MOSCOW, January 28. /TASS/. The Arctic painting founder, the artist of eternal ice, the "Russian Nansen" - those words have been said about artist Alexander Borisov, who was the first to put on canvas the Far North’s beauty. He studied from Ivan Shishkin and Arkhip Kuindzhi, he was the first artist to travel north of the Arctic Circle. We mark his 155’s anniversary. Borisov's paintings cannot leave people unmoved, and his personality has caused many arguments.
From peasant to icon painter
Alexander Borisov was born in a family of peasants in a small village in the Volodga Region’s north. In childhood, he copied pictures from magazines. The boy admired the Northern nature. Later on, he wrote in a book that in the youth the biggest dream was to travel beyond the Arkhangelsk Region. That dream came true.
"The boy helped father with the housework. One day, he dropped logs on his feet. Sasha was ten years old then. For many years he couldn’t move. His mother said that if he recovered, she would send him to the Solovetsky Monastery. Borisov finally began to walk, and at the age of 15 the mother brought him to the Solovki [Islands]. He wanted to learn from icon painters, but because he was physically strong, he was assigned to fishing. For the next year the boy was fishing on the White Sea. After the work, he returned to the native town, Krasnoborsk. His biggest desire was to return to the Solovki to master icon painting. He managed to do this only a few years later," said Stas Borodin, an artist and researcher of Borisov's work.
Borisov’s artistic education began in 1886. General Andrey Bogolubov, a collector of paintings, came to the Solovki that year. Borisov received a scholarship. He began studies at the St. Petersburg Painting School. The general also arranged Mikhail Kazi, a leading navy engineer, gave lessons of engineering and mathematics to the young artist.
Borisov finished the painting course within one year, instead of three, and in 1888 he began attending classes at the Imperial Academy of Arts. "Borisov received a good foundation there, due to which he attracted attention of a few influential people who sponsored the man’s studies," says Elena Borovskaya, Doctor of Arts History, Professor at the St. Petersburg Repin Academy of Arts.
In 1893, he joined the class of Ivan Shishkin for about one year. In 1895, Shishkin retired and Borisov joined the class of Arkhip Kuindzhi.
According to Borovskaya, Kuindzhi gave a powerful impetus to Borisov’s creative growth. "Kuindzhi did not have any pedagogical education, he eyed his students as the family, and practically shared the life with them. In addition to regular classes, he talked with them, took them out on excursions and sketches. He treated every student individually. There has never been a single task for everyone, he approached everyone differently," the researcher said.
First expeditions
Borisov started traveling the Far North in the 1890s. In 1894, together with Finance Minister Sergey Witte’s expedition, he visited the Solovki and the Kola Peninsula. He took pictures, made sketches of the Murmansk coastal bays and harbors.
The impressions were so strong that the young artist promised himself he would return to the North with his own expedition. Later on, he wrote first of all his desire was to "show a true picture of the mysterious world, which no artist has visited."
Two years later, he got to the Novaya Zemlya. It was an expedition of the Academy of Sciences. There he saw amazing natural phenomena - snow hummocks, solar eclipses. He was inspired by polar nights or, conversely, by sunrises, when the sun creeps along the horizon, creating a light-and-air environment. During those trips the artist made more than 150 sketches.
The Artic paintings, exposed at the Spring Academy Exhibition in 1897, have stirred the audience. Collector Pavel Tretyakov bought 65 paintings. He organized a special hall for them. Later on, Tretyakov bought another two big paintings - "In the eternal ice. Summer" and "Spring polar night."
"The demand for Borisov's paintings was growing. Tretyakov had been thinking about one of the paintings for too long, and did not buy it right away. When finally he decided to buy it, the painting had been sold. He asked Borisov to "buy it back at any price", but the person who had bought it said he was not reselling it. The decision was to make a copy. Thus, while still a student, he became quite a significant artist," said Stas Borodin.
Borisov invested all the money from sold paintings in expeditions and in construction of a new house near Krasnoborsk. In April, 1898, he organized a sled expedition across the Bolshezemelskaya tundra to the Vaygach Island, and later on to the Yugorsky Shar. After those expeditions he devoted many paintings to the polar day. He worked days in and out, when the air temperatures dropped to minus 40 degrees. The fingers were numb, the thickened paint wouldn’t stay on the canvas.
The artist managed to get friendly with the locals - the Samoyeds (Nenets): he studied their traditions, lived their lives. The Nenets’ elder leader wrote a special document for the artist. So that the locals were friendly and did not attack him. But Borisov has never used that protection. The Nenets trusted him so much that even allowed him to see the national idol worship ceremony. Borisov wrote a book about the nation. "At the Samoyeds. From Pinega to Kara Sea." The book has been translated into 12 languages.
"He thought it wise to copy the ways the Nenets behaved. When Europeans made a tent, by the morning they normally would be dead of cold. At the same time, he acted like the locals - he dug out a deep pit in the show and slept down there. Air gets through the snow, but the temperature inside remains bearable to spend the night. The Nenets did not take vitamins. Not to suffer from scurvy, they cut deer’s vein and drank its blood. Borisov followed suit. He also had to eat raw venison," Stas Borodin said.
To the Novaya Zemlya onboard the Mechta
In 1898-1890, Borisov prepared a huge expedition to the Novaya Zemlya to stay there for the winter. In Krasnoborsk he made a huge two-floor log house with a sauna and a shed. Later on, it was transported to the Novaya Zemlya. Inside it were cows, dogs, deer, weapons and the stock. For the expedition, the artist had built a reinforced sailing ship and named her Mechta (Dream).
The plan was the crew sails the yacht along the Novaya Zemlya’s eastern coast before winter. However, the expedition failed to start in time, and in the Kara Sea on the way to the Matochkin Shar, the ship got frozen into the sea and began drifting. The yacht was drifting further from the planned route and the house.
When the yacht was some 200 km to the south away the route, the expedition decided to drop the Mechta and to continue traveling by boats. However, this plan failed. The crew kept breaking up the ice, but it was getting thicker. For a few days, the expedition was literally crawling. Borisov and the crew were happy, as the Nenets noticed the people and brought them to the shore. It took the expedition about three weeks to return to that house.
On the Novaya Zemlya the artist spent the total of 14 months. He made many paintings, sketches and wrote a monography - "In the country of cold and death." He gave names to harbors and capes of the Novaya Zemlya - capes Kramskoy, Kuindshi, Shishkin, Vasnetsov, Vereshchagin, Repin, and the Tretyakov glacier. He has put 35 new names on the map.
Borisov left the house, canvases and paints on the Novaya Zemlya to his student, a Nenets, Tyko Vylka. Later on he became well known for his paintings and also for hand-written journals.
Conquering Europe
In the early 20th century, Borisov presented paintings in Europe. The first color reproduction of a painting was exhibited in Prague. In Berlin, Borisov met the future wife, Matrona (Zhukova), the widow of Professor Zabludovsky.
He visited Munich and Vienna, and then came to Paris. "He paid money for the hall, which normally had been offered for free, displayed the paintings, then with the book "At the Samoyeds. From Pinega to Kara Sea. Artist’s Travel Sketches" he came to France’s Geographic Society, where he was welcomed and told they were aware of his works. He invited the Society’s members to the exhibition. For the first time, France saw a line of visitors wishing to see an exhibition. After the exhibition, the French government bought the best painting and awarded him the National Order of the Legion of Honor," Stas Borodin said.
Another triumph was in London. He was awarded with the Most Honorable Order of the Bath - earlier, Russia’s Barclay de Tolly and Georgy Zhukov had been awarded with the order. Norway’s Fridtjof Nansen has traveled to London the see Borisov’s exhibition and decorated him with the Norwegian Order of Saint Olav.
In 1906, Borisov went to the US, where Theodore Roosevelt received him at the request from Witte. The exhibition, organized in the White House, was a success. He used to make photographs on big glass plates and later on made pictures with aniline paints and demonstrated them via an epidiascope - it was practically the first exhibition of slides in the US.
The artist organized a similar exhibition in St. Petersburg’s Yusupov Palace: he rented a hall, draped it with black velvet and directed light beams onto every picture.
World War I brought great disappointments: when the Russian Museum was about to buy his paintings, 30 artists wrote a letter to the government protesting the deal because he had a studio in Germany. The deal failed, some of the pictures got missing, and remain as such till now. In 1914, he left the city to live in the house in Krasnoborsk.
"He spent the last 12 years of life on his own. Borisov practically did not make paintings, he was mostly involved in economic problems - he suggested building a pulp plant so that logs are not exported at low prices, and suggested developing a network of railroads. He worked with engineers on the project of a railroad between Vorkuta and Kotlas. He supported the development of the Solonikha resort, which he managed to the last day," said Antonina Ipatova of Borisov’s Museum.
After the revolution, Borisov lost the studio. Nothing could have changed it - neither Lunacharsky’s protection nor the fact that one of his paintings was above Lenin’s bed in Gorki. In 1931, the artist left Russia to join his wife in Germany. However, quite soon he returned to the USSR as he refused to put up with Hitler’s regime.
An incident, which happened in Europe, was fatal for the artist. At a meeting with reporters he criticized roughly the work of Igor Grabar, who was a member of the commission, which confiscated valuable objects from private houses and from churches. His words "‘Grabar’ originates from to ‘grab’" became public, and the relations with Grabar, who was very influential in the USSR, were ruined completely.
Borisov’s hall at the Tretyakov Gallery was closed, and his name for years remained consigned to oblivion. After the death in 1934, which one of the versions explains as poisoning, the widow insisted all the pictures were given to the Arkhangelsk museum.
"For many years, Borisov’s name remained outside Russia’s history of arts," Stas Borodin said, adding "we resumed talking about him publicly only in the 1990s."
Estate revival
In 2001 only, Alexander Borisov’s estate in Krasnoborsk became a museum.
According to Antonina Ipatova, Borisov and his wife lived in the estate for eight years. They did not have children - Zabludovskaya was over 50 when she got married. Later on, the couple adopted her niece.
"In 1922, the wife and daughter returned to Berlin. He told the wife he wanted young talents to live in the estate. The country nationalized the house, and in 1934-1937 there was a hostel of the local parachute school, and later on, for 60 years, until 1997, there was a children's tuberculosis sanatorium. Over the years, the building has been brought almost to an emergency condition. Some of the objects have been taken by relatives, some by the parachute school. The restoration continued to 2010. The artist’s 445 works have been with the local history museum, but many objects and paintings are still missing," she said.
Borisov is valuable as the "first artist to show the Arctic world - nobody before him could show so truly the Northern nature", she continued. "We know many explorers of the North, but the only singer of the Arctic is Alexander Borisov. People, who have never been there, could see and learn the Arctic."
"Borisov not just drew attention to the North, which has always been attractive for artists due to the romantic fleur and specific lighting. Back then, when the North was just the Valaam and the Solovki, Borisov managed to see the different North - which we’ve called as the Extreme North, or the Polar Region," Elena Borovskaya said. "In the 1890s, Mamontov’s expedition featured the well-known artists Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin, but the purpose was to make up the Extreme North exhibition pavilion. That region became very interesting in the early 20th century. Perepletchikov makes numerous trips to the North; Pinegin, Rylov also painted the Northern nature, the night, but the specific attention to the North exists, probably, only in Alexander Borisov’s works."
Visitors to Arctic are bound to return there
Modern young artists, like were young artists a century ago, are happy to travel to the Arctic to depict its beauty. In summer, 2021, a student at the Russian Hydrometeorology University Elizaveta Schneider was on a two-week expedition onboard the Akademik Sergey Vavilov research/survey vessel, which crossed the Barents Sea to the Franz Josef Land Archipelago.
"I’ve expected to see in the Arctic rocks and sea, but when I was on the sun-warmed southern Flora Cape on the Northbrook Island, I was amazed to see the variety of herbs, flowers and mosses. The cape seemed completely green, it was so bright. I stood there charmed by the beauty. On one day, while we were sailing the Barents Sea, the water changed its colors several times. The Arctic is filled with all the colors. It is rich in scarlet sunsets, purple clouds and even red moss! If someone visits the Arctic, the person is bound to return," Elizaveta said.
The expedition partially repeated the route of Alexander Borisov’s studies. The girl said she had been inspired by his works.
The University has organized an exhibition showing Elizaveta’s works - pencil sketches and photographs. Students from other groups are making drawings to copy the sketches and photographs, Natalia Reginskaya, the university’s department head, said. If the audience enjoys the exhibition, the university will organize new trips for young artists.
"[Borisov] is an incredible artist, who showed the Arctic as it is. For me, he is a true authority. I couldn’t realize it until I was there," the young artist said in conclusion.