Dark landscapes, paintings by Stanislav Zhukovsky

Another Russian artist, a painter of wonderfully atmospheric work, of whom I knew nothing. I first became aware of his beautifully lit and brightly colored interiors - which I will post about soon enough - but I was thrilled to come across these moody and poetic landscapes. Work that shows the deep influence of his teacher, the great Isaac Levitan, but made remarkable and unique by his own vigorous brushwork and particular feeling for color.

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Zhukovsky, 1921.

Stanislav Yulianovich Zhukovsky (13 May 1873, Yendrikhovtsy, Grodno Province, now Belarus -  1944, Pruszków concentration camp near Warsaw), Polish-Russian Impressionist painter.

Born into an aristocratic Polish family - who had been deprived of their noble status and privileges on account of their participation in the anti-Russian uprising of 1863 - he spent his childhood at his father’s family estate. He studied at Warsaw's classical gymnasium, then the college in Bialystok, where his study of art began. At the age of nineteen he moved to Moscow, where he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. He studied under several celebrated teachers, but Isaac Levitan certainly had the most influence on his early work. He would win several awards during his time there.

Zhukovsky became a celebrated landscape artist associated with the Impressionist movement. He regularly participated in exhibitions of the Moscow Society of Art Lovers, those of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions, and his work was shown with the Mir Iskusstva (“World of Art”) group. In 1903 he joined the Union of Russian Artists, and participated in their exhibitions until 1923.

He spent much of his career traveling, but in 1907 he established his own art studio/school in Moscow, where he taught until the October Revolution of 1917. His aristocratic origins and previous associations - one of his specialties was painting grand manor house interiors - made him suspect with the new régime, and in 1923 Zhukovsky immigrated to Poland, living in Warsaw and Cracow and exhibiting internationally. His career continued successfully until the beginning of World War II. During the German occupation of Poland, at the time of the Warsaw Uprising, he was arrested and held at the concentration camp at Pruszków where he died in his seventy-first year.