“Ships. The Evening Sun”
Let’s end our day with some well-deserved brilliance…
“Ships. The Evening Sun” is a fantastical oil on canvas painting by the Russian artist, Konstantin Bogaevsky, from 1912. Bogaevsky is most known for his associations with the Symbolism art movement and his notable contributions to the Russian Silver Age.
In this painting, Bogaevsky paints a seascape scene with a ship in the distance sailing towards the viewer. Right above the ship and illuminating the whole scene is the evening sun which sits low on the horizon. Its rays shoot out in brilliant beams reflecting off the clouds in the sky and the water below. One of Bogaevsky’s favorite motifs was to paint the sunlight. He typically did so with long beams of light and various patches of color, as seen here. Trees, bushes, jagged cliffs, and rock formations line the shoreline. Buildings of classical Greco-Roman architecture featuring marble columns can be seen atop the cliffs on the right of the canvas, standing light against the greens and browns of the trees and rocks.
Bogaevsky painted imaginary landscapes inspired after his visions seen in dreams that were heavily imbued with Symbolism and influenced by the Crimean landscapes. Though he was a landscape artist, he liked to include the effects of a human presence in his scenes. The ship in this painting firmly plants humans into an otherwise fantastical scene. In November 1911, Bogaevsky wrote “I am very excited by ships right now. I make pencil studies for paintings and big ink drawings”.
In 1898 and again between 1908 and 1909, Bogaevsky traveled to cities across Europe to see the masters. He was heavily inspired by the landscapes of the French Baroque landscape artist, Claude Lorrain. Lorrain was one of the first western artists to depict the sun in his work, a feature that Bogaevsky took to, and his influence is seen in this artwork.
“Ships. The Evening Sun” is currently on display at the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
For more on Konstantin Bogaevsky, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
