Research Notes
Transforming Tradition: The Eighteenth Century in the Early Works of Alexander Ivanov.
Over the late 1810s and 1820s the artist Alexander Ivanov made a series of sketches and paintings on religious, historical and literary themes, many of which were set for him by the professors at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of the Three Fine Arts (where he studied from 1817 to 1827) on behalf of the Russian Society for the Encouragement of Artists - who went on to fund the artist in the early years of his 27-year long life in Italy, mainly in Rome, from 1831 to just before his death back in St. Petersburg in 1858.
My argument is that all of these early works were a distinctive reinterpretation of eighteenth-century ideas about the genre of history painting, which tell us much about the personality of the painter himself.
Ivanov is now probably most famous for his magnificent history painting catalogued as The Appearance of Christ (to the People) by the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow,[1] where it is held, painted on a canvas measuring 540cms x 750cms in his studio in Rome from 1837 to 1857, and the literally hundreds of mesmeric landscape, figure and detail studies which he painted and drew at the same time in order to prepare himself for work on the canvas. The vast majority of these remarkable pieces are also held by the Tretyakov Gallery,[2] though there is also a significant collection in the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg.[3]
The Tretyakov Gallery also holds almost all of the artist's luminous late watercolour sketches for murals with which he hoped to decorate a temple he intended to build in Moscow, now widely known as The Bible Sketches, made over the late 1840s and the 1850s.[4]
More has reputedly been written about Alexander Ivanov by Russians than about any other Russian artist of any period.[5] None have, however, argued that his work was a direct reflection of his personality.
My argument is that Ivanov's distinctive reinterpretation of eighteenth-century standards for history painting in his own early work was a reflection of and caused by the equally distinctive features of his personality.
Let me begin by outlining the chronology of the work which he made during his early years in St Petersburg.
The earliest work we currently have by Ivanov is a sketch of a composition showing Christ in the House of Martha and Mary dated to the late 1810s by the Russian Museum which holds it.[6] In the late 1810s or early 1820s Ivanov made a sketch which was identified as showing A Gallic Warrior Offends Manius Papirius by V. I. Linnik of the Russian Museum in 1993.[7] The dating is also by the Russian Museum. The sketch shows the moment at which one of the warriors invading Rome in the fifth century BC reaches out to check whether the figure of Manius Papirius, seated in front of him on the Capitoline Hill, is a man or a spirit, so surprised is the warrior by how catatonic and other-wordly the figure of the older man is.
In 1823 Ivanov made drawings of The Prodigal Son, John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness,[8] Moses Issuing the Law to the Hebrews for a Second Time and The Flood.[9]
In 1824 Ivanov painted his first publicly-exhibited history painting, Priam, Begging Achilles for the Body of his Dead Son, Hector[10] on a subject set for him as an examination piece by the Academy of Arts. The painting was very well received, and Ivanov was awarded what was referred to as the “lesser” gold medal of the St Petersburg Society for the Encouragement of Artists on the strength of it. Around 1824 Ivanov sketched The Young Hercules Strangling a Snake,[11] now held by the Russian Museum.
In the spring of 1825 Ivanov worked with his father and his father's pupil Grigorii Lapchenko on the iconostasis of the Patriotic Institute for Noble Maidens in St. Petersburg and in that year also made a painting of Icarus.
In 1826 he made a sketch of the Prosperity of Russia for presentation to the new Emperor Nicholas I on the advice of his father. The sketch was an allegorical representation of the success of the nation under its new Emperor and received a frosty response from Nicholas, who asked that the young painter be told that there were more worthy subjects than this in Russian history for an artist to paint. In 1826 Ivanov also seems to have painted an iconostasis of a currently unidentified village church.
In 1827 Ivanov made his second publicly-exhibited history painting, Joseph in Prison Interpreting the Dreams of the Butler and the Baker,[12] again on a subject set for him as an examination piece by the Academy of Arts. The picture was an enormous success, Ivanov was awarded the first-place great gold medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, and the right to a period of study abroad – funded by the Society.
In 1828 Ivanov made his self portrait and also a drawing of the seventeenth-century Russian historical scene, The Calling of Prince Pozharskii.[13]
A sketch of an icon which shows either The Birth of John the Baptist or The Birth of the Virgin Mary[14] for the iconostasis of the Tauride Palace is dated to before 1829 by the Russian Museum as is a sketch of The Adoration of the Shepherds for the same church. A sketch of The Trust of Alexander the Great in his Physician Philip[15] is dated to the late 1820s by the museum.
In 1829 Ivanov made an oil sketch of The Good Samaritan,[16] now in the Russian Museum, and also a painting showing Bellerophon Setting Off to do Battle with the Chimera,[17] on a subject set for him by his patrons at the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. In Ivanov's own words (and we have no independent confirmation of this) the painting was badly received, and his patrons criticised him for not listening to their advice when settling upon how he wanted to compose the picture.[18]
In his early work (and later on, for that matter) Ivanov showed scenes of tension between introverted, seemingly catatonic, figures and others.
In his late 1810s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Ivanov shows the passive, other-worldly figure of Mary, who prefers listening to Jesus to working in the house, and Martha, who doesn't understand why she does this. In A Gallic Warrior Offends Manius Papirius the dramatic conflict is between the catatonic figure of Manius, who has entered this state after praying to the gods, and the Gallic warrior who, like Martha in Ivanov's first sketch, is perplexed by this behaviour and cannot comprehend it.
In Priam, Begging Achilles for the Body of his Dead Son, Hector, Ivanov shows Achilles, who is only just regaining a sensory link with this world, and Priam who is cast on the floor in grief. In Joseph in Prison the tension is between the trance-like Joseph and the emotional figures of the butler and the baker. And we can see similar traits in others of Ivanov's early works. His sketches of John the Baptist and Moses, made in 1823 for example, showed the same sort of prophetic, other-worldly figures as Mary, Manius Papirius, Achilles and Joseph, but without the contrast with secondary figures characteristic of these other works. His 1823 sketch of The Flood, drawn a short while after Karl Briullov had been asked to make a sketch of The Destruction of Sodom – an interesting precursor to his famous Last Day of Pompei – can be seen as showing only the sort of emotional, panic-stricken figures, which Ivanov showed in Priam and Joseph particularly, but without the more ethereal figures that Ivanov paired them with in those paintings. The only early painting where Ivanov doesn't do this is his 1829 Bellerophon Setting Off to Do Battle with the Chimera, where (in Bellerophon) he still shows the sort of unemotional figure that he had based his previous works on, but he shows no contrast with him. The opposing figure, Iobates, smiles enigmatically, but expresses not clear opposing state to Bellerophon. This is a painting without any dramatic tension at all.
With the exception of Bellerophon Setting Off to Do Battle with the Chimera, all of these works showed scenes of dramatic tension, as had been expected of the genre of history painting in Russia in the eighteenth century, but they did so in a dramatically new way.
In his 1770 Vladimir and Rogneda,[19] Losenko showed the contrast between grief and love. In his 1805-06 Death of Pelopidas,[20] Ivanov's father showed the contrast between grief and stoic self-control. In his 1824 Priam Begging Achilles for the Body of his Dead Son Hector, Alexei Markov showed the contrast between surprise and grief. In his 1814 Torture of the Saviour,[21] Alexei Egorov showed the contrast between piety and brute force. In his 1813 The Execution of Russian Patriots by French Firing Squad in Moscow in 1812,[22] Mikhail Tikhonov showed the contrast between patriotic self-sacrifice and hard-nosed contempt. I think we can conclude that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, people expected history paintings to show scenes of dramatic tension, and that this tension would be made up of sharply contrasting, clearly expressed opposing emotions.
In his early work (and later on, for that matter) Ivanov did not do this. Ivanov showed scenes of tension between introverted, seemingly catatonic, figures and others. My argument is that Ivanov did this because of his very distinctive personality.
Ivanov couldn't understand people.
When he wrote to Rabus in April 1829 that;
званіе ваше и неравенство лѣть сильно противоборствовали слову вашему: "мы художники" и, наконець, "по упорномь и долгомь сраженіи", первое опровегнувь сильнаго противника, опредѣлило, что я вь отношеніи кь вамь меньше должень имѣть братскаго обращенія, а болѣе почтительности
[23]he was worried that he wasn't reacting to him properly. He was concerned that there was a correct way to respond to the landscape painter, but that he wasn't doing it, because he could not understand how the other artist might be reacting to him.
It was exactly the exactly the same concern which Ivanov expressed in his September 1829 letter, when he wrote to Rabus;
Впрочемь, прощайте мнѣ, Карль Иванович, если я грубиль, грублю и буду грубить вамь вь моихь письмахь, ибо это происходить ни оть чего болѣе, какь оть вашего позволенія писать скоро на-скоро.[24]
In this light, when in April 1829 (with reference to his patrons at the Society for the Encouragement of Artists and senior figures at the Academy of Arts) he told Rabus;
по странной привычке, я словам не верю, хотя их трудно приобрести,[25]
what he was saying is that he knew people had reasons and purposes behind what they said and did, but that he had no idea what they were. He was adrift in a world of people whose actions and motivations he could not understand, and reduced to not trusting them as a default position. He was making the same point about how difficult he found it to understand what people wanted, what they actually meant by what they said and did when, again in September 1829, he wrote to Rabus of what he feared (and why he felt he needed a guide) on his way to Rome;
я совершенно человѣкь неопытный вь семь случачаѣ; мнѣнія же людей (совѣтчиковъ) не хочу придерживаться; трудно, не зная дѣла, слушать ихъ совѣты, противорѣчащіе между собою.[26]
Everything that people said seemed to have no point, no rationale. He was someone wholly “неопытный” (inexperienced) in this respect – that of understanding people, a motif which was to appear in his writing time and time again over the course of his whole life - and so he needed someone who could do it for him. In this context, I suggest that Ivanov's later recollection that his parents were suspicious was not actually about them being suspicious, it was about them trying to instil some sort of sense that he needed to be cautious with people, that people didn't always just mean what they said and couldn't always be trusted – an understanding which seemed to be absent in their young son;
Мой родители мнительны, - порок сей породили беспрестанные неприятности в их жизни, мы всосали с молоком сей недостаток. Мы росли и внимали добродетели вместе с мнительностью. Отсюда происходит, что мы и наши родителы склонны к добрым поступкам, но пороком своим часто обижаем без намерения людей невиных, часто обижаем без намерения людей невинных, часто бегаем и дичимся людей нам полезных, подозревая их в чем-то.[27]
He gives a very clear definition of what life was like for him at the end of this note, describing it as an experience in which he often offended and alarmed people unwittingly, something which would arise from having no idea how to understand the reactions they would have to what he was doing.
Again, while recording his teenage years in a note written in the mid 1830s, he defines his character as, “трусость, дикость и недоверчивость к людям”.[28]
In 1879, the engraver Fedor Jordan wrote his recollection of Ivanov aged about 10 or 11, when he first began studying in the classes of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Noting that the quality of Ivanov's clothes and materials such as brushes and pencils clearly showed that he was from a more affluent family than most of the boys in the institution, Jordan continued that;
С своими товарищами он был постоянно ласков и обходителен, но не отличался никакого резвостью, ни шаловливостью, и никогда не участвовал в общих проказах – он был всегда очень серьезен и сосредоточен.[29]
Ivanov lived in a world where people behaved in a way he could not understand. They experienced emotions and reactions, and he was completely alienated from it, completely uncomprehending of it. Even during these early years, his reactions seemed strange to those around him. When Jordan remembered that, as a boy, Ivanov didn't take part in pranks and tricks and was always very serious, it was this period he was referring to.
If Ivanov found people, at best, difficult – at worst exasperating and depressing – what he did like was ideas, bringing things into order in his mind, understanding what the system was behind things. In April 1829 he wrote to Rabus saying, “Я уже принесъ всеподданнѣйшую благодарность моему разуму, первымъ ощущеніемъ коего я опять-таки вамь обязань,"[20] and he regularly asked the landscape painter for translation of German philosophical and other tracts at this time.
And this is what we see in Ivanov's early paintings and drawings, the contrast between someone who seems to have no reaction to the world at all but is guided by perfect ideas. To begin with he shows us the feeling of just not being understood, of people finding the way in which he did not seem to react to them incomprehensible. In the subjects of his early sketches made in his early to mid teens, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and A Gallic Warrior Offends Manius Papirius, Ivanov shows the contrast between seemingly catatonic figures, working on the basis of perfect ideas (we recall that Papirius offered prayers to the gods before sinking into his trance-like state) and those around them. We recall that this is about the period in Ivanov's life when Jordan recalled atypically Ivanov seemed to react and behave to those around him.
In his next works, Ivanov shows not just the feeling of difference between himself and the rest of the world, he shows us what that difference is, drawing the contrast between people operating on a higher plane and people acting on the basis of their emotions in his award-winning competition pieces, Priam and Joseph, painted in the mid 1820s.
And then, in Bellerophon, we get the depiction of the realisation that he could not trust, and did not understand, the motivations of the people around him, which we see reflected in his writings from 1829.
Bellerophon has been accused of rape by Iobates daughter and sent to Iobates by Proetus, the king of the city where the attack allegedly took place, for punishment. Proetus sends a note to Iobates explaining what was alleged to have happened and what he wanted done about it. Ivanov shows Iobates holding the tablet with this note on in his left hand. Iobates, however, is fearful of the revenge of the gods if he directly kills Bellerophon, so he sends him to fight the deadly chimera in the hope that Bellerophon will be killed, without Iobates actually having to order his death. Iobates is being duplicitous, just as Ivanov experienced all people as duplicitous. Just as he could not read what it was that the people around him wanted, so in his 1829 painting Ivanov shows us the contrast between people like him, acting in accord with deeper, rational order shown in the figure of Minerva protecting Bellerophon, contrasted with the untrustworthy, incomprehensible behaviour of people in general.
So there is dramatic tension in this work, it's just almost impossible to see, as it is the tension between people who aren't as they seem, and people who act in accord with perfect systems.
The work does, however, illustrate the point that Ivanov painted the world as he experienced it during the early part of his life. He was operating according to his own priorities, and his experience of the world was very different from that which most people both have today, and had in the early nineteenth century.
And all of these things, I suggest, we would now understand to be symptoms of Asperger syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum, combining often extreme social dislocation with typical, often high, IQ, and a heightened ability to perceive systems, intellectual structures and order.
The inability to conceptualise how other people are feeling and reacting, the insistence on doing things in that individual's way or not at all, and the search for guides (as I suggest Ivanov saw Rabus) are all recognised features of the condition. Many of the actions and behaviours which Ivanov displayed accord extremely closely with what are now regarded as text-book examples of the experience of someone with Asperger syndrome. For example, in the early 1830s Ivanov wrote of a recurring dream which he said he had during his early childhood in St. Petersburg;
Вь то время когда ум начинает дљствовать когда оставляя колыбель начинал я разсуждать Вь то время во снѣ моем увидљл знаменія жизни моей - видљл и другіе сны но сей сон утвердится в памяти моей знаменіе бь мое есть видљл драконов гонящияся за мной из залы в залу какого то огрмнљйшего строенія иногда я забљгал в промежуточныя маленькия комната спасатся от их видь, отдыхал но не на долго - сыскивали и я бљжал всегда не один но болље всехь прочихь страдал опять находили [захоулок] опять прятеть и опять они меня сыскивали, такое мученіе продолжалось до расвљта и просыпом моим слышаль голос в чей то. Довольно ты страдал, проспись и живи. -.[31]
In comparison, in 1995 the American academic Temple Grandin, who was originally diagnosed with high-functioning autism but who now feels that she would be diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, wrote;
Imagine a state of hyperarousal where you were being pursued by a dangerous attacker in a world of total chaos.[32]
– Andrew Curtin, University of Essex
NOTES:
[1] Государственная Третьяковская Галерея, Инв. 8016.
[2] For illustrations of painted sketches in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery, see; Государственная Третьяковская Галерея, каталог собрания, Серия; Живопись XVIII-XX веков, том 3, Живопись первой половины XIX века (Москва, 2005), сс. 129-170. For illustrations of drawn sketches in the collection of the gallery, see; Государственная Третьяковская Галерея, каталог собрания, Серия; Рисунок XVIII-XX веков, том 2, книга третья, Рисунок XIX века, А. А. Иванов (Москва, 2014) cc. 54-93.
[3] For illustrations of painted sketches in the collection of the Russian Museum, see; Государственный Русский Музей, Живопись Первая половина XIX века, том 2 (Санкт Петербург, 2002), cc. 206-222.
[4] For illustrations of the Bible Sketches in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery, see; Государственная Третьяковская Галерея, каталог собрания, Серия; Рисунок XVIII-XX веков, том 2, книга третья, Рисунок XIX века, А. А. Иванов (Москва, 2014) cc. 124-231.
[5] М. М. Алленов, Александр Андреевич Иванов (Москва, 1980), c. 5. “Об Александре Иванове написано много, пожалуй, больше, чем о каком-либо другом художнике нового времени." Г. Голдовский, 'Александр Андреевич Иванов; Юбилейные размышления', in Русский Музей, Александр Иванов (Санкт Петербург, 2006), c.7. “По всеобщему признанию, ни один из русских живописцев прошедших веков не удостоился такого количества и тематического разнообразия публикаций."
[6] For an illustration of the sketch, see; Русский Музей, Александр Иванов (Санкт Петербург, 2006), c. 29, ил. 20.
[7] For an illustration of the sketch, see; Русский Музей, Александр Иванов (Санкт Петербург, 2006), c. 40, ил. 32.
[8] For an illustration of the sketch, see; Государственный Русский Музей, Страницы истории отечественного искусства XVIII- первая половина XIX века (Санкт-Петербург, 1993), c. 88 (upper illustration).
[9] For an illustration of the sketch, see; Государственный Русский Музей, Страницы истории отечественного искусства XVIII- первая половина XIX века (Санкт-Петербург, 1993), c. 87 (upper illustration).
[10] For illustration, see; https://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/priam-isprashivayushchiy-u-akhillesa-telo-gektora/
[11] For an illustration of the sketch, see; Русский Музей, Александр Иванов (Санкт Петербург, 2006), c. 40, ил. 33.
[12] For an illustration of the painting, see; Государственный Русский Музей, Живопись Первая половина XIX века, том 2 (Санкт Петербург, 2002), c. 199, No. 601.
[13] For an illustration of two of Ivanov's sketches on this subject, see; Русский Музей, Александр Иванов (Санкт Петербург, 2006), c. 32, ил. 24 & 25.
[14] For an illustration of the sketch, see; Русский Музей, Александр Иванов (Санкт Петербург, 2006), c. 41, ил. 35.
[15] For an illustration of the sketch, see; Русский Музей, Александр Иванов (Санкт Петербург, 2006), c. 41, ил. 34.
[16] For an illustration of the oil sketch, see; Русский Музей, Александр Иванов (Санкт Петербург, 2006), c. 47, ил. 42.
[17] For an illustration of the painting and oil sketches for it, see; For an illustration of the sketch, see; Русский Музей, Александр Иванов (Санкт Петербург, 2006), c. 44-45, ил. 38-40.
[18] М. Боткин, Александр Андреевич Иванов, Его Жизнь и Переписка; 1806-1858 (Санкт-Петербург, 1880), с. 8. Письмо А. А. Иванова к К. И. Рабусу, С-Петербург, Осень 1829 г. “Срокъ или конецъ прошедшаго лѣта (1829- AC) окончил и мою картину, которая была принята съ неудовольствіемъ: говорили, что она совсѣмь не превосходит "Іосифа въ темницѣ" и что имъ оскорбительно, что я не слушаю ихъ совѣтовъ въ разсужденій композиціи." (“I finished my painting, which was received with dissatisfaction, on time or at the end of the summer: they said that it was in no way better than “Joseph in Prison” and that they were insulted that I had not heeded their advice with regard to the composition.”
[19] For illustration, see; http://en.rusmuseum.ru/collections/painting-of-xviii-first-half-xix-centuries/artworks/vladimir-i-rogneda/
[20] For illustration, see; https://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/smert-pelopida/
[21] For illustration, see; Государственный Русский Музей, Живопись Первая половина XIX века, том 2 (Санкт Петербург, 2002), c. 181, No. 546.
[22]For illustration, see; Государственная Третьяковская Галерея, каталог собрания, Серия; Живопись XVIII-XX веков, том 3, Живопись первой половины XIX века (Москва, 2005), c. 275, No. 854.
[23] Op cit, М. Боткин, 1880, с. 2. “your title and the difference in our ages conflict sharply with your words “we artists” and, finally, “after a bitter and lengthy battle”, the first, having been refuted by a strong opponent, means that I should have a less brotherly tone in relation to you, and more respect.”
[24] Ibid, M. Боткин, c. 7. “Incidentally, forgive me, Karl Ivanovich, I have have been, am or will be rude to you in my letters, as this results from nothing more than your permission to jot things down to you.”
[25] Ibid, M. Боткин, 1880. с. 3. “By strange habit I do not trust words, though they are hard won”,
[26] Ibid, M. Боткин, 1880. с. 5. “I am a person who is wholly inexperienced in such matters; I do not want to adhere to the opinions of other people (advisors); it is difficult, without knowledge of the matter, to listen to advice in which they all contradict one another.”
[27]И. А. Виноградов (сост.), Александр Иванов в письмах, документах, воспоминаниях (Москва, 2001), с. 77. “My parents were suspicious, - a fault which caused them constant unpleasantness in their lives, we imbibed this fault with our mother's milk. As we were growing up, we saw virtue and suspicion. This is why both we and our parents are prone to good deeds, but often unintentionally offend innocent people because of our failing, often avoid and alarm people who help us, suspecting them of something….”
[28] Ibid, И. А. Виноградов, 2001. с. 79. “cowardice, wildness and suspicion of people”.
[29] Ibid, И. А. Виноградов, 2001. с. 29. “He was always gentle and courteous with his colleagues, but was neither playful nor mischievous, and never took part in pranks with others – he was always very serious and concentrated.”
[30] Op cit, M. Боткин, 1880. с. 3. “I have already offered humble thanks to my mind, for the first sensation of which I am once again indebted to you.”
[31] Государственный Русский Музей, Отдел Рукописи, Ф. 24, Ед. Хр. No. 13. с. 176. “At the same time as the mind begins to work when leaving the cot I began to reason. At that time I saw the sign of my life in a dream – I saw other dreams too but this dream fixed itself in my memory for it is the sign of my life I saw dragons chasing me from hall to hall of some huge building sometimes I darted into small anterooms to be saved from their view, rested but not for long – they found me and I ran never alone but suffering more than anyone else again they found [an out of the way place – word unclear in Russian text. AC] again I hid and again they found me, such torment continued until dawn and on my awakening I heard some sort of voice. You have suffered enough, awake and live.-”
[32] T. Grandin, Thinking in Pictures And Other Reports from My Life with Autism (London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney, second edition, 2006), p. 48.
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