Konstantin Bogaevsky painted The Old Crimea in 1903. The artist was born in Feodosia and lived a larger part of his life there, he knew the nature of the Crimean Peninsula very well, and for that reason, he often depicted the landscapes that were so dear to his heart.
The Old Crimea
Creation period
1903
Dimensions
110x160 cm
110×160 cm
110×160 cm
Technique
Oil on canvas
Collection
3
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Konstantin Bogaevsky
The Old Crimea
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Poet Maximilian Voloshin, the painter’s close friend, said:
“An artist should long for the land he paints. He must experience the story of every one of its valleys, hills, bays. The experience of the heart, which languished with melancholy in its twilight, and the experience of the feet that touched all its pathways will give him no less than the impressions caught by the eye”.
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In 1891, Bogaevsky moved to Petersburg, to study painting at the Academy of Arts, in the class of Arkhip Kuindzhi. After graduation, he traveled across Germany, Italy and France in the company of his college-mates. When abroad, he saw contemporary European art for the first time, and it struck him deeply.
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In the early 1900s, Bogaevsky came back to Feodosia. He made an array of paintings with scenery of his homeland. One of those works, The Old Crimea, stays at the A.N. Radishchev Saratov State Museum of Fine Arts.
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In the landscape, the artist produces an image of a salt steppe that is typical of the peninsula. Soils of that kind are very salty, so vegetation is very scarce, with a few clumps of trees. Bogaevsky used a dark palette. He worked with different shades of brown and ocher, in order to render the soil color more authentically. To paint the sky, the artist chose black with a bluish tint, and for the leafage on the trees, he opted for dark green. The color range of the picture creates the feeling of monumentality in that landscape.
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Bogaevsky had close ties with members of the World of Art association, and he participated in their exhibitions on multiple occasions. They believed that nature was a stage for historic events, so landscape must evoke associations with the past in contemporaries. Bogaevsky borrowed the idea from them, and inserted characteristic features of the past in his landscape: ruins of a fortress, robust ancient trees, worn roads.
The tableau The Old Crimea expresses the artist’s views. He created a stern-looking and silent landscape, which conceals mysteries of the past. The painter’s oeuvre combined the classicistic tradition of Realism and new attitudes of the World of Art. Therefore, Bogaevsky is considered to be one of the most ingenious Russian artists of the early 20th century.
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The landscape was part of the collection of Mikhail Glazunov, a Soviet collector, in Leningrad. In 1975, The Old Crimea was transferred to the A.N. Radishchev Saratov State Museum of Fine Arts.
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A.N. Radishchev Saratov State Museum of Fine Arts
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The Old Crimea
Creation period
1903
Dimensions
110x160 cm
110×160 cm
110×160 cm
Technique
Oil on canvas
Collection
3
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