South harbour veduta

Alexey Petrovich Bogolyubov, a graduate and scholarship holder of the Academy of Fine Arts in Petersburg, continued his painting studies with Alexandre Calame in Geneva, Eugène Isabey and Thomas Couture in Paris and in Düsseldorf, as a private student of Andreas Achenbach. After returning to Russia in 1861, he received the title of a professor from the Petersburg Academy and became its member in 1893. His paintings are Romantic in style; these are mainly marine themed landscapes and marine battle scenes from the times of Peter the Great and the Crimea Wars. His style gradually evolved towards Naturalism; in 1873, he became close to the Peredvizhniki movement. Three years earlier, he moved to Paris where he taught in several studios. Bogolyubov was also a patron of the arts, and in 1885 he funded the museum of painting in Saratov, bearing the name of his grandparent, Alexander Nikolayevich Radischev (the first public museum in Russia). At the end of his life, he assigned his fortune to the opening of an art school named Bogolyubov’s Painting School, whose graduates include, among others, Pavel Kuznetsov. The collections of the National Museum in Szczecin feature a relatively small view of the southern harbour in Odessa, made in August 1895. The painting presents ordinary harbour life on a hot summer day: on the left hand-side, there are sail and steam vessels moored to the quay with smoking chimneys; in the background, silhouettes of more steam vessels are visible and a fishing boat with three fishermen is positioned in the foreground. In the distance, there is a line of low harbour development. The viewer’s attention is attracted ˗ apart from the colourful elements of the rigging of the ships ˗ by the peaceful sheet of water, glistening in the sun. The dark blue colour of the Black Sea brings out the bright, shining and clear blue colour of the sky, interspersed here and there with grey and white spots of the cumulus clouds. The painting was made with minor strokes of thick paint; the artist managed to accomplish the effect of vibrant air, glimmering and glistening of the water by small, lightly placed, horizontal spots of blue and white colour.

Dariusz Kacprzak