VASILY POLENOV

 

Post-200 -by Gautam Shah

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture

Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov (1844-1927) was a very important realist painter in the history of Russian art. He began a systematic study of drawing in 1856. He had interest in history painting from the student days. But he also worked on landscape art. It was during the 1880-1890s that he achieved a balance between the two forms. He also embodied both European and Russian traditions of painting.

In 1876, he became an Academician, and in 1882-95 he was appointed a professor of landscape painting at the School of Art in Moscow. He visited Vienna, Munich, Venice, Florence, Naples, Middle East, Constantinople, Palestine, Syria and Egypt, and stayed in Paris for a long time. Due to his urban upbringing, he was fond of nature. He built a house at Borok, Tula, on his own design, as a ‘nest of artists’.

Polenov shows a mastery over the bright sun-light and figurative elements, which established a new fashion for landscape paintings. Some of the later paintings show brush strokes of impressionistic styles. He included architectural entities and elements as background setting in natures’ paintings. 

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