Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov, 1862-1942

The image of a young woman looking out into a distant landscape represents one of the most enduring subjects in Mikhail Nesterov's oeuvre, perhaps most famously illustrated in On the Hills (fig 1).

Nesterov's world is one of 'poeticised realism': the vastness of the landscape hinted at in the composition points to man's search for the meaning of his existence through God. Indeed, we feel that as if we have intruded on a moment of private contemplation.

Through the presence of these mystical figures Nesterov presents a vision of the world freed from the banality of adult perception. By clothing his subjects in traditional costume, Nesterov harks back to a bygone age, when Russians were believed to have a greater communion with their native land. This nostalgia for an irrevocable past reflects the prevailing preoccupation with Nationalism among Russian intellectuals of the nineteenth century.

As with On the Hills, the imagery in the offered work resonates with another important Slavophile concept: woman as a metaphorical image for Russia and the representation of the Russian landscape as unmistakably feminine within literature. (E.Rutten, Unattainable Bride Russia: Russia, Intelligentsia and State Engendered in Twentieth-Century Russian Intellectual Thought, Unpublished Thesis) Barely perceptible both tonally and spatially in the composition, the female figure seems to coalesce completely with her environment - it is her very essence. The notion of 'unattainable beloved' as symbolising the authentic Rus' from which the artist feels isolated is one of the strongest threads running through the poetry of the Silver Age:

Russia, my poor Russia,

To me [...]

Your windy songs,

Are like the first tears of love!

[...] What can I do? One care more,

One tear more to make the river roar,

But you will be the same - forests, and a field,

And a patterned scarf up to your brows...

And the impossible is possible,

The long road is light,

When in the distance of the journey

A momentary glance sparkles from under your scarf'

A. Blok, Russia, 1908