#Aleksey Venetsianov

[vintage-russia]

"Cabinet of the artist Aleksey Gavrilovich Venetsianov" (1830s/1840s)

Fyodor Slavyanskiy (1817-1876)

[artsof]

Harvesting. Summer. | Aleksey Venetsianov | 1820 | Tretyakov Gallery

“The painting Harvesting. Summer is one of Venetsianov's acclaimed masterpieces. What unites it with another masterpiece, In the Ploughed Field. Spring, is the theme of seasons. The epoch of romanticism perceived it as a symbol of the circle of human life. The eternal work on the eternal earth is the main theme of both paintings. A peasant woman with her baby, a traditional symbol of fertility, is depicted seated on a high platform. The woman’s figure with its clear silhouette stands out against the landscape, and the clarity and generality of its plastic characteristics make it solemn as a classical relief. The foreground is brought closer to the viewer, as if the distant view was seen from the window – with such a technique, romantic landscape painters sought to capture the integrity of nature, the continuity of the particular and the universal. The calm rhythms of the horizontals in combination with the vertical format of the canvas, which is almost halved by the horizon, give rise to a feeling of perfect balance of the elements - the sky and the earth. The clear, laconic composition brings to mind masters of the Italian Renaissance.”

[davidbowievsworldart]

[russianpaintings]

Aleksey Venetsianov. In the ploughed field. Spring. First half of the 1820s. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Venetsianov chose simple motifs. In his paintings there is almost no action. He is not so much interested in the particulars of a way of life as in being. For the artist, peasant work is something from the distant past, eternal, repeating itself over and over like the changing seasons. The figure of the woman is depicted in enlarged scale. The movements of the peasant girl are elegant. She does not step on the soil; rather she seems to hover over it. Her sarafan is as beautiful as a Greek tunic. The subject is made to look like the Antique goddess of fertility Flora. The infant in the foreground may be understood to be a symbol of maternity and fertility. The artist sees in a typical peasant scene the unsurpassable beauty of an ancient idyll. Everywhere there is festive silence – the quality of Classicist painting.

[pastedpast]

Fortune-telling.

Aleksei Gavrilovich Venetsianov, 1842.

[shapelywomen]

M. A. Venetsianova, by Aleksei Venetsianov, 1810

[vintage-russia]

"Peasant boy" (1830s)

Aleksey Venetsianov (1780-1847)

[vintage-russia]

"Recruit's Blessing" (1830s)

Aleksey Venetsianov (1780-1847)

[artsof]

A Peasant Girl at Needlework | Aleksey Venetsianov | 1843 | Tretyakov Gallery