SOURCE: Marsh, Cynthia. “Lermontov and the Romantic Tradition: The Function of Landscape in A Hero of Our Time.” Slavonic and East European Review 66, no. 1 (January 1988): 35-46.

In the following essay, Marsh explores connections between Lermontov's paintings and his landscape descriptions in A Hero of Our Time.

Lermontov's debt to Romanticism has exercised the critical mind considerably; the role of his interests as a painter, though, has hardly been taken into account. The publication in 1980 of Lermontov's paintings has shown that he was a talented artist.¹ His debt to Romanticism in the sphere of painting is clearest in his portraits and landscapes.

Lermontov's early portraits are in the Romantic exotic style: his Emiliya (1830-31) and Gertsog Lerma (1833) evoke, for example, the remote, colourful atmosphere of medieval Spain.² His landscapes continue the same style. The Caucasus, his principal subject, was regarded as an exotic adventurous place on the far-flung borders...