The Russian Itinerants

Gathering Storm 1884 Ivan Shishkin

In protest against the rigid academic restrictions of the traditional art academies in Russia, a group of representational art students left the Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts in order to form an independent artistic group. The Petersburg Cooperative of Artists was founded in 1863 by fourteen former students. By 1870 it had become the Peredvizhniki (The Itinerants). The group championed the poor, the rural peasants and the beauty of the Russian landscape. They espoused the importance of bringing social and moral responsibility into their artworks by representing the tough everyday life in the countryside under the Czarist system rather than by painting the traditional subjects in the traditional styles of the academy. Their paintings reflected the contradictions of Russian society at the time at a time when free expression was not allowed.

The style of their paintings is often more natural and with a light…