Igor Grabar was shown in the Tretyakov Gallery: what was left behind the scenes

Igor Grabar is a figure whose importance cannot be overestimated. He is often referred to as a Renaissance man, referring to the versatility of his talents and accomplishments. Even if you list all of them in a list, a whole treatise will be typed. The view offered by the exhibition curator Olga Atroshchenko focuses on Grabar’s talent for painting, on his contribution to the preservation of cultural monuments in a critical period for the country, and on his activities as a trustee and director of the Tretyakov Gallery. We will also look at Igor Emmanuilovich from these points of view, and then we will try to understand what is left behind the scenes and why.

The exhibition begins in the white hall, where the audience is greeted by the landscape “February Blue” (1904) – one of the master’s most famous landscapes. This work was painted in the Dugino estate at the moment when Igor Grabar first appeared in the estate of Nikolai Meshcherin, a manufacturer and artist. They met in December 1903 at an exhibition, and this chance meeting played a special role in Grabar’s fate. He and Nikolai became friends, and years later, Igor Emmanuilovich became related to him, marrying his niece, Valentina Meshcherina (in 1913), and over time, due to life circumstances, to her younger sister, Maria (in 1946).

The artist recalled with pleasure the history of the creation of this picture: one sunny February morning, walking around the neighborhood, he looked at the unusual “by the rhythmic structure of the branches” birch tree so much that he dropped the stick that he was holding in his hands, and bending down after it, he saw the top of a tree of “fantastic beauty “. In order to paint the landscape from this angle, Grabar was not too lazy to dig a spacious hole in order to put the easel at the right point. The artist painted February blue from his trench for more than two weeks. We note here that this biographical sketch is a picturesque touch to the character of Igor Grabar.

Then this landscape was shown at the 2nd exhibition of the Union of Russian Artists (SRH), where the well-known collector and trustee (that is, the head) of the Tretyakov Gallery, Ilya Ostroukhov, said that this “thing falls out of Russian painting.” That is why the Tretyakov Gallery did not buy this work by Grabar, the purchase took place a year later – in May 1905. However, Ostroukhov turned out to be right: the artist’s painting really falls out of the general flow of his time. The artist himself considered his style within the framework of realism, which included both impressionism and cezannism. However, unlike many other authors who were saturated with the aromas of French art, Grabar managed to have his say.

The “impressive” painting of the artist is difficult to confuse with someone else’s. Saturated colors, rhythmic strokes, lively gentle light. He developed his special, well-recognized style by the beginning of the 1900s and did not change until the end of his long life (the artist died in 1960, at the age of 89). Amazing loyalty to oneself – incredible for those turbulent times when many artists changed styles like gloves. This originality made us talk about Russian impressionism – it is no coincidence that a few years ago the Museum of Russian Impressionism opened in Moscow, where Igor Grabar’s painting occupies an honorable and key place.

And yet there are unusual landscapes of Grabar in the exhibition, where he departs from impressionism. In the white room, they occupy an entire wall. Here, mostly works of the mid-1920s, painted after the artist returned from America, where he was preparing a traveling exhibition of Russian art in New York. At the same time, he retired from the leadership of the Tretyakov Gallery, and, it seems, was in some despondency. Perhaps that is why I decided to make an experiment – to write “the landscape is beautiful in the opinion of the layman, but not attractive for painters.” It’s a kind of hyperrealism. It seems that we have a classic landscape in front of us, reflecting nature as it is, as if in a mirror, and take a closer look – and you can see wide strokes, deliberately left untouched sections of the canvas, deliberate understatement.

Portraits were also successful for the artist. In the white hall, they introduce the public to the Grabar family – the first wife Valentina Meshcherina, their children Olga and Mstislav, daughter-in-law – Doctor of Philosophy, Professor Maria Grabar (she taught Latin and knew German perfectly). There is also the famous painting “Cornflowers” at the exhibition, where Grabar depicted his first wife Valentina and her younger sister Maria, who later became his second wife, side by side. At the exhibition, this very famous canvas is not emphasized, although in the artist’s biography, which occupies an entire wall in front of the entrance to the white hall, one can find a photo where Grabar writes the Meshcherin sisters. In the proposed chronology of life, there is a mention of the first wedding, which happened at a dramatic moment – Igor Emmanuilovich married Valentina in April 1913. A couple of weeks earlier, the Moscow City Duma had decided to make him a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery, and he knew that managing the museum would not be easy. “You have to be a donkey not to see that this is not a museum, but a shed,” Grabar wrote in a letter to Alexander Benois back in late 1912.

He had to make a real revolution in the Tretyakov Gallery – and the artist carried it out. He expanded the halls, outweighed the works, giving them more “air”, grouping together paintings by some artists and arranging the entire collection in historical sequence. This reform caused a storm in society, the issue was discussed by the City Duma and eventually approved. When Surikov saw his “Boyar Morozova” in the renewed exhibition, he exclaimed: “It’s like I’m seeing her for the first time!” Grabar, moreover, for the first time counted the number of works in the collection, introduced inventory books, and began publishing catalogs. That is, he set the principles by which the modern Tretyakov Gallery still works.

At that very moment, the artist’s personal life also changed – he married a beautiful woman with red hair. However, later, when Valentina gave birth to two children, she was diagnosed with a severe hormonal disease that affected her state of mind. She could suddenly laugh for no reason, and in a minute pounce on the children with her fists. For several years, Valentina was treated at Ignatiy Kazakov’s clinic for high-ranking party workers. And in the end, she left the family – in an unknown direction. After that, Maria began to manage the household and raise children, Grabar legalized relations with her in 1946. The image of Valentina has been preserved in other portraits, and everywhere she is good: rosy-cheeked, with beautiful red curls and a dazzling smile. Maria is different, she rarely smiled, except perhaps with the corners of her lips, as in the portrait of 1931. But she became a support and support for her husband – she was engaged in housekeeping and children, with her characteristic vigor and efficiency.

The second hall was designed by the architect of the project, Yuri Avvakumov, in the style of a conditional manor living room in crimson tones. On the walls are landscapes painted in various estates. Grabar traveled a lot, visited friends, rented dachas in different places for the summer. And everywhere he painted local views, thereby preserving for posterity the images of old mansions, many of which are now wiped off the face of the earth. Even his beloved estate Dugino (near the modern city of Domodedovo) is now destroyed. You can admire these landscapes hung in several rows (such hanging was common in Grabar’s time) from a soft raspberry sofa. The space of the manor living room is separated from the others by a huge cube, which, however, looks too arbitrary here and unjustifiably eats up too much space.

But before entering the crimson living room, you can find another interesting portrait of the Meshcherin sisters, on which everything is written, except for the faces. In this picture of 1904, when Grabar had just made friends with the Meshcherins, Valya was 12, and Manet was 10 years old, next to them is their younger brother Vasily. It is believed that the group portrait under the birches is unfinished. Maybe so, but it has a special enchanting magic and a connection with the Russian avant-garde, which Grabar did not adhere to as an artist, but appreciated as a historian and art critic. It was during his reign that the Tretyakov Gallery received the works of many contemporary artists – Goncharova, Larionov, Petrov-Vodkin, Kandinsky. And we must understand that he managed to do this at a difficult turning point.

Grabar was an incredibly active person. He is the author of the 13-volume work “History of Russian Art”, and many monographs – including those about Repin, Serov, Ukhtomsky, etc. Thanks to him, the Institute of Restoration appeared in Russia, later named after Grabar, which continues to be one of the most authoritative specialized scientific organizations today. Igor Emmanuilovich also founded the Institute of the History of Art and the Protection of Monuments of Architecture (now the Institute of Art Studies), which also does not give up its positions to this day and conducts active scientific work. This side of Grabar’s personality is dedicated to a separate room, where a conditional study has been created. Against the backdrop of blue walls, you can find books that he wrote and read, diplomas from various organizations, correspondence with colleagues, catalogs that he collected in different countries and published himself. Here the secret of its working capacity is revealed. Igor Grabar got up at 6 am and went to bed at 10 pm. “I didn’t like to sit, I never visited in the evenings and visited guests, because I saved my time for business,” contemporaries recall. He traded secular life for work: he spent all his time in a workshop or office, where all the walls were occupied by bookcases. They tried to convey this situation, albeit not verbatim, in the blue room.

The final section is devoted to Grabar as the organizer of the restoration workshops. It opens with a self-portrait in 1947, where Grabar paints himself in a fur coat. At first glance, he could be defined as a hereditary intellectual. Round glasses, nice suit, expensive furs. As Grabar did not change himself in a picturesque manner, so he did not change himself in habits and in the choice of wardrobe. Even when rallies thundered outside the window, when they wanted to distribute the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery to the proletariat, when valuables were sold abroad, or there were purges that affected many artists. Grabar managed to protect the museum collection and many monuments of both the Middle Ages and modern times from sale or destruction. He managed to defend, for example, St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square, but not the Shukhov Tower. During the persecution of religion, he managed to rediscover many icons and explain the value of Andrei Rublev’s art. Actually, the central exhibit in the final hall of the exhibition was the Vasilyevsky rank from the Assumption Cathedral – a temple in Vladimir, which was painted with the direct participation of the icon painter. There was an assumption that this grandiose iconostasis was created by Rublev’s students. However, later the researchers found that these images appeared in the cathedral later – during the time of Catherine II.

There are many unique icons hanging, which today make up the “golden fund” of the Tretyakov Gallery. True, one story was bypassed – it is about the legendary “Trinity”, which was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century, cleared and moved from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra to the museum with the direct participation of Igor Grabar. But in the light of recent events, when, after the summer “tour” to the monastery, the icon “fell ill” and went for restoration, they decided to drop this sensitive topic. The dramatic story with the painting “Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan”, which was attacked in 1913, also remained behind the scenes. The 29-year-old icon painter, Old Believer Abram Balashov stabbed the canvas three times, after which the trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery, Ilya Ostroukhov, resigned. Thus, the place of the head of the museum was vacated, which a few months later was taken by Igor Grabar. There is a legend that he also restored Repin’s painting. After the attack, the author rushed from the “Penates” and rewrote the picture in purple tones. I had to erase the author’s “restoration” and bring the picture to its original form. Who exactly did this is still a moot point. Nowadays, when passions have not yet subsided after another attack on Repin’s masterpiece, which was recently restored, but has not yet been returned to the exposition (they are waiting for a protective frame), apparently, they also decided not to stir up this story.

In a word, many episodes from the life of Grabar remained behind the scenes. And the point here is both in subjective reasons (the Tretyakov Gallery already has enough scandals and painful topics), and in objective ones – Igor Emmanuilovich was such a broad and great personality that his work and activity cannot be put into one project.