Vasily Dmitrievich Poleno (Russian, 1844-1927)
The Herzegovian on lookout, c. 1876
Oil on canvas
127 x 90.8cm (50 x 35 3/4in)
Private collection
Sold for $300,000 USD in Nov 2019
In 1876, Serbia and Montenegro, joined by Bosnian and Herzegovinian rebels, declared war on Turkey. These events produced a stormy response in Russian society when many Russian cultural and scientific persons of note expressed strong public support for the Balkan people. Among them were the writers Vsevolod Garshin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, doctors Sergei Botkin and Nikolai Pirogov, as well as a group of Russian artists who took direct part in the campaign, including Vasilii Vereshchagin, Konstantin Makovsky, Ivan Aivazovsky, Alexey Bogolyubov and Vasily Polenov.
Polenov was working in Paris when the war broke out. As a response to the events in the Balkans, he produced two extraordinary works The Montenegrin Girl and the present The Herzegovinian on lookout. Different in artistic approach, both paintings are highly romanticized images of the Balkan women-fighters.
In the fall of the same year, Polenov traveled to the Balkans as a volunteer in the army of General Chernyaev. Two months spent at war earned Polenov medal for his bravery.
Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov (1 June 1844 – 18 July 1927) was a Russian painter. He began a systematic study of drawing in 1856. He also took lessons with Chistyakov, whom he considered his most important teacher, in 1871 and early 1872, after finishing his academic course. From 1863 to 1871 Polenov studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Art, where he met members of the progressive wing of the Russian artistic intelligentsia, and occasionally in the faculty of law at St Petersburg University.
The classical education he received at home, his academic training and lessons with Chistyakov led Polenov towards an 'exalted' history painting, although he personally inclined towards landscape. This dualism remained in Polenov's work for the duration, and not until the late 1880s and early 1890s did he achieve a stable relationship between the two forms.
The whole of his student career and the initial postgraduate, scholarship period was largely taken up with historical works: from academic compositions, to numerous pictures and sketches on subjects from antiquity and medieval history, executed in France or shortly after his departure from there, under the perceptible influence of Paul Delaroche. At the same time he produced his first independent works, in the 1860s and early 1870s: landscapes in the surroundings of the Imochentsy estate in Karelia and landscape studies and pictures executed from nature in Normandy in 1874.
In 1876 he became an Academician. In 1882-95 he was professor of landscape painting at the School of Art in Moscow. He became interested in depictions of Christ and philosophical and religious questions. In 1905 he left the teaching staff of the Academy in protest against the massacre in St. Petersburg. In 1910-18 he managed the first folk-theatre in Moscow, and became active in the development of factory and village theatre. More on Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov
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