Russian Traveler Genre Portrait 19th Century Oil Painting Signed Framed

The short signature lower left a monogram of joined Cyrillic letters "V" and "P" with date 77,  leads to the Russian painter Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov (1844 - 1927). Here we have plein air study in oils rapidly done in confident brushstrokes of the master’s skillful hand. Tall figure of slender bearded man squinting in the sun, fully equipped he dressed as long-distance traveler. The pose of a man is very expressive: here we have true tired man leaning on the stick in the minute of sudden rest – not a studio posing. Antique oil painting on canvas, pasted on paperboard, signed a monogram, framed.  
Size app.: 42 x 21.7 cm (roughly 16.5 x 8.5 in), frame is 62.5 x 41.7 cm (roughly 24.6 x 16.4 in). Overall in very good condition with age wear. Please study good resolution images for cosmetic condition. In person actual painting may appear darker or brighter than in our pictures, strictly depending on sufficient light in your environment. Weight of app. 4 kg is going to measure 7 kg packed for shipment.
Polenov landscape painter associated with the Peredvizhniki movement of realist artists. He was a multi-talented and well-educated man. He studied in parallel at St. Petersburg University and the Academy of Arts. In 1871, he received a law degree and, at the same time I. Repin, a gold medal for the competition film "The Resurrection of Jairus's daughter." But it took several more years before Polenov really found myself as an artist. He goes to Germany, Italy, France (as a pensioner AH) wrote the historical and genre paintings and portraits. But the more he is attracted to his landscape painting outdoors - plein air, pure colors. It examines the work of the great French landscape, particularly the Barbizon school. Learns directly, not through academic schemes to see and understand nature, to comprehend its great harmony. In 1876 Polenov returned to Russia. Subsequent work Polenova - "Grandmother's Garden" (1878), "Overgrown Pond" (1879), sketches 1881-82 gg., Made during a trip to Greece and the Middle East - have strengthened his fame as one of the best Russian landscape painters. He is in the minds of contemporaries, the first in this volume introduced in Russian painting "European influence" (A. Vasnetsov), that is, the principles of plein air painting: clean and more open paint, colored shadows, free swab. In the years 1882-94. Polenov leads MUZHVZ landscape painting class. His pupils were I. Levitan, to K. Korovin, A. Arkhipov, A. Golovin and other famous masters later. In many later landscapes artist persistently repeated motif of the river, the current slowly away among the boundless space of the Russian plain ("Early Snow" 1891, "Golden Autumn" 1893, etc.). This - Motherland. This Polenov remembered her from childhood. Landscapes - the best of his legacy.