Lot 9: PETR PETROVICH VERESCHAGIN

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

RUSSIAN, 1836-1886
NEVSKY PROSPECT, ST. PETERSBURG

measurements
18 1/4 by 24 1/2 in.

alternate measurements
46.4 by 62.2 cm

signed in Cyrillic P. Vereschagin (lower right); inscribed in Cyrillic St. Petersburg (lower left)

oil on canvas

LITERATURE

F.I. Bulgakov, Nashi Khudozhniki, zhivopistsy, skulptory, mozaichisty, gravery i medalery, biografii, portrety khudozhnikov i snimki s ikh proizveden, (in the facsimille 1880 edition) vol. I, Moscow, 2002, listed, p. 87 under 1876 (titled Nevsky Prospect)

NOTE

St. Petersburg played a dominant role in Petr Vereschiagin's life. He spent seven years in the city as a student of the Imperial Academy of the Arts and although after graduation he traveled and painted extensively throughout Russia, he could not resist returning to the cultural center of St. Petersburg where he would eventually die at the age of fifty.

Described by the nineteenth-century art historian and critic Fiodor Bulgakov as a master of perspective, Vereschiagin worked tirelessly to perfect his cityscapes. The present work, recorded as Nevsky Prospekt, is said to have been completed by the artist in 1876 (Fiodor Bulgakov, Nashi Hudojniki, vol. I, Moscow: Trilistnik, 2002, p. 87). The painting also may have traveled in exhibitions in 1886 in Odessa and in 1887 in Kharkov (Bulgakov, p. 87). Bulgakov notes that ``almost all of [Vereschiagin's] works were shown in academic exhibitions, a contributing member to which he became in 1868'' (Bulgakov, p. 85). In a comparable composition in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, View of the Embankment at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg (see fig. 1), the artist does not stray from the conventions of a vedutisti; his landscapes remain topographical in conception and rich in detail. There is no question that the artist was exposed to the work of Italian master Canaletto, whose souvenir views of Venice not only earned him international recognition, but conceived the term veduta, which applied to the topographical painting style. Canaletto's Reception of the French Ambassador in Venice (see fig.2) is a work purchased by Catherine the Great in 1767 for her growing collection at the Hermitage Museum.

The present composition vividly captures the various facets of the modern city center: the bustling activity, throngs of people and its commercial ingenuity. The artist paints the architectural vistas with documental accuracy. Nevsky Prospekt was named after the recognized Russian saint Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky, a compelling leader who secured Novgorod's outlet to the Baltic Sea in a conflict with the Swedes on the river Neva in 1240, thus earning him the sobriquet Nevsky. When Peter the Great's vision of a northern Venice was realized in 1703 on the delta of the Neva river, Nevsky Prospekt was charted as the main boulevard leading from the Admiralty, south to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. The present view is that of the northern perspective, with the Admiralty in the near distance, and with a glimpse of Gostinni Dvor, or Merchants' Row, to the near left. The market was first built towards the end of the eighteenth century by Vallin de la Mothe. The arcades of the first two floors of the building were said to be a favorite promenade for Petersburg residents at the turn of the century. Next to the market, stands the small chapel of the Guslizky monastery, built in 1861 by the architect Gornostaev. Deeper into the composition is the town hall building called the duma, built by Giacomo Ferrari in 1802, recognizable by its pentagonal tower. From the middle of the eighteenth century the heads of merchants' guilds would meet here. The tower was used as the semaphore telegraph system which established communication between the Imperial residences of the Winter Palace and Gatchina, Kronstadt, Vilnius and Warsaw. Beyond the tower, the Roman dome belongs to the Kazan Cathedral, constructed between 1801 and 1811 from the plans of architect Andrei Voronikhin, and inspired by the Basilica of St. Peter's in Rome.

Perhaps the spirit of the offered work is best conveyed in Alexander Pushkin's 1933 poem, ``The Bronze Horseman'' (Waclaw Lednicki, Pushkin's Bronze Horseman, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1955, p. 142).

...today, along
Those shores, astir with life and motion,
Vast shapely palaces in throng
And towers are seen: from every ocean,
From the world's end, the ships come fast,
To reach the loaded quays at last.
The Neva now is clad in granite
With many a bridge to overspan it;
The islands lie beneath a screen
Of gardens deep in dusky green.
To that young capital is drooping
The crest of Moscow on the ground,
A dowager in purple, stooping
Before an empress newly crowned. I love thee, city of Peter's making; I love thy harmonies austere,
And Neva's Sovran waters breaking
Along her banks of granite sheer;
Thy traceried iron gates; thy sparkling,
Yet moonless, meditative gloom
And thy transparent twilight darkling;
And when I write within my room
Or lampless, read--then, sunk in slumber,
The empty thoroughfares, past number,
Are piled, stand clear upon the night;
The Admiralty spire is bright...