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I. M. Nikitin, 1688-1741, was one of those
who received scholarship and went abroad to study. He successfully learned the
western techniques of painting, and was quite able to give a penetrating
psychological analysis of the persons he painted. His portraits favorably
compare with those of good contemporary European painters. Peter the Great was
proud of him, and mentioned Nikitin even to the King of Prussia as a proof that
"Russia also has good painters." A quick glimpse at his portrait of
Count Gavrilo Ivanovich Golovkin, the first Russian Chancellor, whom Nikitin
painted in the seventeen-twenties, could fool even an experienced eye into
thinking that it was borrowed from Versailles, so striking is the resemblance
to French dignitaries. See Golovkin.
Another of Nikitin's successful portraits is the one of Peter the Great; his
"Tree of the Romanov Dynasty," though it lacks originality. He
obviously borrowed the idea form Ushakov and a few details from some other
painters. Nikitin's career was interrupted after the death of Peter. He was one
of the new Russian intellectuals who came out openly against foreign domination
in the arts. Their persecution began during the reign of Anna Ioanovna, and in
it, Count Ernst Johann Biron, the all-powerful favorite of the Empress, played
the major role. A foreigner himself, Biron accused Peter's retainers of siding
with Artemii Petrovich Volinskii (1689-1740), a statesman and leader of the
party that fought strong German influence at the Russian court. Nikitin was
arrested and exiled to Siberia. Elizabeth freed him but he died on the way back
to Saint Petersburg. Other portraits by Nikitin are the series beginning with
Peter I in his twenties ending with Peter I on his death bed, (1725, Russian
Museum), the March, 1726 portrait of S.G. Stroganov (Russian Museum). The
portrait "Napol'nogo Getmana," (Russian museum), the portrait G.I.
Golovkin (beginning of the 18th century in the Tretyakov Gallery), and the
portrait of Anna Petrovna, (of 1720 or thereafter, in the Tretyakov Gallery).
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