Epochs · Russia

Russian Realism

c. 1830 – 1900

In 1863 fourteen students walked out of the St Petersburg Academy rather than paint a set mythological subject. Their successors, the Peredvizhniki or Wanderers, took travelling exhibitions across Russia and painted peasants, history, landscape and the conscience of the nation. Repin, Kramskoi and Savitsky joined sharp observation to moral seriousness, while painters like Aivazovsky and Bryullov carried the Romantic and academic traditions alongside them.

Hallmarks

Travelling exhibitions for a wide public
Peasant life and social critique
Russian history painted as drama
The vast Russian landscape

Artists here

Ivan Shishkin · 1832 – 1898
Ivan Kramskoi · 1837 – 1887
Arkhip Kuindzhi · 1841 – 1910
Ilya Repin · 1844 – 1930

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Works (8)

Barge Haulers on the Volga
Ilya Repin · 1870–73
Christ in the Wilderness
Ivan Kramskoi · 1872
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
Ilya Repin · 1880–91
Moonlit Night on the Dnieper
Arkhip Kuindzhi · 1880
Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan
Ilya Repin · 1883–85
Portrait of an Unknown Woman
Ivan Kramskoi · 1883
They Did Not Expect Him
Ilya Repin · 1884–88
Morning in a Pine Forest
Ivan Shishkin · 1889