Russia’s Artistic Journey — Wanderers: Russian artists in the 19th Century

Russia’s enforced Westernisation in the 18th century produced a crisis of identity in the 19th century. As the great historian Nikolay Karamzin said in 1811: “We became citizens of the world, but ceased in certain respects to be citizens of Russia”. By the 1860s, however, Moscow had re-emerged as the centre of a burgeoning Slavophile movement. This illustrated lecture tells the story of how writers like Pushkin and Gogol led the way in promoting a groundswell of nationalist feeling which resulted in novels exploring the Russian character, musical works infused with native folk song, and extraordinary journeys undertaken by Russian painters inspired to find new beauty in their own landscape.

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