the mood that the picture created among the spectators standing in front of it, attracted the attention of critics, artists and collectors to it. Pavel Tretyakov, expressing his intention to buy "Winter" for his collection, paid Dubovsky five hundred rubles for it - against the seventy-five initially declared by the artist as the price for the work.

In the works of Dubovsky, critics saw not only the influence of the strongest masters of landscape of that time - Alexei Savrasov, Arkhip Kuindzhi - but also the artist's own subtle perception of nature, the ability to feel its connection with man, with his inner experiences.

Exhibitions of the Wanderers will become the main way of communicating with the public for Dubovsky; during his life he will send hundreds of his works to them. Already in the eighties, the artist became a member of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, and in the future, the difficult and contradictory history of this organization will be closely connected with the name of Dubovsky, who professed its ideals and principles until the very end of his life. He strove to be honest with himself and art and serve the people - and this resonated in the hearts of Dubovsky's contemporaries, among the ardent admirers of his work was not only the patron of art Tretyakov, but also many artists, first of all - Ilya Repin.

At the Repin dacha near St. Petersburg, Nikolai Dubovskaya spent a lot of time sketching, working in the open air. The artist was also invited to his house in Kislovodsk by one of the leaders of the Association of Itinerants Nikolai Yaroshenko. Dubovskoy traveled a lot, he visited different parts of Russia and Europe, visited Italy, Greece, Switzerland and France many times, traveled to Turkey.

An important, significant work of his was a painting called "Quiet", painted in 1890. The artist created it based on sketches that he painted by the White Sea. "Quiet" is a demonstration of both the majestic and alarming splendor of nature, the silence preceding the revelry of the impending elements. Looking at the picture, it is difficult not to feel a sense of your own insignificance, insignificance in the face of the forces of nature.

This work was immediately acquired at the exhibition by Emperor Alexander III, who sent it to the Winter Palace. Thus, the painting was not available to the general public. Then Pavel Tretyakov ordered a repetition of Dubovsky, and the second version of "Quiet" liked the patron even more than the original work. Now both paintings are exhibited, respectively, in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and in the Moscow Tretyakov Gallery. The new motives that appeared in the painting "Quiet" became the main ones in subsequent works of the artist. Dubovsky's works produced a strong effect, despite the fact that their main content was silence and even emptiness. "Quiet Evening", "On the Volga", "Sea. Sailboats "- these and other pictures are written on a simple plot, laconic, and yet they hold the gaze for a long time and find a response in the soul of the viewer.

These were the very "mood landscapes", works that would later be identified as a separate direction of landscape painting. Dubovskoy accurately noticed this property of nature, when a person's gaze perceives, first of all, what is close to his state of mind. This is how he created his landscapes - they became like a mirror in which everyone could see their own, intimate.

The results of the creative life and legacy of Nikolai Dubovsky

Dubovskoy was not only devoted to the principles of the Itinerants, he became a reconciling party for different groups and different generations of artists. The philosophy of life allowed him, relying on the heritage of the masters of the older generation, to be sincerely interested in the innovative approaches of young people, and therefore, for a significant period of time, he actually became the organizer of the work of traveling exhibitions.

Since the nineties of the last century, his name has gained great influence in academic circles. After the reform that the Academy of Arts underwent in 1893-1894, Dubovskoy was a member of its various committees and commissions. Since 1911, he finally agreed to head the landscape workshop of the Higher Art School at the Academy - after the death of the painter Alexander Kiselev, the former leader. He treated his students gently, but demanding, demanding from them all-round artistic development, but not imposing his own perception.

He was much interested in science and many types, areas of art, believing that they are all closely related, complement each other. Dubovsky's social circle, which was very extensive, included not only artists, but also scientists. He maintained a close relationship with Dmitry Mendeleev, made friends with Ivan Pavlov. Dubovskoy was married to the artist Faina Nikolaevna, nee Terskaya, married, as it was believed, happily, both spouses, not attaching excessive importance to the practical, "philistine" side of life, much more attention was paid not to everyday life, but to communication, creativity, serving their ideals.

Nikolai Dubovskoy died on February 28, 1918 in Petrograd, suddenly, from “heart paralysis”. He was full of ideas and ready to work, but the crumbling way of life at that time, as well as the overestimation of the role and place of the fine arts, apparently exhausted his strength. Dubovskoy remained for the next generations a master of the old, pre-revolutionary art, but after a while his name, at first simply used to denounce the "useless" directions of art, was completely forgotten.

During the years of Soviet power, most of Dubovsky's paintings and sketches were scattered across many - more than seventy - provincial museums in the USSR. This was done, as it was believed, in order to "bring" the periphery to the objects of art of the two capitals, in fact, the legacy of Dubovsky was taken away from the sphere of attention of art critics and generally connoisseurs of painting. Even the collection of his works in the Tretyakov Gallery (and a total of ten paintings by the patron were acquired by the patron) turned out to be fragmented, despite the will of Pavel Tretyakov himself.

About who else created the "mood landscapes" - in this article.