Artist's Colony Echoes Traditions of Old Rus

It is as if the walls of the Tretyakov Gallery came alive. Sensually swooning hills, placid pools of water and fields of golden and violet posies -- all arranged as perfectly as an artist would a sitter's hair -- are rendered here in three dimensions.


When traveling to Abramtsevo, the late 19th-century artist's colony founded by railroad magnate and patron of the arts Savva Mamontov, be sure not to miss the view that travel by rail affords you on the way to this rustic retreat 60 kilometers north-east of Moscow.


Making one's way from the elektrichka station down the verdant path that inspired many of the artists who stayed at the estate-cum-commune, one reaches the little community whose turn-of-the-century guest list would make any erstwhile hostess salivate. Ilya Repin, Vasily Polenov, Valentin Serov, Viktor Vasnetov and Mikhail Vrubel were just a few of the artists who frequented Abramtsevo.


In 1870 Mamontov purchased the estate from Sergei Asakov, a Slavophile who advocated the exportation of Orthodox Christianity westward. Asakov selected this spot because of its proximity to the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery. He had opened his home to sympathetic writers and intellectuals in the 1840s in his attempt to reinvigorate this "true" Russian culture. It is said that the nationalist Slavophile ideology was conceived in this fertile milieu as literary luminaries like Gogol and Turgenev bandied arguments back and forth.


It is not this house where Mamontov, his family and visiting artisans lived that is so remarkable,however, but the half dozen buildings, paintings, furniture, ceramic works, icons and other decorative arts that the artists created that make Abramtsevo such a unique and influential in situ museum.


Mamontov, not unlike Asakov, was aware of the artistic angst facing the current generation and sought to stimulate interest in Russian culture in contrast to the reigning Francophilia.


The emancipation of the serfs in 1861, together with Russia's industrial revolution, resulted in a mass exodus to the cities and considerable social upheaval. Amid this turmoil and uncertainty -- and under Mamontov's sponsorship -- the artists at Abramtsevo looked back to pre-Petrine Russia for inspiration. The colony became a place where the medieval and modern worlds came together.


The artists advocated a return to indigenous Russian art, away from the Eurocentrism Peter the Great deluged the country with in the 18th century. The artists at Abramtsevo looked to the art and architecture of the medieval Russian peasantry, which in the late 19th century was most pristinely preserved in the Russian North.


"Mamontov's circle" as the group of artists came to be known, held the common belief that art should be both useful to society and accessible to the people, in contrast to the academic tradition. Many of these artists left the St. Petersburg Academy of Art in 1863 and were thus dubbed "The Wanderers."


To these secessionists, art was a proactive force in social reform, and the common man and his landscape became a typical theme for paintings. Similarly, these egalitarian artists sought to elevate ordinary applied arts like furniture making and ceramics to a level on par with the fine arts.


This dedication to bettering the life of the people was first witnessed at Abramtsevo by the construction in 1871 of a hospital on the grounds of the compound, after the local community was hit by a cholera epidemic. And soon afterward, Mamontov sponsored the area's first school, run by his wife Elizabeth.


By 1873, with the erection of architect Ivan Ropet's teremok, or bathhouse, the medieval influence in the artists' work had surfaced. Ropet designed a log house with the elaborate lace-like carving typical of medieval Russia for a building with a simple utilitarian purpose. This old Russian love of patterning continues on the steeply pitched roof with its red-and-green checkerboard design.


But it was with the design of the diminutive Church of the Icon of the Savior Not Made By Hands that the group of artists coupled their nascent belief in socialism with the medieval tradition of guild craftsmanship, where artisans work collectively to create a final product.


Plans to construct the church were undertaken in 1880 when flooding prevented the local community from attending the traditional church services on Easter. A new church, it was thought, would prevent such a misfortune from occurring again. From the onset, those artists resident at the time worked together to come up with different designs for the small church.


Polenov, who in addition to being a painter was an amateur archaeologist, chose a 12th-century church outside Novgorod as a model. This simple white church with its single dome stood in contrast to the Byzantine or 17th-century Muscovite styles then prevalent. But to Polenov this was quintessential old Russia, an unpretentious Russian church peasants might attend.


As medieval art and architecture were little acknowledged at the time, the Abramtsevo colony undertook a considerable amount of research as a group. The artists embarked on an expedition to Yaroslavl and Rostov to look at the old buildings, frescoes, icons and other furnishings. Upon their return, Vasnetsov modified the design, reflecting their expanded knowledge.


Not only did the academically trained artists work together on the designs for this two-year project, they built it as well.


Repin, Polenov, Mikhail Nesterov and Vasnetsov's brother Apollinarius together painted the gilt iconostasis, creating a modern interpretation that rivaled its medieval prototypes. Sculptor Mark Antokolsky executed the bas-relief depicting John the Baptist.


Viktor Vasnetsov got down on all fours to lay the mosaic floor that he had designed in the image of a giant blooming flower. Ornamental trim on the exterior was clad in the colorful tiles that would become an Abramstevo trademark. Yelena Polenova, Vasily's sister, supervised the design of the furniture in a heavy arts and crafts style that was not dissimilar from that concurrently being produced in Western Europe and the United States.


The synthesis of the arts was so thorough that even the vestments and church cloths were embroidered by Mamontov's wife Elizabeth, Polenova and Maria Yakunchikova, who was soon to marry Polenov in this same church. But in contrast to previous historical revivals, it is important to note that in every medium, each designer interpreted medieval models not with an archeological accuracy, but merely looked to them as inspiration for their own creations.


At Abramtsevo, the performing arts also found a fertile venue. Actors and musicians were invited for Mamontov's amateur productions. Such notables as singer Fyodor Shalyapin and Mamontov's cousin and renowned theater director, Konstantin Stanislavsky, often visited Abramtsevo.


In 1883, Mamontov established his own Private Opera in Moscow, where again this unity of the arts was evident. Sets were designed not by stage designers, but by those who had already gained recognition in the fine arts.


Likewise, established artists took needle to thread to create the costumes. In 1886, celebrated composer Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "Snegurochka," or "The Snow Maiden" was performed with sets designed by the academically trained Viktor Vasnetsov.


In 1889, the impassioned and troubled Mikhail Vrubel joined the artists at Abramtsevo. A master of many mediums, Vrubel's most significant contribution was in the ceramics workshop, where his penchant for vibrant colors and provocative grotesque forms is still evident in the tile stoves, furniture with tile inlay and other pieces on display.


The scope of these artisans' influence reached well beyond the confines of their pastoral setting. The group brought their reinterpreted medievalism or "neo-Russian" aesthetic to Moscow, where many were able to enjoy the patronage of Moscow's merchant elite.


Their often nationalist historical or landscape paintings adorned the walls of Mamontov's capitalist contemporaries like Pavel Tretyakov. Likewise, the decorative and applied arts of Abramtsevo found their way into the arts-and-crafts woodwork and furniture, medieval revival sculpture and fantastic tile work that this newly monied class was commissioning for the new mansions they were constructing.


Vasnetsov's own 1894 house on Vasnetsova Pereulok, just north of the Garden Ring -- open as a museum today -- allows a glimpse into the neo-Russian aesthetic as introduced to an urban setting.


The appreciation of the applied arts and the revival of traditional motifs were also evident in the most modern of contexts. Grand new hotels like the Hotel Metropol looked to the style moderne -- akin to the art nouveau -- but also used neo-Russian elements that had their conception at the Abramtsevo colony.


Instead of a traditional classical frieze and cornice, Vrubel's larger-than-life mosaic, "The Princess of Dreams," caps the building, while another Abramtsevo alumnus, Alexander Golovin, was chosen to execute the ceramic panels on the facade.


Similarly, when Viktor Vasnetsov was commissioned in 1900 to expand the Tretyakov Gallery, he employed the neo-Russian style for this museum which to this day houses many works created at Abramtsevo. By now, the ceramic tiles used on the colorful friezes found on these buildings were coming from Abramstevo's ceramics workshop, which had relocated to Moscow.


When Fyodor Shektel designed his 1902 Yaroslavsky Station, he, too, looked to the architectural forms and motifs of the Russian North that inspired the artisans at Abramstevo.


Taking the meaning of the medieval iconography a bit further, he ironically used architecture parlante, the architectural device wherein a building visually betrays its purpose. By using the heavy masonry forms and steeply pitched roof of medieval Yaroslavl, and by depicting the animals of this northern city, the architect tells the passengers that they will be soon ascending a conveyance that would take them to this northern clime.


And likewise, as the point of departure for Abramtsevo, the iconography of the station beckons one to the bucolic enclave only a quick hour away.