Vladimir Donatovich Orlovsky

Collection of Mr Kuznetsov, Moscow
In the present collection by 1934

F.Bulgakov, Al'bom russkoi zhivopisi: Kartiny V.D.Orlovskogo, Moscow, 1888, no.20 listed and illustrated in b/w; mentioned in the text on p.19

Structural Condition The canvas is unlined and is securely attached to the artist's original keyed wooden stretcher. This is providing a stable structural support. Paint Surface The paint surface has an even varnish layer. There are small scattered spots of household paint below the upper horizontal framing edge. There is a slightly raised craquelure pattern within the sky and the water in the lower right quadrant of the composition. This appears stable. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows scattered retouchings running through the upper part of the sky, and a further spot of retouching within sky in the centre of the upper right quadrant of the composition. These retouchings appear crude and excessive, are visible in natural light, and could be considerably reduced with more careful inpainting. Inspection under ultra-violet light also shows scattered areas of fluorescence within the trees and the foreground. These appear attributable to the artist's materials and techniques. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in good condition and would benefit from cleaning, restoration and revarnishing including the removal and careful replacement of any previous restoration work.
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Upon graduating, Vladimir Orlovsky left Kiev for St Petersburg where he studied under Alexei Bogoliubov at the Academy of Arts. In 1869 he was awarded a travel scholarship and on the encouragement of his professor went to Paris where he visited the studios of many of the leading lights of the Parisian art world. Orlovsky was largely unmoved by what he saw and steadfastly stuck to his own path. When war broke out between France and Prussia in 1870 he left for Switzerland. In Geneva, he was similarly uninspired by what he found in the museums and exhibition halls and felt that the Swiss landscape was altogether too dramatic, too grandiose to paint anything that held any truth or worth. Of all the European countries Orlovsky visited, he felt most at home in Italy where at least the light and colour reminded him of Crimea. By the time of his return he happily concluded that no country in Europe was more picturesque than Russia because in Russia all the variety that could be found in Europe could be found in one country, and his three years abroad had only made him appreciate his homeland more.

From 1874 Orlovsky regularly participated in exhibitions at the Academy, but many of his finest landscapes remained hidden from public view because these paintings were snapped up before they could be shown. Orlovsky’s views of Russia were particularly popular with the Imperial family and the aristocracy. Buyers of his work included Pavel Pavlovich Demidoff, Prince of San Donato; Grand Prince Vladimir Alexandrovich, the then president of the Academy; Pavel Tretyakov and the Tsar himself.

In the late 1870s and the 1880s Orlovsky produced a celebrated series of sun-dappled scenes of Little Russia, often incorporating staffage figures and genre scenes into the landscape, washerwomen doing laundry in the river, workers in the fields and, as in the present lot, hunters out with their dogs. River Gnilitsa was one of the large-scale oils the artist worked up from studies produced over the summer of 1883 in Podolsk province, near the present-day border of Ukraine with Moldova.