Sylvester Shchedrin
Sylvester Shchedrin was a Russian Romantic artist who lived from 1791 to 1830. He is one of the most well-known artists to come from Russia and is remembered for his naturalistic landscape paintings of the Italian sea and countryside. Shchedrin was one of the founding members of the School of Posillipo.
Shchedrin was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1791 into a well-known and well-off artistic family. His father was the famous sculptor, Feodosiy Shchedrin, and his uncle, Semion Shchedrin, was the first landscape painter in Russia. Shchedrin’s first training was at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg where his father worked. He did very well and received numerous awards, graduating in 1811. In 1818, partly from the money he received from his awards at school, Shchedrin left for Italy to study the old masters of Rome. He would remain in Italy for the rest of his life.
Shchedrin, though trained classically, sought to paint scenes realistically. He aspired to give beauty to the simplest of scenes. He used more naturalistic colors and integrated more fully the subject of what he was painting into the background. Rather than having the background look like a separate and unrelated backdrop, it was part of the scene.
Shchedrin moved to Naples in 1825. He was one of the founders of the School of Posillipo, a small art movement that took place in the Posillipo neighborhood of Naples, Italy. This group of artists created more natural landscapes that were sold to tourists who wanted an authentic vision of the places they visited. As Europe was mostly Protestant, the landscapes were in higher demand than religious art. Shchedrin was very successful in Italy and abroad. He received a lot of commission work, painting en plein air the landscapes of the small Italian villages and towns he encountered. His art and the work of his peers is often regarded as laying the essential foundation needed to move from academic art to Impressionism.
Towards the end of the 1820s, Shchedrin’s health started to decline. At around the same time that he got sick, his work turned to nocturnal landscapes that left viewers slightly unsettled. He died at just 39, most likely from some form of hepatitis, though that remains speculation.
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