Picturing Russia’s Men

Engaging with a remarkable spectrum of behaviors, expectations, violations, and stereotypes, this book generates new understanding of masculinity and modernity by considering paintings as revelatory, questioning, and even constitutive of what it meant to be a man during a turbulent half-century of imperial rule. * Rosalind P. Blakesley, Professor of Russian and European Art, University of Cambridge, UK * By exploring the myths and pressures of masculinity that shaped male experience in Imperial Russia after Napoleon, Allison Leigh offers compelling new perspectives on five of Russia’s best-known nineteenth century painters. Beautifully illustrated, full of incisive new readings of familiar paintings, Picturing Russia’s Men excavates the innumerable ways in which the institutions of academy, army, and family shaped the male artist’s identity and output. With its blend of close reading, theoretical sophistication, and wide-ranging research, this fine study brilliantly dispels the common misperception that there is little more to be said about Russian painting of the nineteenth century. * Wendy Salmond, Professor of Art History, Chapman University, USA * An important and eye-opening contribution to the Slavic field and our studies of modernism in Russia. Through an examination of male portraiture, it traces the breakdown, between 1825 and 1881, of various myths surrounding masculinity—from the solid heroic code of virtuous, courageous manhood to the ambiguities of doubt-ridden individualism. * Elizabeth K. Valkenier, Resident Scholar, Harriman Institute, Columbia University, USA *