EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 20 © 2017 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

3 For many centuries, a painter had been regarded as a subservient artisan who depended on either the wealthy and powerful or the church for patronage. In other words, artists had to paint the subject matter that their sponsors chose. Freedom of choice and the freedom to set their own agenda didn’t come until well past the mid-nineteenth century, oddly enough with two different artistic movements that started almost simultaneously: the Impressionists in France and the Peredvizhniki (often called the Wanderers or Itinerants in English) in Russia. Both artistic movements began during the 1870s. In France the Impressionists had been barred from participation in the official Salon, and so displayed their work on a ‘Salon des Refusés. The Wanderers in Russia, though artistically very different fromtheir French counterparts, and starting roughly three years prior to them, also created their own exhibitions. They, effectively toured their work around Russia and didn’t limit themselves to exhibiting in the two main cities: Moscow and Saint Petersburg. While the Impressionists relied on colour over technique, and deviated far from the classicism that had become pre-eminent in the artistic field, the Wanderers in Russia relied on an unprecedented realism to fuel their work. They also The Wanderers The always affable Diego Cordoba brings us the story of a group of Russian painters who fought for an independent way of working and brought an unprecedented realism into their art. ABOVE: A group photo of some of the Wanderers, 1881. Back row and standing, from left to right: Grigory Miasoyedov, Konstantin Savitsky, Vasily Polenov, Yefim Volkov, Vasily Surikov, Ivan Shishkin, Nikolai Yaroshenko, Pavel Briullov and Alexander Beggrov. Seated, left to right: Sergei Ammosov, Alexander Kiseliov, Vladimir Makovsky, Nikolai Nevrev, Alexander Litovchenko, Illarion Prianishnikov, Karl Lemokh, Ivan Kramskoi, Ilya Repin, Pavel Ivachev (clerk of the Union’s board) and Nikolai Makovsky. FACING PAGE: Ilya Repin, Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom , oil on canvas, 230 x 332.5 cm, 1876. Painted while Repin was a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts in France. Cut off from his usual environment, he employed a folklore theme to express his mood and state of mind. Dedicated to achieve maximum authenticity, Repin studied maps of the sea world, sketched the sea-life of Normandy and toured Crystal Palace in London. In 1876, he was made an academician for this monumental canvas.