The Wanderers was a movement of painters and others who rebelled against the neo-classical constraints of art in the Russian Empire, including Ukraine, in the 1860s.

They sought to depict, for the first time, the real life of the majority of the population. Beginning in the relatively reformist period under Tsar Alexander II they dominated the art scene of the Russian Empire for the rest of the century. Although painters such as Ilya Repin, Grigory Miasoyedov, Konstantin Savitsky, Isaac Levitan, Valentin Serov and Vladimir Makovsky are not well known in the west, they are artists of a high order who between them produced a panorama of society including the peasantry, the rising middle class and the great literary and musical figures of the day. As innovators they were parallel in some ways to the Impressionists but focused more on social comment at a time when there were wide hopes of democracy. Copiously illustrated, the lecture outlines their rise, achievement and eclipse.