Michail Konstantinovic Klodt Sold at Auction Prices

Landscape painter

MIKHAIL KLODT (b 1832, d 1902) Russian Landscape Painter. Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt was the uncontested master of 19th-century Russian landscape painting. Klodt was born into an already-famous family of Barons Von Jurgensburg, an art dynasty that included his father, a noted engraver, as well as an uncle and cousin, an accomplished sculptor and painter, respectively. A scholarly work by F.I. Bulgakov (1890) noted that Klodt won the First Order Gold Medal at the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1858 for his painting "View of the Estate of Zegevald", now known as "Riverside Farmstead." At the Academy, he also received the title of Artist of the First Degree while studying under Vorobiov. Along with the title came pension money he used to travel in Europe and make a name for himself through exhibitions and commissions that would insure his fame and place in Russian art history.
Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt would return from his tour of Europe and become a professor at the Imperial Academy, but he never left his roots, traveling throughout the provinces creating beautiful works depicting the landscapes of Russia. While he tutored future Russian artists such as Dubovskoy and Bashinjagyan, among many others, his wanderlust and independent spirit led him to be one of the founders in 1868 of the famous Society of Traveling Exhibitions (Peredvizhniki) Group, appropriately known as the Wanderers. Formed in response to the Academy's repression of genre painting in favor of instruction in Italian historical works instead, the group's influence spread like wildfire throughout the Russian art community, sparking a new acceptance of genre painting in the face of opposition from the Academy.
The Wanderers group would in time include the great Russian artists Shishkin, Repin, Makovsky and Bogdonav-Belskii, with many others to follow. After the first Wanderers exhibition in 1871 the genre took hold, with many works being acquired by collectors such as Pavel Tretyakov, who assembled the remarkable collection that is now the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Inevitably the Academy adopted the ideology of the Wanderers, which unfortunately led to the stifling of creativity in late-19th-century Russian art and resulted in a split among the group's members, partly due to Klodt's refusal to relinquish his professorship at the Academy.
While he would occasionally exhibit with the group, Klodt retired from his professorship at the Academy and died in 1902, much revered by the Russian people. A striking picture of the artist painted by Ivan Nikolaevich Kromskoy is prominently displayed in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery. (Courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries, Russian Fine Art Signature Auction, June 3, 2008, lot 79014)