A. E. Kotzebue’s Creative Work in the Russian and European Art Criticism of the XIX-XX Centuries
The study aims to present a corpus of assessments of A. E. Kotzebue’s creative work found in publications by the Russian and German critics (art historians) of the XIX-XX centuries. Scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time since 1955, the leading Russian battle painter’s creative work has become a subject of research; for the first time in art history, the author has identified, introduced into scientific use and analysed publications on Kotzebue’s creative work in the Russian and German art press of the XIX-XX centuries; until recently, the German authors’ point of view has not been published. The researcher has revealed general characteristics of the artist’s creative work in Russia and Germany, as well as specificity of his art perception in these countries. As a result, it has been proved that Kotzebue’s creative work was an object of close attention of the German and Russian art historians in the late 1850s - mid-1870s; that high appraisal of his paintings is confirmation of international recognition won by the artist; that in the 1870s, the shift in the military genre development in the Russian art gave rise to Kotzebue’s battle pieces criticism, while his creative work was still highly regarded in Germany; that the opinion of the Russian and foreign art historians of the XX century on Kotzebue is based on XIX-century publications and does not contain any fundamental novelty.