Portrait of the Artist Johann Gottlieb Wenig 1861

This is Ivan Kramskoy's "Portrait of the Artist Johann Gottlieb Wenig." We can see in this piece the tensions of the Russian artistic world of the mid-19th century. In this image, Kramskoy portrays a fellow artist, Wenig, with a direct gaze and naturalistic detail. Look at the beard, for example, and the way the hair curls. Kramskoy was a key figure in the "Wanderers," a group of Russian artists who broke away from the academic art establishment. They sought to create art that reflected Russian life and social issues, challenging the conservative norms of the Imperial Academy of Arts. The Wanderers organized their own exhibitions and this portrait is an example of an artist representing another artist in an unidealized way. The goal of these painters was to show ordinary Russians in their everyday environment. We need to look at exhibition catalogs and other historical documents to better understand this period of Russian art history and the development of a distinctly Russian artistic identity.