Karamzin critique d’art

Karamzin as Art Critic : Painting in Letters of a Russian Traveler The present paper focuses on Karamzin’s opinions on painting as expressed in Letters of a Russian Traveler. If the “ russian traveler” does visit several famous painting collections, such as the Dresden gemäldegallerie, the Basel Faeshe Cabinet and Boydell’s Shakespeare gallery in London, he seems quite indifferent to the paintings he sees and does not hide this feeling from his readers, sometimes in a provocative way. this lack of interest is also reflected by Karamzin’s indifference to the latest trends in contemporary French painting, mainly to Neo-classicism, which the writer may have rejected for its alleged ties with the ongoing revolution. Karamzin’s general indifference towards painting knows only one exception : the paintings of henry Fuseli, which the traveler very much admires in the Boydell Shakespeare gallery. this sudden interest for a painter who remained largely underestimated in his lifetime shows Karamzin’s bold taste and his aesthetical evolution from Sentimentalism towards romanticism. It also allows the writer to set up the rise of the traveler’s aesthetic sense, which confirms Letters of a Russian Traveler’s belonging to the Bildungsreise genre

Art · Art history · Classicism · Literature · Painting · Romanticism · Taste · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Philosophy