PORTRAIT PAINTING AT THE ACADEMIC EXHIBITION OF 1833

Abstract

The article is devoted to portrait painting presented at the St. Petersburg Academic Exhibition of 1833, a detailed analysis of which has not been carried out yet. This is primarily due to the small number of surviving works that were shown at that exhibition. Based on the sources (the index of the exhibition and the article by M.E. Lobanov), the author reconstructs the composition of the participants and their works. The main attention in the article is paid to three capital works: the paintings "Newspaper Readers in Naples" by O.A. Kiprensky, "Portrait of L.P. Wittgenstein's Children" by K.P. Bryullov, and "Portrait of the Dowager Empress Elizabeth Alekseevna" by P.V. Basin. The possible artistic sources and impressions that could contribute to the creation of these works are considered, the opinions of contemporaries on the problems of artistic form are given, the coexistence of two lines in the portrait genre of the first half of the 1830s - illusionism and decorativeness - is emphasized, the tendency associated with the desire to combine portrait and genre painting is noted. Briefly dwelling on the masters of the "second row" (students and graduates of the Academy of Arts), the author examines the works of the French painter F. Riss, noting a certain trend in the portrait of this time associated with the desire for complex and pretentious movements of characters, which is associated with the search for a new artistic language and an attempt to get away from boring portrait stamps.