Critics in the native soil: Landscape and conflicting ideals of nationality in imperial Russia

Although the native landscape would eventually become an important locus fo r Russian national sentiment, Russians only came to celebrate the distinct characteristics of their natural environment at a comparatively late date. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that a pointedly native school of landscape painting would gain acceptance with the public and the arts establishment. But within a short span of time after its appea rance Russian landscape painting came to generate widespread interest and e njoy great success. One of the best ways to help illuminate both the: hesit ance to embrace landscape painting and the rapidity of its emergence as a s ignificant genre is to explore the critical response to it. In this paper I argue that Russian art critics were torn by landscape painting because it did nor comfortably conform to any of the established formal or political f rameworks then available for the evaluation of art in Russia. Its popularit y nevertheless increased because it offered a new way to envision Russia as a national community in the era of rapid change surrounding the Great Refo rms.