The Itinerants: society for circulating art exhibitions: 1870 - 1923 (USSR)

Published by Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad, 1974, hardcover, coffeetable format, colour illustration, 209 pages, condition: as new.

Russian painting in the first half of the 19th century was dominated by the conservative Russian Academy of Arts. As a result, in 1863, a group of progressive artists formed the independent Association of Free Artists that, in 1968, led to the Society of Traveling Exhibitions of the Works of Russian Artists, also called the Wanderers, Itinerants and Peredvizhniki.

Over the next 25 years most of the major Russian painters of the period became members, (Korovin, Riabushkin, Verashchagin and Meshkov were amongst those who did not join but contributed to its exhibitions) and the Society's members organised 48 exhibitions, created 3504 works that were seen by a million viewers and used to counter social and economic injustices. The Society continued until 1923, when they were incorporated into the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR).

This book presents the work of 47 artists in the Society, including a single female, Antonina Rzhevskaya, shown in 114 colour plates, each accompanied by a brief biographical text and a photograph of the artist. Personally, I find such contemporary photographs very interesting. Indeed, the Frontispiece is a photograph of members of the Society in 1899 - all men except for `E. Shanks' (Emily Shanks, 1857-1936, a British painter living in Moscow, and the first woman to be elected to the Society) and with the usual few looking away from the camera. The illustration on the front cover is a detail from Vasily Polenov's "A Courtyard in Moscow", 1878.