Artworks of Mikhail Klodt

Mikhail Konstantinovich Klodt was the uncontested master of 19th-century Russian landscape painting. A scholarly work by F.I. Bulgakov (1890) noted that this very picture won him the First Order Gold Medal at the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1858, where he also received the title of Artist of the First Degree while studying under Vorobiov. Along with it came pension money he used to travel in Europe and make a name for himself through exhibitions and commissions that would insure his fame and place in Russian art history. Klodt was born into an already-famous family of Barons Von Jurgensburg, an art dynasty that included his father, a noted engraver, as well as an uncle and cousin, an accomplished sculptor and painter, respectively. Mikhail was born in the town of Zegevald, a small town "60 miles from the city of Riga" as Klodt saw fit to note in his own hand on the reverse of this painting. Indeed, Riverside Farmstead is an homage to his place of birth, the Latvian town also known as Sigulda.

Михаил Константинович Клодт фон Юргенсбург (1832 - 1902) — русский художник-пейзажист второй половины XIX века. Первым из русских художников объединил жанровую картину с эпическим пейзажем. Племянник Петра Карловича Клодта, известного русского скульптора и педагога. Автор реалистических пейзажей русской деревни. Для произведений Михаила Клодта характерны скрупулезный реализм изображения, безукоризненный рисунок с тщательной проработкой деталей, великолепное мастерство перспективных решений, строгость и стройность композиции, умение "одушевить" природу присутствием человека. Его живописная манера тщательна в предметах переднего плана и более широка и обобщающая в изображении отдалённых планов и неба с облаками.