Old trunk 1895

Konstantin Bogaevsky painted this expressive oil sketch, “Old Trunk,” sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. Look at the way the light filters through the leaves, and how the trunk appears weathered and gnarled. It’s a clear reference to the Romantic tradition of landscape painting, which emphasized the power and sublimity of nature, and the relationship between nature and national identity. Born in the Crimea, Bogaevsky lived through a period of immense upheaval in Russia, including war, revolution, and famine. In a changing society, the Romantics’ focus on nature could be viewed as an explicit rejection of the new industrial and urban world. But it could also be a coded form of resistance to the rise of Soviet power, an assertion of local identity against a centralizing force. Historical sources from the period help us understand the multiple layers of meaning contained within this seemingly simple landscape.