Lot 79014: Riverside Farmstead

Russian Fine Art: MIKHAIL KLODT (Russian, 1832-1902) Riverside Farmstead 1858 Oil on canvas 41-3/4 x 60-1/2 inches (106.0 x 153.7 cm) Signed lower right: M. Clodt also signed lower left: Clodt PROVENANCE: Sotheby's London - Russian Pictures, Works of Art, and Faberge - 20 February 1985, lot 225 LITERATURE: Nashi Khudozhniki, F. I. Bulgakov, Saint Petersburg, 1890. Zabitiyie Imena Russkaya Zhivopis XIX Veka, Alexander Shestimirov, Moscow, 2001, page 129. Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt was the uncontested master of 19th-century Russian landscape painting. A scholarly work by F.I. Bulgakov (1890) noted that this very picture won him the First Order Gold Medal at the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1858, where he also received the title of Artist of the First Degree while studying under Vorobiov. Along with it 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. While Bulgakov titled the picture View on Vallum, its original title was View of the Estate of Zegevald, and it is now known as Riverside Farmstead. It was destined to be his greatest work, a painting that changed the face of the Russian art world. 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. Mikhail was born in the town of Zegevald, a small town 60 miles from the city of Riga as Klodt saw fit to note in his own hand on the reverse of this painting. Indeed, Riverside Farmstead is an homage to his place of birth, the Latvian town also known as Sigulda. In this masterpiece Klodt has captured the serenity of the pastoral scene in magnificent detail. Even without Klodt's handwritten notations on the back of the canvas, there is no mistaking the location. The ruins of the 13th-century Sigulda castle high above the Gauja River valley is one of the most celebrated locations in Latvia, and Klodt has majestically placed the ruin in the upper left of the picture. 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. Significantly, it was his submission of Riverside Farmstead as his graduation work in 1858 that influenced Klodt's early leadership role in the movement, which had its roots in the renaissance of Russian genre painting. 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.

41.75in x 60.5in x 0in

Oil on canvas

1858.0