Maybe you'll remember that throughout Lent 2017 we reflected together on a number of paintings by the landscape artist, Isaak Levitan. During Lent 2019 we reflected on the Impressionist paintings of Camille Pissarro. I'm eager to travel through Lent with you this year, considering the work of the 19th century Russian landscape painter, Vasily Polenov. Here is a photograph taken of him when he was in his early 30's.
If we're inclined, full biographies of Vasily Polenov can be found online. I'd suggest we might best get to know him by contemplating his paintings. Here then is just a brief window into his life to get our attention.
Unlike Isaak Levitan who was sometimes desperately poor, Vasily Polenov was born into a wealthy, intellectual and artistic family dating back to the 18th century. Vasily's father was Dimitri, a well known historian and archaeologist who would take his son along on field studies encouraging him to sketch whatever he saw that interested him. Vasily's mother was Maria Alekseevna, a portrait painter and author of children's books. Vasily also had a younger sister, Elena, who was also an artist. I'll hold off on Vasily's maternal grandmother because she was especially formative of his inner life.
Vasily Polenov lived June 1, 1844 to July 18, 1927. So, he was 83 when he died. Before he was thirty years of age he had traveled widely to Vienna, Munich, Venice, Florence and Naples. In 1883 he enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Arts where his work earned him an allowance to travel at the expenses of the Russian State.
He visited Germany and Switzerland, then stayed in Rome, where he fell in love with a young woman named Moroussia Obolenskaya who died the same year they met. In 1881 he undertook a trip to Syria, Palestine and Egypt, the places close to the start of Christianity, to study the light, culture, architecture and people that informed his Life of Christ Series.
Later he settled in Paris. During the 1880's he joined The Wanderers — the outdoors movement (we might remember from our Isaak Levitan Lent) which broke away from the imposed themes of the Academy to better represent nature and contemporary issues. He studied and worked alongside other great artists like Ilya Repin. Isaak Levitan was one of Vasily's students.
He met his wife, Natalia, in 1910 when he joined a folk theatre project. They turned their home into a kind of school (House of Theatre and Education) which set out to bring art to people who would otherwise have no exposure to it. He exhibited and priced his paintings ridiculously low so everyday people could afford them. But a profiteer bought them up and raised the prices to reflect their real value — like the millionaire profiteers who make huge money off of wars, or billions of dollars off Coronavirus.
Polenov's property and house, and the church he designed and had built, survived the Russian Revolution and are with us today. We're grateful for that.
So maybe, spread the word that we'll begin our Polenov pondering on Ash Wednesday (February 17). Perhaps you know folks who are looking for a Lent-to-Easter path that is both beautiful and positive.
"I believe that art must give happiness and joy, otherwise it's worth nothing. There's so much misery, so much vulgarity and filth in life that if art drenches you in horror and villainy, living would become too difficult." Vasily Polenov 1888.
