Alexander Matwjejewitsch Dorogoff
Crossing the Bosphorus
Date 1846
Period 1750-1850, 19th century
Origin Russia
Medium watercolour and pencil
Dimension 27 x 36.5 cm (10⁵/₈ x 14³/₈ inches)
Alexander Dorogoff was a Russian artist whose works encapsulated romantic notions of the Orient. Born in St. Petersburg, he worked as an engineer until 1844 when he committed to his love of painting. Under the tutorage of M. N. Vorobyev he attended the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts, which awarded him several medals in 1845 for his paintings of the Crimea. He also travelled to the Caucasus and Constantinople during that year and undertook the present work. Three years later he was invited to join Peter von Tschichatscheff’s geological expedition throughout Asia Minor and illustrate the adventure.
Dorogoff’s works can be found in a number of institutions including The Russian Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, The State Russian Museum (formerly the Petersburg Museum of Emperor Alex III) the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The present work certainly attests to Dorogoff’s consummate skill in portraying the truly vertiginous nature of the ocean, whilst his refined use of pencil and watercolour so adeptly reveals the sentiment of his characters. The composition results in a delicacy born in the midst of the dynamic.
Date: 1846
Period: 1750-1850, 19th century
Origin: Russia
Medium: watercolour and pencil
Signature: Signed ‘Constantinople, 1846, Dorogoff’.
Dimension: 27 x 36.5 cm (10⁵/₈ x 14³/₈ inches)
Literature: Bassin, M. Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East 1840-65, Cambridge, 1990.
Bolton, R. and Strachan, E. Russian Orientalism: Central Asia and the Caucasus, Sphinx Books, London, 2009.
Germaner, S. and Inankur, Z. Constantinople and the Orientalists, IşBank, 2004.
Inankur, Z., Lewis, R. and Roberts, M. (eds). The Poetics and Politics of Place: Ottoman Istanbul and British Orientalism, Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation, Pera Museum, Istanbul, 2010.
Shalev, L. J. Vasilii Vereshchagin (1842-1904): Orientalism and Colonialism in the Work of a 19th Century Russian Art, Proquest, 1993.
Thieme, U. Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Kunstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Seemann, Leipzig, 1907.
Wageman, P. and Kouteinikova, I. (eds). Russia’s Unknown Orient: Orientalist Painting 1850–1920, Groninger Museum, Nai Publishers, 2010.
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