“Veranda Entwined with Vines”
“Veranda Entwined with Vines” is a lovely oil on canvas piece, dated to 1828, by the Russian Romantic and landscape artist, Sylvester Shchedrin.
In this painting, Shchedrin depicts a southern Italian scene. It’s the siesta in the middle of the day, when the sun is the hottest. The beggars, as represented by their donkey and bags of personal belongings, relax leisurely in the shade of a pergola, escaping the heat of midday. The pergola is covered in grape vines that generously hang from the top of the structure. The sea is visible in the background, cool colors against the warm colors of the people.
This painting depicts two of Shchedrin’s favorite subjects, the midday siesta and the local poor folk. Other favorite motifs that he repeatedly uses and included here are vine covered verandas and the play of sunlight off the air and water. The same themes can be seen in his painting, “Terrace at Sorrento”.
In 1825, Shchedrin moved to Naples in southern Italy where he would remain until his premature death at 39 years of age. He fell in love with the area. He achieved fame for his paintings of Naples and the surrounding countryside. Shchedrin once wrote, “An Italian doesn’t need much. If he is not dying of hunger, then he is the happiest man in the world.”
Shchedrin was one of the founders of the School of Posillipo, a small art movement that took place in the Posillipo neighborhood of Naples, Italy. This group of artists created more natural landscapes that were sold to tourists who wanted an authentic vision of the places they visited. Shchedrin was very successful in Italy and abroad. He received a lot of commission work, painting en plein air the landscapes of the small Italian villages and towns he encountered. His art and the work of his peers is often regarded as laying the essential foundation needed to move from academic art to Impressionism.
“Veranda Entwined with Vines” is currently in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia.
For more on Sylvester Shchedrin, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
This is a particularly great image for those of us in the northern USA right now, since it reminds us of sunny days while we’re currently enduring a mean cold snap. Thank you so much for doing this. I enjoy every image, and always learn something. I hadn’t heard of this artist and especially appreciate learning so much I didn’t already know despite my own art history background.
This is absolutely my pleasure! It always amazes me how often I find master artists I had never heard of before. I love to be able to share them all here and remember them through their art. Thank you so much for taking the time to read these! And here’s hoping to a quick March and an early spring!