Poetry of Landscape: Veniamin Semenov-Tyan-Shansky – the Geographer and the Artist

Veniamin Petrovich Semenov-Tyan-Shansky (1870–1942, hereinafter V.P.) is an outstanding Russian geographer, cartographer and statistician, as well as a geologist and landscape artist. His strong point within geography was anthropogeography and theoretical geography. He was one of the first in the world to raise the question of the aesthetic resources of nature and the relationship between art, in all the breadth of its genre palette, and science, in particular — and especially — geography. Both the landscape scientistgeographer and the landscape artist — both, in his view, think in the same geographical images, both are engaged in identifying both typical and unique features in them: only the artist is artistic, subjective and, if possible, talented, while the geographer is scientific, objective and reliable. Being the founder, director and one of the landscape artists of the Central Geographical Museum (CGM), which skillfully and systematically visualized geographical landscapes, V.P. was a unique case of the synthesis of science and art, geography and painting. The dominant motif of V.P. as an artist is landscape landscapes. Most often he painted from life, but sometimes he also practiced copying from suitable photographs. After the liquidation of the CGM, its exposition and funds were largely lost. Among what survived, V.P. is credited with about 30 works, and in total for the CGM, according to N.N. Baransky, he painted about 140 of them. About 150 paintings and sketches by V.P. have been preserved in private hands — in the collections of members of the Semenov-Tyan-Shansky family. In total, the V.P. contains 195 works of art, 27 of which have a background from the Central State Museum funds. The corpus is dispersed across 15 collections, 13 of which are in St. Petersburg and one by one in Ryazan and in the village of Gremyachka in Ryazan Oblast. Characteristics of each collection are given in the article.

1. Baransky N.N. In memory of V.P. Semenov-TyanShansky. Geografiya v Shkole, 1946, no. 1, pp. 49–50. (In Russ.).

2. Khudozhestvennoe nasledie sem’i Petra Petrovicha Semenova-Tyan-Shanskogo: kniga-katalog [The Artistic Heritage of the Family of Pyotr Petrovich Semenov- Tyan-Shansky: The Catalogue Book]. A.A. Bogdanov, T.P. Borodina, P.M. Polyan, Eds. Voronezh: Izd-vo Ye.A. Bolkhovitinova. Publ., 2024. 160 p.

3. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky V.P. Raion i strana [Region and Country]. Moscow, Leningrad: Gosizdat Publ., 1928. 311 p.

4. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky V.P. To, chto proshlo. V dvukh tomakh. T. 2. 1918–1942 [What Has Passed. In Two Volumes. Vol. 2. 1918–1942]. Moscow: Novyi Khronograf. Publ., 2009. 664 p.

5. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky V.P. Opyt vysshei geografii: izbrannye raboty po antropogeografii i teoreticheskoi geografii. V dvukh tomakh [Experience on Higher Geography: Selected Works on Anthropogeography and Theoretical Geography. In Two Volumes]. P.M. Polian, Ed. St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriya, 2026. Vol. 1 – 800 p.; Vol. 2 – 840 p.

6. Tenisheva M.K. Vpechatleniya moyei zhizni. Vospominaniya [Impressions of My Life. Memories]. Moscow: Zakharov Publ., 2002. 479 p.