6 Paintings to See in St. Petersburg, Russia

Known as Canaletto, meaning “Little Canal,” Giovanni Antonio Canal is not just remembered as a painter from Venice but as a painter of Venice. He trained under his father, Bernardo Canal, a scenery painter for the theater, from whom he learned to master the art of linear perspective. Canaletto furthered his ability to depict coherent and realistic urban spaces from topographical artists whose work he encountered in Rome. Throughout his career he produced an incredible number of paintings of Venice: its civic pageantry and festivals, its well-known buildings and canals. These sunlit and picturesque views became favorite purchases of 18th-century “Grand Tourists,” sons of wealthy aristocrats completing their education by traveling to the main European cultural centers. Reception of the French Ambassador in Venice (at the Hermitage) shows the colorful and stately arrival of Jacques-Vincent Languet, comte de Gergy, on November 4, 1726. Having been appointed French Ambassador to the Republic of Venice, his ceremonial welcome took place outside the Doge’s Palace, the facade of which is seen in sharp perspective on the right. The panoramic view and its endless detail are perfectly visible throughout. The dramatic sky fills half of the painting, and through the darkening clouds the sunlight casts shadows on the palace facade and highlights the richly decorated gondolas at the very front. The ambassador can just be marked out in the center of the crowd, followed by a row of senators and preceded by a line of men in uniform. (Aliki Braine)

Paul Signac originally planned to be an architect, but in 1884 he met Claude Monet and Georges Seurat and was struck by the colors of the former and the systematic working methods and color theory of the latter. At 21, he became Seurat’s faithful supporter and turned from architecture to painting. Under Seurat’s influence, he discarded his Impressionistic sketchy brushstrokes to experiment with the pointilliste style. Each summer, he left Paris and painted vibrantly colored views of the French coasts. He loved sailing, and from 1892 he took a small boat to almost all the ports of France, the Netherlands, and around the Mediterranean. He returned with bright watercolors, sketched speedily from what he had seen and from which he painted large canvases in his studio. The pointilliste technique used in this painting consists of small dotted applications of paint and is sometimes described as “divisionism.” He went even further than Seurat in his methodical divisions of light into its elements of pure color, and he arranged rectangular brushstrokes that seem like little pieces of colored glass. The rich luminosity of Harbour at Marseilles (at the Hermitage) emerges from his application of pure, unmixed pigments, and the influence of the younger painters Henri-Edmond Cross, André Derain, and Henri Matisse is apparent. The artists mutually inspired each other, and Signac played a significant role in the development of Fauvism. (Susie Hodge)

In 1897 Dutch painter Kees van Dongen moved to Paris, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He worked at first in a somewhat Impressionist manner. His paintings became increasingly colored and bold, and by 1906 he had joined Les Fauves (“The Wild Beasts”) Two years later he briefly joined the German Expressionist group Die Brücke (“The Bridge”), whose paintings were also brightly colored and often wrought with emotional intensity. Woman in a Black Hat (at the Hermitage) was one of several paintings he made of women in headgear that are minimal in composition but are charged with a sensuous undertone. The restricted palette of green, red, and black and the simple forms with sparing use of line make the image intensely focused. Van Dongen painted a number of society portraits, but the quality of his later works never matched that from his earlier career. (Tamsin Pickeral)

Despite the subject matter of this painting, at around the time he created it, Pierre Bonnard was spending less and less time in Paris. In 1911 he made several prolonged trips to St. Tropez, and in 1912 he bought a home at Vernon, near Giverny. In addition to spending much of his time in the south of France, he and fellow painter Édouard Vuillard took regular trips abroad. At around the time Morning in Paris was painted, however, Bonnard also took on a new Parisian studio at 22 rue Tourlaque for the weeks he was there. Perhaps it was this move and the studio’s new views over the city that prompted him to create such a nostalgic scene. Morning in Paris (at the Hermitage) emphasizes the strong influence the Impressionists had on Bonnard’s work as he too became fixed on trying to recreate the effects of light, particularly in his later decades and in landscape scenes. (In the 1920s Bonnard would become friends with Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.) Bonnard wrote vivid descriptions of scenes or objects he had encountered in his diaries, interpreting the particular composition of their colors and describing what combination of paint colors he would use if he were trying to recreate that particular hue or light effect. The figures in the background of Morning in Paris are less defined than those at the forefront not only because they are in the shadows but also because, for his purposes, they are less real, more illusory. Bonnard was intrigued by the human form, and this interest was enhanced by his forays into puppet design and photography. (Lucinda Hawksley)

Born in Ukraine, Kazimir Malevich briefly attended art classes at the Drawing School in Kiev, then at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. In 1911 he showed some of his work at the second exhibition of the Union of Youth group (“Soyus Molod’ozhi”) in St. Petersburg. Three years later, he was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, along with Sonia Delaunay and Alexander Archipenko. Malevich taught at the Vitebsk Practical Art School from 1919 to 1922; then in 1926 he published his important The World as a Nonobjectivity while teaching at the Leningrad Academy of Arts. For two years he gave art classes at the Kiev State Art Institute, followed in 1930 by more teaching at the House of Arts in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Persecuted by the Stalinist regime, Malevich died in poverty and oblivion. Black Circle (at the State Russian Museum) remains one of the best examples of the work the artist started developing in the mid-1910s. All references to figurative elements are abandoned in favor of a total abstract composition. In this painting he chose to depict a perfect circle—a pure geometrical figure—standing on a white background. From this period onward, Malevich started to create abstract “nonobjective” paintings, an idea he introduced in his manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism, published in 1915. Such work would later have a huge impact on art movements such as Op art. (Julie Jones)

Archangel Gabriel, also known as Angel with the Golden Hair (at the State Russian Museum), is one of the most famous Russian icon paintings. It is attributed to the Novgorod school. During the 10th and 11th centuries, Christianity spread northward from Constantinople, bringing Byzantine arts to the Slavic region of Russia. The revival of iconography in this era ushered in new thinking about icons as aids to meditation. Icons take earthly materials and create something that enables the viewer to approach the divine, allowing the painting of icons to become a form of prayer. The jewel in the angel’s hair indicates that this is an archangel. It is thought to be Gabriel, God’s messenger, although this is disputed. Painted with large, stylized eyes, the archangel looks away from the viewer toward the mysterious and ineffable. Detached but compassionate, he inspires the contemplation of beauty and purity. (Mary Cooch)