Artist Profile: Abram Arkhipov

Abram Arkhipov was a Russian artist trained at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Vasily Perov, Aleksey Savrasov, Vladimir Makovsky and Vasily Polenov. He joined the WANDERERS (Peredvizhniki) in 1889 and the Union of Russian Artists in 1903. While indebted to the realist painting of Perov, Arkhipov also gave particular attention to effects of light, rhythm and texture, even in his most didactic canvases, such as Washerwomen (late 1890s; two versions Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal. and St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.).



Arkhipov found a rich and diverse source of inspiration in the Russian countryside and the peasantry; he painted peasants at work, the melting of the snow, the local church and priest, the villages of the far north and the White Sea. Works such as The Lay Brother (1891) and Northern Village (1903; both Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.) are evidence of Arkhipov’s important position in the history of late 19th-century Russian landscape painting. His concentration on plein-air painting was shared to a considerable extent by other representatives of the Union of Russian Artists such as Baksheyev, Leonard Turzhansky (1875–1945) and Sergey Vinogradov (1869–1938).



See more paintings by Abram Arkhipov at A World History of Art.

Thanks to Max Turner for this information.

Artist Profile: Felicia Forte

Felicia Forte was born in Los Angeles, California. She has lived in Florence, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco. Her influences include Sargent, Vermeer, Duveneck and Whistler. Her mode, primarily, is the portrait. She says of her work:



"When I see a portrait, I feel a connection with the subject—there is a thread that runs through time and class. And the tired old man, or the grand lady who I am allowed to stand and gaze at for as long as I'd like, are part of what we are all living today, and what others will be living some day. To be beautiful, destroyed, triumphant or simply at peace. This is what life is. When I can assist in the capturing of these moments; these truths, I feel my strongest creativity. For an instant or for a day I hold fast to that connecting thread as I paint, and thereafter each painting adds to the tapestry that is art and history."



Visit Felicia Forte's website.