Pyotr F. Sokolov: Watercolour Portraits in the Age of Pushkin

Beyond the Cyrillic curve and the printed page, if the Golden Age of Russian poetry has a visual representative it may lie in the works of Pyotr F. Sokolov. From the early 1810s until the time of his death in the late 1840s, Sokolov painted in aquarelle portraits of the society figures who inhabited an elite cultural milieu in and around Saint Petersburg.

This was the Pushkin era, when military personnel and ladies-in-waiting rubbed shoulders with an increasingly convoluted band of the landed gentry. In between bouts of enforced or self-imposed exile, Alexander Pushkin briefly shone at the heart of salon culture in what was at the time the capital of empire.

Combining French modes with customs and critiques borne of their native land, Pushkin and his fellow authors Konstantin Batyushkov and Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky were laying the groundwork for Russian literature. Courtesy of a light touch and an original choice of materials, pioneering within the context of Russian art, Sokolov seems to breathe the same air and share the same temperament as these Golden Age poets.

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Pyotr Fyodorovich Sokolov was born in Moscow in 1787. Between 1800 and 1809 he studied historical painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts under the tutelage of Vasily Shebuyev and Alexei Egorov. He attained silver medals in 1807 and 1808, before achieving a minor gold in 1809 for Andromache mourning slain Hector. Drawn from the Iliad of Homer, the subject had been made famous by the French artist Jacques-Louis David in 1783, when Andromache Mourning Hector resulted in his election to the Académie Royale.

Graduating in 1809, Sokolov stayed on at the Academy in the pursuit of a major gold, which dangled the prize of a stipend for a spell of overseas studying. Sokolov wished to travel to Italy. He was handed a programme on the blessing of Dmitry Donskoy by Sergius Radonezh before the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. A cherished moment in Russian history, victory for Dmitry and the Rus over the Mongol warlord Mamai led to the rise of the Muscovite state, but Sokolov’s campaign ended in failure. He left the Academy with a small pension in 1810, soon relinquishing historical tropes for portraiture in pencil and watercolour.

Following life in the Academy, Sokolov took up teaching and began to win a reputation for his pencil drawings. Sketching portraits of his friends and acquaintances, his clean line and lively shading earned him a growing number of commissions from the aristocracy. It was towards the end of the 1810s that he began to embrace watercolour, initially complementing his pencil drawings with light washes.

As his technique developed, Sokolov diligently avoided the use of white lead, one of the core pigments in classical European painting. Instead he painted in transparent colour. Selecting from a subtle palette, his works featured thin applications of paint with pastel tones in the highlights. He used graphite pencil to draft his compositions, emboldening his line and emphasising his colours once he had finished with the paints. Many of his mature works are signed in graphite.

In 1821, Sokolov was invited to Anichkov Palace at the recommendation of Count Pyotr Apraksin. At the imperial palace delicately poised between Nevsky Prospect and the banks of the Fontanka, his task was a portrait of the three-year-old Alexander Nikolaevich Romanov. The son of the future Nicholas I, the boy himself would ascend the throne as Alexander II, the great reforming emperor of Russia. The prestigious commission brought a flurry of interest from the court, effectively securing Sokolov’s reputation.

Over the next two decades Sokolov painted the breadth of the Russian upper class. From poets, musicians, and fellow artists to public officials and senior aristocrats, he was a favourite among the leading ladies of the court, portrayed foreign princes and dignitaries, and managed to cover the patriots of 1812 while also completing a series on the Decembrist revolutionaries.

By the 1840s, Sokolov had begun to incorporate deeper blocks of colour. In 1842 he travelled to Paris hoping to alleviate ill health, painting the portraits of prominent Parisian Russians. He soon returned with his family to Russia, and had settled in Moscow by 1846. Then in 1848 during an extended stay in Kharkiv, Sokolov died after contracting cholera. Over the course of his life he had painted more than 500 portraits.

Watercolour painting saw a surge in popularity towards the end of the nineteenth century. By the early 1900s, the critic and patron Sergei Diaghilev could lament that Petersburg had become a ‘city of artistic gossiping, academic professors and Friday watercolour classes’. In his opinion, artistic vitality had become the preserve of Moscow.

Sokolov’s works however remained prize possessions. They were so popular that his catalogue began to be diluted by forgeries, a situation made murkier still by the fact that Sokolov often made copies of his work, repeating his paintings with minor variations and sending the results as gifts to friends and relatives.

Today many of these forgeries have been identified owing to differences in technique and quality of paper. The largest collections of Sokolov’s art are held by the State Russian Museum in Petersburg and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, with many of his works remaining in the hands of private collectors. In 2003, the State Pushkin Museum held a major exhibition bringing together more than 200 of his works, borrowing from private collections and for the first time covering the extent of his career.

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As the eighteenth century drew to a close, the leading portraitist in Russia had been Vladimir Borovikovsky. Born in 1757 in Myrhorod in modern Ukraine, he made the good graces of Catherine the Great, painting her portrait alongside assorted figures from the nobility and military.

Closer to Sokolov in age, Orest Kiprensky studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts from 1788 when he was just six years old. In 1805 he obtained a major gold medal for a painting of Dmitry Donskoy after the Battle of Kulikovo, and subsequently travelled across Europe. Kiprensky painted many of the leading literary figures of the day, including the poets Vasily Zhukovsky and Konstantin Batyushkov, but he remains best known for his iconic 1827 portrait of Pushkin.

Vasily Tropinin studied at the Imperial Academy as a non-degree student. Born into serfdom, he attained his freedom in 1823 at the advanced age of forty-seven. He nevertheless painted more than 3,000 works during the course of his life, many of which were portraits. And Karl Bryullov studied at the Imperial Academy immediately following Sokolov between the years 1809 and 1821, with his most famous work, The Last Day of Pompeii, receiving lofty praise from both Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol.

Borovikovsky, Kiprensky, Tropinin, and Bryullov produced substantial works of art in the realm of portraiture. Following lengthy spells in Italy, Kiprensky and Bryullov like Tropinin back home led the charge as Russian painting turned from Neoclassicism towards a form of Romanticism. For Bryullov’s part after establishing himself as a portrait artist and genre painter in Rome, in later life he increasingly focused on historical compositions.

Still they all painted in oil and made use of traditional forms. Sokolov was the exceptional artist of the era for his unique and innovative use of watercolour. He established the medium in Russian art, inspiring Bryullov and paving the way for the success of Woldemar Hau, who under Nicholas I attained the title of court painter.

Rarely using medium, the absence of white lead and flourishes of graphite gave a sketch-like quality to many of his paintings. Characterised by their deft line, light brushwork, and delicate halftones, Sokolov seems to capture his subjects in the moment before flight. For all of their keen attention to the details of attire, his portraits feel spontaneous and vital. He worked quickly over a small number of sittings, and many of his subjects returned to him time after time, imbuing their lives with the discrete commentary of his palette.

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