UNIT 5
Birch Grove
A.J. Kuinji (1842-1910) was born in Mariupol into the family of a Greek shoemaker. From 1874 onwards he exhibited with the Itinerants and in 1875 became a member of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions.
Kuinji was drawn to the romantic side of nature, he occupies a specific place among Russian landscape painters of the second half of the XIX century. Kuinji sought the sort of light effects that lent poetry to a scene. Kuinji’s “Birch Grove” gives the viewer the impression of depth and the smooth roundness of the birch trunks is almost tangible. The lighting and the vivid colors once again play an important part. For his striking effects Repin called him a “master of light”.
Kuinji’s painted romantic landscapes and sought to render the highest expressiveness in illuminating states of nature. He used intensive colours and unusual perspectives to achieve a decorative vibration within the painting.
The treatment of the landscape in this painting has nothing reminiscent of the national tradition or popular ideals. The image of a sublime and perfect nature suggests the artist's desire to reach a full-blooded evocation of life, an approach that would be echoed in the dream-like fantasies of the artists of the next generation.
Nature in the Birch Grove is both real and conventionalized; it looks as a condensed essence of reality. Kuinji's imagery tends towards the symbolic concentration and generalization of the fundamental features from all similar phenomena. The pure plasticity of the painting differs from a mundane approach to beauty.
Kuinji had a keenly appreciative eye. Legends were told about his striking ability to grasp the subtlest nuances of colour. However, the sensitivity of the eye itself would not provide an artistic effect, were it not combined with the perfect command of the harmony of colours and tones.