Exotic Aesthetics: Representations of Blackness in Nineteenth-Century Russian Painting

Abstract

This article focuses on a series of both iconic and little-known paintings, examining the diverse ways in which some of Russia's most prominent nineteenth-century artists such as Karl Briullov, Vasilii Polenov, and Il΄ia Repin depicted Black subjects. Through a combination of close formal readings and broader analyses of the specific contexts in which these images were produced, the article probes a number of complex and interconnected topics such as Russian exceptionalism, imperialist aesthetics, and nationalist versus cosmopolitan pictorial sensibilities. The article likewise pays close attention to the conceptual and material continuities and discontinuities between the first and second halves of the nineteenth century and considers how these paintings might have contributed to the evolving Russian discourses on race, nationality, and empire in the “long” nineteenth century.