Arkhip Kuindzhi, 'Morning in the Dniepr', 1881.
Collection Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Russian landscape in the age of Tolstoy

23 June - 12 September 2004
Sainsbury Wing Admission charge



During the course of the 19th century, landscape came to play a unique role in Russian folk consciousness, featuring heavily in the country's literature, mythology and visual art. The emptiness of the vast reaches, the rigours of its climate, the difficulties of transportation, and the intense isolation of the long winter months, contributed to a specifically Russian sense of nature, different from - perhaps more fatalistic than - that found in the west.

At this time most Russians, including landowners, peasants and serfs, lived on the land. Even aristocrats returned to their country estates for part of the year, to reconnect with the land and its people. By the 1860s landscape came to be imbued with political, moral and social meanings. The exhibition featured work by Venetsianov, Shishkin, Levitan and Kuindzhi, showing lakeside and forest vistas, awe-inspiring depictions of the endless Russian horizon, and the hard struggle of peasant life in both summer and winter.

The exhibition was organised in collaboration with the Groninger Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands.

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