Vassily Vassilievitch Pereplotchikof is an artist of
the new school. "An Impressionist," he calls
himself, and, like Russian painters in general, he does not paint so much what
he sees as the soul of what he sees. His aim is to reproduce the mood of Nature
in the mind of the beholders of the picture. The Pre-Raphaelite paints exactly
what he sees; the painting by an impressionist is more in the nature of a guide-post for
the imagination. Vassily Vassilievitch paints the North as he feels it, and I am
sure the English Academy-goer would declare, when looking at his pictures, that
no such scenes as those represented could be found under the sun. Yet the
galleries of Moscow and St.-Petersburg are full of
such pictures, and the Russian world of Art is a world of impressionism. It does
not matter what is painted so much as how. The artist is perfectly
free from traditions and conventions, and he uses his material as he likes. His
representation may mean nothing to the mind looking through the eyes alone. The
sense is wafted as the seed of wild flowers — by accident. One catches a meaning
from the tout ensemble, but not through methodic effort to understand.
Pereplotchikof is a popular Moscow painter, though it
says much for the Intelligentia that such
paintings as his can be appreciated widely. They are
all full of poetry and also full of sorrow. His are the cold dreaming pines, the
pittple and violet lights of sky and river, the old
grey izba, the Mother-Shipton shaped old churches. One feels in his pictures
the land that winter has treated so
unkindly. His summer landscapes are full of the remembrance of pain, and in his
White Night pictures. Nature seems to weep because
darkness has not been given her.
On the day of my first
acquaintance with him, we went in a steamer down the river to Salombola, a suburb of
doss-houses, low taverns and music halls. It was in the
afternoon, and the sun flooded from the west as if it were standing at the
gateway of its home. We passed the town in review — the cathedral, the gardens, the house built
by Peter the Great when he lived at Archangel, the old town gaol with its black
burned walls and fifty empty windows — the place is out of use now — the splendid
suburb where all the Germans live together. There
are many Germans and English in Archangel, though they are mostly Russian
subjects, the descendants of people who at the time of the Crimean War took out
letters of naturalisation. The painter did not say much, but looked across the
river to the left bank where there are no buildings except here and there an
izba or a church. The water is wide as the
sea, but calm and clear, and the colours of the strange northern sky are
dissolved in it. Suddenly the painter turned and said,
"This beautiful country is ours, is it not, better
than if it were our private estate, for we know the meaning of its beauty. You
know the saying, 'Not he owns a picture, who hangs
it on his walls, but he who understands it'. "
When we returned to the port we had a lively
experience in a dried-fish warehouse on the shore.
There a travelling musician was playing on the goosla, an ancient Russian instrument,
hand-made, a
guitar or harp of twenty strings. He had made his goosla himself. An old
man with blue glasses, he came from Nizhni-Novgorod province, but had no home.
He just wandered over Russia as so many others do, from town to town, throughout
the varying year. Picture him sitting on a sack of dried herrings, playing, not
only with fingers but with fire, the old songs of the peasantry. Two hooligans
had officiously taken it upon themselves to fulfil the missing part of the
programme, and they danced as only Russians can, not with legs only, but with
neck and shoulders, nose and eyes, sides and arms. At intervals they subsided
and took round the hat, duly delivering the collection to the old
musician.
We were the most important spectators. Vassily Vassilievitch is
a devotee of the balalaika and all stringed instruments, and is quite
ready to sit up all night any season to listen to their music. We dictated the
programme, very carefully putting him off when he struct
on something modern like "Sing, swallow, sing" to the tune of "Two
lovely black eyes." They were old tunes of the country and merry ones — "Away down the Volga River,"
"Down the cobbled roadway," "The Kamarinsky." The
audience felt very happy; it thrilled to all the
sentiments in the tunes. It is wonderful how the little glories of man's life
are sent up to the gods with a crash of music; as we
think God sends music with the presence of the Grail. "My friend, you are wonderful," said the
painter.
"You ought to be a
society entertainer and not a strolling musician. Where do you live ? You ought to come and see me."
But the old man declined
to be flattered or to look up. He regarded as suspicious any well-dressed person
who should ask him where he lived, and only after the question was repeated, he
replied, "I have no address. . . as yet."
We went away to see a hunter who lives on the Troitsky.
We hoped to get him to arrange about a
special passport to help me in my tramp through the country. This was M. Beekof — Alexander
Alexandrovitch, as he is called — and he was of much
assistance to me. A very interesting, all-round man I found him. I should say
his like was not easily to be found in any country. All the summer he sits at
the counter of a large drapery establishment of which he is the owner, but in
the winter he shoots bears. He has visited and photographed parts of Nova Zemlya,
which no one else has yet discovered. He is an
excellent photographer, working even in coloured photography in such a remote
district as Archangel, rows well, shoots well, rides well: is married, and his little children
play with young pet bears in the nursery. Picture a short
stalwart man with lowering, frowning forehead and
protruding eyes. Though only twenty-six years of age he is bearded. He is very
stout and massively strong; in the country he wears a loose red Russian blouse
fastened with a belt. Capable, of course, to the finger tips, he would probably
do anything well, and in intellectual parts he is not lacking, I should say, for
he is a contributor to several Russian journals. Yet his aspect is forbidding. . .
but his character pure gold.
We were shown into a large sombre room. It was an
expression of the hunter's soul. A great black bear stared over one's head at
the doorway, a bear's head looked up from under the writing-desk, another looked
down from above the divan. On the walls were long guns and short guns, pistols,
knives; on the floor, skins. The holy pictures
looked down from one corner, and from another, over the writing-desk so that he
could see it when he was working, his wife's
picture. The exterior of Alexander Alexandrovitch
might seem unprepossessing, but the portrait of that smiling girl is the
explanation of his heart.
We turned over some hundreds of photographs together, chiefly of
Nova Zemlya, snow, Sarnoyedes, and bears. He seemed to think I might get
into some difficult positions while tramping south,
and telephoned to the governor of the province, asking if he could give me
special letters. The upshot was that I arranged to
go to the palace on the morrow and talk the matter over with the
Vice-Governor.
With that we bade the hunter farewell for the time being, and
went to pay another visit. This was to a friend of Vassily Vassilievitch, who
had just moved into a new lodging. It is a custom in Russia, when a friend
changes his rooms, to bring the hostess a cake, and the painter, who is a
devoted observer of old customs, went now to the chief baker in the town and
purchased an immense cake. There was great difficulty in tying it up, and we
carried it through the streets with some exultation to the house of M. Karetnikof, a government
engineer, who promised me all manner of aid should I need it. But after all,
what aid was I, a tramp and a pilgrim, likely to need beyond a night's lodging
at the end of each day's travel.
It was a long evening I spent with the painter, and it was
difficult to feel how late it had become. We parted at two in the morning and it
was still clear bright day. Very, very strange it was, walking through the
sleeping town in that unnatural light. I found my way to the little house where
I was staying, and reflected that on the morrow or next day I should probably be
in a position to leave Archangel and begin my life among the moujiks. It happened as
I expected. I saw the
Vice-Governor; he gave me a general certificate and
a letter of recommendation, loaded me with pamphlets — even made me a member of a
learned society, the Society for the Exploration of the North of Russia. I spent
an hour or so studying the maps of the Government Survey, and I felt that if Pereplotchikof
was ready, there was no reason why we
should not start at once. He, too, was going to the country to paint, and I
should accompany him thirty miles of the way. My plan was to live with him for a
few weeks in his village, and then to resume my journey alone.
So it was arranged, and we rowed down the Dwina that night to the village of
Uima with Beekof and his
wife and children. They were going to a datcha, or country house, to get a change from the
town air; the husband was returning on the morrow.
For some reason or other we did not start until ten o'clock at night, and it
must have been past midnight before we reached the village. But there was clear
bright day on the sleeping river. We rowed past the many landing stages of the
port and the huge barges high in the mud. We took turn and turn about with the
oars, and as the night was sharp and cold, it was much more pleasant to row than
otherwise. The journey took us three hours, and we rowed three spells of half an
hour each. It was a strange experience rowing those bright midnight hours on the
broad deserted river; one felt as perhaps the old
explorers felt coming up the Mississippi or the St.
Lawrence for the first time.
The Dwina is about three times as
broad as the Thames, and is clearer and more rapid. It has broad yellow shores
like a sea, and cliffs of crumbling day. Along these cliffs, which in these parts they
are pleased to call mountains, are prim rows of cottages, like neat
annotations or remarks on the margin of the river. Beyond the cottages stretches the pine
forest — "undreamed, unprobed abyss." Uima is a village about four versts long, and its name,
a pretty word used only in
the North, means "many" — Uima domof, or
many houses. We slept anyhow we could, on sofas and chairs in the country
cottage, and next morning the painter and I proceeded to Bobrovo" Mountain." This
was yet twenty-five versts, and we made the journey
in a troika, a light cart drawn by three
horses.
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