Presented to Her Majesty The Queen by Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) and Nikolai Bulganin (1895-1975), during their visit to the United Kingdom in 1956, this painting by Igor Grabar, a prominent painter, publisher and art historian, displays the influence of French Impressionism transplanted to Russian soil, and celebrates a landscape that is uniquely Russian. Born in Budapest, Grabar initially studied law at St Petersburg University. In 1894 he enrolled in Ilya Repin’s art class, but left just a year later to travel in Europe. He spent his formative years, 1896–9, at Anton Ažbe’s (1862–1905) avant-garde art school in Munich, which numbered amongst its pupils Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944) and Grabar’s friend, Alexei von Yavlensky (1864–1941), plus a host of Russian impressionist painters.

It was in Munich that the artist possibly developed and refined his technique, later superseded by a form of divisionism. According to Grabar, the summit of his career was the period 1903–7 (with February–April 1904 as the ‘pinnacle’), and this painting, in a sense, can be seen as a reworking of those most fertile years and a return to the sublime snow scenes of that period. The painting echoes one of Grabar’s masterpieces, The Azure of February (1904, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), in terms of subject matter and, to a certain extent, technique: a thickly snow-covered landscape, looking up through a silhouette of spindly birch trees, the orange fanning out against an azure sky. The painting can be seen as a debt to both Monet’s (1840–1926) series of poplars and his luminous snow scenes; however, the landscape also recalls the rich tradition of Russian realist landscape painting epitomised by artists such as Shishkin (1832–98) and Levitan (1860–1900), the waif-like birch synonymous with the Russian identity.

However, the painting lacks the energy and vitality of the earlier period – possibly in keeping with his changed role (after the Revolution, he was professor of art history at Moscow State University, until 1946, and director of the Scientific Central Restoration Studios, Moscow). The wild, frenetic brushstrokes and coloured highlights of Azure are replaced by a smoother,more restrained and conventional composition. The horizontal and more modest format of the landscape contrasts with the dynamic vertical format of 1904. Although the initial background sky and snow in both paintings is divided with the same warm purple line of trees, a much more economical palette is evident, and indeed less paint; Grabar has applied a dull pinkish white background to the canvas, which he leaves exposed in many areas beneath the loose brushwork. The paint is relatively smooth and fluid in application, with longer, flatter brushstrokes. Impasto is not used as a compositional element, but restricted, in a more academic manner, to the highlights on the trees. However, pinholes visible towards the corners of the composition, and the artist’s retouching covering two of them, make it likely that the painting was executed en plein air, reinforcing its impressionist heritage. There is added poignancy to the scene, dated 5 February 1941 – it was painted just months before German tanks entered Russia, as part of Operation Barbarossa, destroying much of this cherished landscape.

Archival records reveal that Her Majesty The Queen was to be presented with a painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, one of Russia’s foremost marine painters and now an increasingly sought-after artist. It is not known why the Grabar was considered a more appropriate gift.

Text adapted from Russia: Art, Royalty & the Romanovs, London, 2018