Alexei Petrovich Bogoliubov

Acquired by the grandfather of the present owner in the 1950s

The canvas has been cut and laid onto another canvas. There is some ingrained dirt and fine lines of craquelure in places. UV light reveals a thin line of retouching to the left of the central mast, flecks of retouching in the sky and elsewhere and an uneven layer of discoloured varnish. Held in a simple wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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This early Italian seascape dates from Bogoliubov's first serious trip abroad as an Academician between 1854 and 1860. The landmark exhibition of foreign landscapes at the Russian Academy of Arts which he staged on his return launched his career. Ivan Kramskoi recalled that before this exhibition he was scarcely known, but 'in 1861 he staged an exhibition of everything he had done abroad and at once became the Bogoliubov we know: he had absorbed brilliantly so many European techniques and elements of constructing landscapes. It was just wonderful, particularly for us, who then knew so little of the contemporary European masters'.  In the words of the Academy report 'no artist on a travel scholarship from the Academy has brought back to Russia such a large number of brilliant studies, proving not only their talent, but also their extreme diligence and yearning for perfection'. He was immediately made a Professor.

 

Bogoliubov's Italian views from this period are particularly lovely, and by his own admission incorporate elements of the work of his predecessor Sylvestr Schedrin. View of Sorrento (fig. 1), was even painted from exactly the same viewpoint as a work by Schedrin. 'It was enormous cheek', recalled Bogoliubov in his Notes from a Sailor Artist, 'but I always loved this maestro and used to copy his studies lovingly at our Academy'.  The unapologetically bright sunlight, rock-strewn sandy beach and bright red caps of the Italian fishermen in the present work are especially characteristic of Bogoliubov's admiration of the earlier Russian artist.