A Travel Book by an Artist-Pensioner: The Russian Artistic Community in Italy and the Disadvantages of Academic Education

The article is devoted to an album of drawings by an unknown Russian artist-pensioner of the mid-1850s from the circle of A.P. Bogolyubov. The young draughtsman, who had an excellent academic education, traveled around Italy, drawing typical views and genre scenes, while to a greater extent trying on the role of S. Shchedrin and K. Bryullov in his search for creative identity. The album is set within the broad context of the work in Italy of young Russian artists. Similar stylistic and iconographic analogies are drawn from similar sources — the travel sketches of A.P.Bogolubov and F.A. Bronnikov, as well as the album of F.A. Klages. A careful comparison of the works by the novice masters allows us to draw conclusions about the common problems experienced by the young graduates of the Imperial Academy of Arts who had excellent technical skills and, at the same time, a poor readiness for individual artistic exploration. The drawings examined in the article significantly expand the circle of visual sources on the Russian artistic community in Italy. In some cases there are portraits and caricature, as well as the development of the iconography of typical scenes (for example, “Interrupted rendezvous” by Karl Bryullov or “Temptation” by N. Shilder). The album contains many inscriptions, which are also published alongside to facilitate the identification of the author by subsequent researchers.

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