Greetings!

As all the galleries across the world are closed, it’s the online ‘exhibitions’ that come to the fore – not that many of us could just pop over to Moscow even in usual times! But this is just a quick note to direct anyone following my little “Art & Artists of Russia” articles that there are some glorious paintings on the Russian Impressionism Museum website: the English version is at Collection – Russian impressionism museum (rusimp.su)

My favourite painting (today!) from the Museum is “Little Church at Abramtsevo” painted by Valentina Diffine-Christi (sometimes Valentina Mikhailovna Diffine-Kristi) in 1953 [website link].

The picture is radiant with sunlight; the brushstrokes so loose and free with paint and colour, that it would be so satisfying to relate its expressiveness to the broader context: 1953 was the year that Stalin died.

Even if that’s not the case, the painting certainly looks back to a previous time. The Abramtsevo estate had been a vibrant and radical artists colony in the 19th century – a community that included perhaps the most famous pre-Revolution artist, Ilya Repin, and artists from the Wanderers movement who excelled in depictions of the Russian landscape such as Konstantin Korovin whose impressionism – inspired by trips to Paris, where he would settle permanently in 1923 – is a direct antecedent of “Little Church”. Here’s his painting “Yalta” from the 1910s (also at the Russian Impressionism Museum [website link]).

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Hoping this might have brightened your day!

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