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Friday 9 January 2009

Be selective

From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg

Royal Academy, until 18 April

Sponsored by E.ON

The main gallery is inevitably dominated by Matisse’s great painting ‘The Dance’, the much-trumpeted centrepiece of the show, a work commissioned by the collector Sergei Shchukin, and an image familiar from art-history books. However important it is considered to be, I have to say that I prefer ‘Nasturtiums with Dance II’, altogether more demanding compositionally and colouristically, and infinitely more intriguing. It’s also strikingly juxtaposed with a cool analytical Braque landscape, ‘Castle of La Roche-Guyon’, hung to the right. A third Matisse, which hangs at right-angles to ‘The Dance’, is ‘The Red Room’, a much tougher painting, with its radical (if awkward) interplay of branching interior decoration and through-the-window landscape. Back at the beginning of this room there’s a solitary and rather marvellous van Gogh portrait, followed by a clutch of fabulous Gauguins, namely the radiant ‘Matamoe (Death) Landscape with Peacocks’. Among other fine things are the powerful Picasso nude, crumpling at the knees (in despair?), and the large Bonnard, less interesting in its narrative aspects than in the exquisite meeting of colours, applied with feathery, almost feinting precision. In the corner a quietly lucid Parisian riverscape by Marquet deserves more attention than its lousy neighbouring Vlaminck.

More articles from: Andrew Lambirth | this section

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