Georgy Grigorievich Nissky

Acquired directly from the artist

Y.Khalaminsky, Georgy Grigor'evich Nissky, Moscow: USSR Academy of Arts, 1961, p.67 illustrated
M.Kiselev, Georgy Nissky, Moscow: Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo, 1972, p.124 illustrated; p.155 listed under works from 1959-1963

Structural Condition The canvas is unlined and is securely attached to a keyed wooden stretcher. There are inscriptions and old labels on the reverse of the stretcher and the canvas is inscribed in the lower left as viewed from the reverse. There is a small old canvas patched repair in the lower left as viewed from the reverse. There is a small old hole on the right side of the upper edge and two minor indentations within the sky above the building on the right of the composition. There is a very small slightly raised repair within the sky just in from the left edge. Paint Surface There is a very small paint loss within the sky and some further minor paint loss to the very top of the building on the right of the composition. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows scattered areas of fluorescence throughout the composition which largely appear to be reworkings by the artist but some of which may be later inpainting. Inspection under ultra-violet light also shows some strengthening within the train and a small retouching corresponding to the hole in the upper right mentioned above. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in good and stable condition and would benefit from the infilling and retouching of any minor paint losses.
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This superb large-scale work begun in the late 1950s can be seen as a counterpart to Moscow Suburbs in February (1957, The State Tretyakov Gallery), perhaps the best known of all Nissky’s works and which also depicts a steam train passing through a snowy landscape at sunset (fig.5). The present work was published at least twice during the artist’s lifetime. In both images, we see the work in its unfinished state (fig.2). As Kiselev elucidates in his 1972 monograph, the composition of En Route was reworked in 1963 with the artist ‘introducing a few changes in order to enhance the laconism of the work’ (M.Kiselev, Georgy Nissky, Moscow: Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo, 1972, p.140). These changes include the shifting of the sun further to the right so that it becomes the vanishing point for the lines of the bench and railway tracks; the clock is also removed, the signal light shifted to the right and made smaller and the central figures on the platform moved aside to allow more room for the expanse of the horizon. The overall effect is indeed more dynamic and laconic, with the viewer's eye drawn immediately to the train undistracted by other elements. In places the earlier composition is just visible beneath the surface in raking light.

As a young man Nissky worked on the railways and trains would become a major theme in his work. He grew up near a major junction at Novobelitsa in Belorussia where he sketched passing trains from an early age. 'I just longed to be a driver of one of those steam engines' he recalled in his autobiography, but instead he went on to study under Alexander Drevin and Robert Falk at the Moscow Higher Art and Technical Studios between 1923 and 1930. He was influenced by the OST aesthetics as well as by Alexander Deineka, whom he greatly admired for his depictions of ‘new life and the new ways of people, whom one meets at workplace, on streets and sport fields’. 

There is something of Edward Hopper’s railway landscapes (fig.3) in the flat colour planes as well as the strong horizontal and vertical lines that dissect the present landscape. The low horizon recalls Over the Snowy Fields (fig.4), also acquired by the Union of Artists, but whereas his landscape with the plane was remarkable for its two-dimensionality the present work is striking for exactly the opposite reason – the long evening shadows and vanishing lines creating a great sense of depth to convey the expanse of the country beyond. The sense of ‘Russia’ is as impressive, one might argue, as that of California in David Hockney’s photo-collages of road-signs, traffic lights and tarmac. One of the rare works by Nissky to be offered on the open market, few Soviet landscapes can compare in terms of provenance, quality or size.