Msta River at the Academic Dacha
Tkachev, Sergei and Aleksei Petrovich
1922 -, 1925 -
Msta River at the Academic Dacha
Oil on canvas
92 x 110cm
Signed by both artists lower right
PROVENANCE:
Zaplin-Lambert Gallery, 651 Canyon Rd, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA
Private Collection, Switzerland
The Tkachev brothers are considered amongst the most important of the Moscow School of painters that dominated Russian paining after the Second World War. This golden period of Russian painting sometimes known as the second generation of Russian Impressionism developed in the more relaxed atmosphere in the Soviet Union that arrived after the death of Stalin in 1953. There is a realism and honesty that pervades their work that speaks to viewers in a universal language that transcends language and culture. As the brothers themselves have said, “Our paintings tell our life stories. The subjects are not fantasies, they all spring from real people, real events, and from stories told to us by our elders. Part of our souls are in each one.”
In an interview 1996 Sergei Tkachev identified the subject in the picture as the river behind the Academic Dacha, a country house made available to the leading Moscow post war artists and the setting for many great paintings of the period. The painting is broadly and confidently painted in strong colours and the clouds in the sky reflected in the water. The slow moving river is covered in patches of lilies and the trees are heavily laden with midsummer foliage and hang over the water’s edge. The painting is beautiful evocation of the timeless Russian landscape and the only movement is provided by some seagulls flying across the lake. The painting is a pure landscape study, requiring no figures or boats to give it focus, and remains a celebration of nature with no distraction.
