Tretyakov Makes Big Deal Out of Small Paintings

Little known in Russia, Ivan Pokhitonov won fame in France for his delicate miniature paintings of landscapes. The Tretyakov Gallery is now providing local audiences with a chance to re-evaluate the artist with the exhibit “Painter-Sorcerer” — timed to the 160th anniversary of his birth — that shows 80 of his works.

“Pokhitonov was not famous in Russia, firstly, because of the unpopularity of miniature painting,” said Eleonora Paston, the exhibit’s curator. “Secondly, he lived abroad most of his lifetime. In France, he was a well-known artist.”

His paintings were remarkable for the delicate, painstaking work that went into each one. The works were painted on small pieces of red and lemon wood that he polished with fish bone to make them smooth. He used tiny brushes and a magnifying lens to paint all the intricate details, with each painting taking several months to finish, Paston said.

He was considered to have a technique superior to Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, one of the most famous miniature painters.

Born in 1850, Pokhitonov went to study in Paris in his mid-20s where he was taught by landscape painter Alexei Bogolyubov. He spent almost two decades living in Belgium and returned to Western Europe in 1919, where he lived until his death in 1923.? 

In his will, he bequeathed 23 of his works to the Tretyakov Gallery. Other works are mainly in France and Switzerland, mostly kept by his relatives.

Despite his lack of fame, Pokhitonov was highly valued by many of the great Russian artists of the late 19th/early 20th century, such as Ivan Kramskoi, Vasily Polenov, Victor Vasnetsov and Valentin Serov.

The exhibition gets its title from a remark about Pokhitonov by the great painter Ilya Repin.

“It is some kind of painter-sorcerer, done with such skill, virtuosity, that I can never understand how he paints it,” Repin said.

One of the problems for Pokhitonov was that as he was a member of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions his work was often displayed at exhibits alongside huge landscape paintings that overshadowed his tiny masterpieces.

Apart from his miniatures, the exhibit also includes porcelain work that he made at the Paris Porcelain Workshop of Russian Artists. In addition to Pokhitonov — Repin and Polenov were also among the artists who painted for the workshop.

“There are very few of these left in Russia, as they were bought up in France,” Paston said. A few plates can still be found in the museum dedicated to the radical writer Alexander Radishchev in Saratov, she said.

Visitors, the gallery hopes, can have the same experience as Repin, who, after wandering around a dismaying exhibition of art until arriving at Pokhitonov’s small delights, said: “With pleasure I relaxed in front of the miniature pearls of our own I.P. Pokhitonov.”

“Painter-Sorcerer. Ivan Pokhitonov (1850-1923)” runs till May 23. 10 Lavrushinsky Pereulok. Metro Tretyakovskaya. Tel. (495) 230-7788, www.tretyakovgallery.ru.