Evening
A beautiful painting for the cabinet. Gold frame. 25x18 cm, with frame 48x38 cm. Oil, canvas, wood. Julius Klever was a Russian artist of White German origin. Academic landscape painter. Academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1878). Artist of the first rank (1876). Professor (1881). Until the end of his life, a member of the faculty of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg and the Shtiglitsky Central School of Technical Drawing, where he headed the department of monumental painting. The so-called Klever school of painting, in which the mood of a landscape is dramatised by the colouring of a sunset or sunrise and the horizontally falling muted light, became very popular in Russia, leaving many followers. He came from the German von Klever family in Courland; his father Julius Klever (1821-1895) was a master of chemistry, the first to obtain this degree in Tsarist Russia. From childhood Julius had a great interest in drawing and in 1867, after his father encouraged him to study architecture at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, painting and landscape studies began to play a central role in his life. He did not complete his studies and was expelled from the Academy in about 1870. Nevertheless, in 1871 his painting "An Abandoned Cemetery in Winter" was highly appreciated by the art community and bought by Count P. S. Stroganov. In 1872 his painting "Sunset" was purchased by Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna. In 1874, his solo exhibition was held at the Society for the Promotion of Art. In 1875, J. J. Klevers won the prize of the Society for the Promotion of Art for his painting "Ancient Park", and in 1876 - for his painting "The First Snow on a Ploughed Field".