The other day, young ladies from all sorts of noble classes, now let's look at the village ones. Why is everything usually good and fun at them?

Look, what's interesting: there I hung a lot of paintings about nobles, townspeople and merchants, and in most of them some kind of drama unfolds: " Unequal marriage", "Bigamist", "Interrupted Betrothal". And I wrote that don’t feed our genre writers and especially the Wanderers bread, but let them write something sad, heartbreaking and instructive about the wedding plot, using this topic to apply ideas about the subordinate position of women , the merciless power of capital and all that jazz.

To which my beloved attentive and erudite readers (isn’t it cool that I banned all the evil troll-stompers? such a comfortable atmosphere in the comments, it’s really nice) quite rightly began to write, for example, this:

_mjawa : I listened to Svetlana Adonyeva’s lectures here about the traditions of the Russian North, and about weddings in particular. I learned that the bride not only had to symbolically cry before the wedding, but thoroughly, ritually cry, sob and lament for up to two weeks in a row, mourning her girlhood, childhood in her home and transition to a new unfamiliar life.
Realize emotionally and experience the state of transition, feel properly that the previous life has ended forever and irrevocably, and that new life And new family one must accept unconditionally, no matter what it turns out to be (negative scenarios were also spoken out and cried in symbolic form during this period).
A happy, cheerful bride at a wedding was perceived as an open gate for the evil eye, from which she was protected in every possible way and surrounded with amulets and amulets, often strange (for example, keeping a piece of soap under her arm during the entire wedding). Moreover, all these sobs, when the bride’s legs are not supported, she wails, falls and hits the floor, tears off the girl’s ribbons from her braids - in the stories of old women about their own experience, they are “deliberate”, “according to custom”, like bodily psychopractices.
And among those same Russian writers, all the same rituals that they either saw or heard about are taken seriously and in good faith - “after all, the illiterate Herods forcefully marry off a girl, and she cries and kills herself, sick."

This is true, but based on this logic, pictures about peasant weddings where this ritual was observed should have been even more tear-jerking than in my previous material, about young ladies in white crinolines.
But nothing. There is very little tearing.
Let's explore.

To begin with, those few (very few paintings) in which the tear is still present.

Sergey Gribkov. "Wedding Blessing"

A. A. Buchkuri. Wedding train.

The next picture is sad - well, it’s just Perov. He cannot live without it, no matter what he writes.

V. Perov. On the eve of the bachelorette party. Seeing the bride off from the bathhouse

In the next picture you can’t tell right away whether it’s a tear or not, because we don’t read the plot at all deeper than the first level. On the website of the Russian Museum they believe that the painting is good: “In 1861, Myasoedov married the daughter of a landowner, Elizaveta Mikhailovna Krivtsova. This event to some extent influenced the creation of the canvas. The prototype of the young lady was the artist’s bride. The artist admires a sweet home scene, the characters of which immersed in an atmosphere of love."

An additional aspect to the canvas in our eyes is given by a fact that Myasoedov could not have implied: the year of creation. How long is there left before serfdom is abolished? A little more, and you'll be fine, instead of getting into the smallest details intimate life your serf slaves.

Grigory Myasoedov. Congratulations to the newlyweds in the landowner's house. 1861.

Well, that’s kind of all the hysterical stuff that I managed to scrape together.

All other paintings were painted with a completely different artistic goal.
This is approximately the same point of view from which the authors of these paintings looked at their nature - beautiful! Interesting! everyday life description of an alien world.

It is clear that in these paintings the artists are interested in “strangers”, villagers, strange customs, unusually colorful outfits. Some kind of modesty. Pictures, when we look at which we think, “Damn, there’s some kind of encrypted serious drama, some kind strange story, moralizing", and no.
There are no tears, no tears.
In approximately the same way, our Vereshchagin looked at the Hindus and Tibetans with their amazing costumes.

But thanks to this point of view, we can observe all stages of the rituals associated with the wedding.

Nikolay Pymonenko. Matchmakers.
It seems like Ukrainian peasants, or not?


UPD (from here): It turns out that in a number of regions of Ukraine in the 19th - early 20th centuries, a custom was recorded: if a girl liked the match offered by the matchmakers, she, sitting by the stove, began to chop lime on it, and the more she liked the future groom, the more actively her fingers moved. The virgin in the picture hasn’t exactly removed half of the whitewash with her finger, but is very focused on what she’s doing. She is clearly not against the boy whose parents sent matchmakers.

Attention!
If the picture is clearly a wedding, but the girl and those around her are wearing rich kokoshniks, pearls, sundresses (like this), then this work is not suitable for us here. Because it belongs to a completely different genre, which was called “how beautiful life was in pre-Petrine Rus', and then this alcoholic and syphilitic ruined everything.” We can also talk about weddings in such paintings, if interested, but another time.

In the meantime, we return to our peasants and genre documentaries.

N. Petrov. Bride's viewing.

Nikolai Bekryashev. Choice of dowry
The bride, probably, with a bundle in her hands?

The next picture is very interesting.
It is quite early, the first quarter of the 19th century.
This author does not yet know how to document “like Vereshchagin”; he paints romantically, in an empire style, as Bryullov would have done.
The heroes stand in noble poses, and Achilles or Iphigenia could be depicted in a similar way.

Unknown artist. Blessing before the wedding.

The next picture is from 1889. Do you see what evolution has taken place?
You can easily restore costumes based on this canvas and go to the historical reconstruction festival.

Alexey Korzukhin. "Hen-party".
A half-naked bride looks out from the bathhouse.
UPD: _mjawa The bride walks wrapped up in a fur coat. And from the bathhouse in both paintings, another participant in the ceremony looks out and runs out after the main procession with the bride - or younger sister, or someone replacing her role. The personification of the left maiden share in the parental home.

The next picture shows a Ukrainian wedding. In general, there are also quite a few paintings on the theme of Little Russian rituals, but I don’t take them specifically, I only took this one because of the composition.
(Yes, as it turned out, someone is very concerned about this question, so I will answer here: I personally am neither Armenian nor Jewish, but a mixture of Kuban and Don Cossacks, that’s why there is so much kindness a la Nonna Mordyukova in my look, and my hand is so heavy).

V. Makovsky. hen-party

That's why an example of composition was needed - see how in the picture above the girls are sitting in the corner?
See below: Elena Kiseleva (a forgotten student of Repin) was supposed to have a multi-figure painting, but only this elaborate sketch of a piece with a group has survived.

Elena Kiseleva. Brides. Trinity Day

UPD: _mjawa Kiseleva doesn’t just have brides of marriageable age. These are already betrothed brides, as evidenced by the white thread caps under the red scarves-girlish headbands. They are already in a transitional state - they are not yet young, but their fate has already been determined.

And the composition itself should have been like this

The next picture is from 1909.
In the second half of the 19th century, especially towards the end, and then at the beginning of the 20th century, the “folk” theme was presented differently, Surikov showed that it is not necessary to be so careful, but rather emotionally, with soul. At the same time, the topic was quite fashionable, “peasants” were given to write as an assignment at the Academy of Arts for a diploma, etc.

Ivan Kulikov Ancient rite blessings of the bride in the city of Murom

And here is the earlier one again.

Karneev. Getting ready for the wedding

The crowns are put on the head, no one is holding them.
Double wedding on top of that?
And please note that a clear and simple wedding is practically of no interest to painters, with the exception of this author.

Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky. Wedding.

And here is a whole series of postcards about rituals.

I. Lvov. Redemption of the road

I. Lvov. Arrival of the young man from his parents to his father-in-law's house for the wedding feast

I. Lvov. Wedding celebration

This is a must know painting.
This is one of the first examples of genre painting in Russian art IN GENERAL.

Mikhail Shibanov. Celebration of the wedding contract. 1777

Description of the painting by Shibanov (from here):

On the reverse side of the painting there is an inscription by the author, explaining the plot chosen by Shibanov:
"A painting representing the Suzdal provincial peasants. The celebration of the wedding contract, painted in the same province by all the Tatars in 1777. Mikhail Shibanov."

We learn about the essence of this festival from ancient descriptions Russian peasant life: “The agreement consists of the exchange of rings and small gifts. The groom comes to see the bride. This agreement is holy and inviolable.”
This solemn moment in life peasant family and is shown in Shibanov’s film.

The action takes place in a hut owned by the bride's parents. In the very center of the composition is the bride, dressed in a rich national outfit. She is wearing a linen shirt buttoned to the top, a white brocade sundress embroidered with flowers, and on top of it a gold brocade jacket with red embroidery. On the head there is a girl’s headdress consisting of a gold embroidered bandage and a veil. The neck is decorated with pearls, a necklace of large stones descends onto the chest, and earrings are in the ears. Next to the bride is the groom in a smart blue caftan, from under which a greenish half-caftan and a pink embroidered shirt are visible.

On the right, behind the bride, the invitees crowd. They are also richly dressed: women in sundresses and kokoshniks, men in long cloth zipuns. Shibanov showed great compositional skill, rhythmically arranging the figures of the festival participants and combining them general movement. The group of invitees is closed by a figure young man, with a broad gesture pointing to the bride and groom. Strict rhythmic construction in no way excludes either the living naturalness of poses or their diversity. On the left side of the picture is a table covered with a white tablecloth and laden with all kinds of food. At the table are four peasants, apparently the bride's father and her older brothers. One of them stood up and addressed the bride and groom. The figure of this peasant, slightly tilted, with his hand extended forward, is necessary for the artist in order to connect two disconnected groups. characters. (there are still some words in the link).

***
The painting below is from 1815, it is also quite romantic and Empire style. Pay attention to the girls' dresses - the exact same cut as Natasha Rostova's, the artist perceived sundresses in this way. The gestures are also noble, like on the reliefs.

Unfortunately, Venetsianov, who lived at the same time, did not write about weddings; I think he would have done the best job.

M. Terebenev. Peasant wedding.

Finally, perhaps the most famous 19th century painting on this topic.

V. Maksimov. The arrival of the sorcerer peasant wedding

Description of Maksimov’s painting from here:

The artist came from a village.
The work about the wedding was realized thanks to childhood memories. He remembered an incident at his brother’s marriage. The bridegrooms stood, and everyone else could not stop admiring them. While feasting, a stranger entered the hut, accompanied by his dog; without taking off his hat, he stopped at the threshold. Those sitting were alarmed and whispered: the sorcerer has come. Afterwards, the uninvited guest was politely served a cup of drink, given a coin, and he went home. In the picture
the same plot is depicted, but somewhat modified and very detailed. There is no dog next to the sorcerer; he is also wearing a headdress, which is sprinkled with snow and with snowballs stuck to his boots and sheepskin coat.

An elderly woman approached him with bread. By showing hospitality, the wise woman wants to appease the sorcerer, so as not to cause grief and hear good parting words. The rest of the relatives and invitees are alarmed and scared, the children are full of curiosity. The newlyweds in the corner of the hut are still standing under the icons.

A hidden light source illuminates them with a bright glow. The light also falls on the faces and clothes of other characters, on the stern features of the old man who entered. Some of the figures are in semi-darkness and cast shadows. This creates a general impression of mystery and mysticism.

A. Ryabushkin. The newlyweds are waiting for the crown in the Novgorod province

A. Ryabushkin. Peasant wedding in Tambov province


Sketch for it

And here are my favorite paintings on the theme of Russian peasant weddings.
This is provincial naive art, created not by visiting city painters, but by peasant/merchant artists themselves.

Bachelorette party in a merchant's house. XVIII (?) century

Smotriny in the 18th century in the city of Toropets

Description of the picture:

“Bridesday in the 18th century in the city of Toropets” is the traditional name of a painting from the end of the 18th century, which was known and aroused interest even in the 19th century. The meaning of the rituals preserved among the Toropets merchants, the traditions of pre-Petrine antiquity, was impossible to unravel even then
Obviously, the picture does not depict a wedding, but a bachelorette party - a celebration of the end of a girl’s life on the eve of the wedding, when “from night to morning”, before the groom’s arrival, the girls gathered in the bride’s house. They are dressed up, with scarves in their hands, while the bride is dressed in a dark sundress without stripes and a white shirt, which was supposed to be worn to the crown.

The costumes of the Toropets merchants were famous for their beauty and unusualness; they combined elements of national and European dress. Women covered their tall kokoshnik with a large scarf, and mahal fans were in common use. Handkerchief or fan married women in public they covered half their face.

Please note, the gentleman came to the bottom left, wearing a camisole and a wig

***
That's probably all I have.

If anyone sees in these works also, in their specialty, for example, costume historians, please write, it’s very interesting, I’ll add it.
Do you know any other pictures about village weddings?

• My t

There is no work more honorable and important than cultivating the land. Unfortunately, this simple truth does not always work in this world. However, the poetics of peasant labor, harmony with the surrounding world, and the feeling of satisfaction from a job well done have always interested artists. One of the first to turn to the theme of rural life was the Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, nicknamed Muzhitsky for his passion. In the cycle of paintings “The Seasons,” three of the five surviving works show rural everyday life: “Return of the Herds,” “Haymaking” and “Harvest.” Two latest paintings differ in their peaceful and joyful atmosphere from most of Bruegel’s works.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the pastoral genre - an idealistic depiction of rural life - became especially popular in European, and especially French, painting. The most famous paintings describing rural life are by Francois Boucher: “Farm”, “Morning in the Village”, “Rest of Peasants”. However, everything depicted in the pastorals is far from real life, and only by the beginning of the Enlightenment did realism begin to predominate in pastoral painting, for example the works English artist Thomas Gainsborough "The Return of the Peasants from the Market", "Return from the Harvest".

The pastoral painting of Alexey Venetsianov is filled with Russian flavor. His paintings, idealizing the life of the Russian peasant, have always been quite popular: “On the arable land. Spring", "Reapers", "Sleeping Shepherd". Despite the romanticization of rural life, Venetsianov strove for maximum realism in his work; for example, to work on the painting “The Barn”, the wall of this agricultural building on the artist’s estate was dismantled. Once again, interest in peasant labor in Russian painting arose with the advent of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions. For example, Grigory Myasoedov’s painting “Mowers” ​​(Time of Passion) celebrates the joy of work and its unity with the hot landscape. Ivan Kramskoy often turned to the peasant theme. There is a well-known series of peasant portraits “Miller”, “Forester”, “Contemplator”, “Beekeeper” and others, in which representatives of some rural professions are typified.

Vincent van Gogh addressed this topic many times, for example, one of the few paintings sold during the artist’s lifetime was “Red Vineyards in Arles” depicting the grape harvest. Another famous "rural" painting by Van Gogh is The Potato Eaters. Several times he turned to the theme raised in the painting “The Sower”, because he believed that the sower personifies the rebirth and infinity of life. Although Dutch artist classified as a post-impressionist, in his understanding of the complexity, monotony and exhaustion of peasant labor, he becomes a true realist. Perhaps Van Gogh adopted this attitude towards rural life from Jean Millet, whose work greatly influenced the young artist. Millet himself, the founder of the Barbizon school, said to himself that he was just a peasant. However, in his works, sometimes a certain poetry of rural life slips through: “The Ear Pickers”, “Angelus”, “The Winnower”, “The Sower”, “Threshing” and many others.

The artist Arkady Plastov was called the singer of the Soviet peasantry. His numerous paintings glorify the hard work of the collective farmer. All his heroes have very expressive hands - strong, knobby, not afraid of any work. Today it is customary to accuse his paintings (“Harvest”, “Haymaking”, “Summer”, “Tractor Driver’s Dinner”, “Potato Harvesting”) of “ socialist realism” - embellishment of reality, however, they are unique in their clearly expressed national character and nationality of images. This is how the artists saw it different countries and eras, complex and thankless peasant labor, not without its own special charm and beauty.

The peasant - a representative of the “silent majority” - did not occupy any noticeable place in the visual arts until the 19th century, before the era of social revolutions and urbanization, with which the formation of modern nations and the construction of their mythology was associated. In the romantic era of the beginning of the century, the cultural image of the villager acquired in Europe specific meaning: when the nation was understood as a collective body growing from the primordial soil, it was the tiller who began to be perceived as its purest, most complete, unalloyed embodiment. But in the public consciousness of Russia in the 19th century, the peasantry occupied a very special place: it became virtually synonymous with the concept of “nation,” and the rural worker turned into a moral standard for various political and intellectual movements. Our art, with unprecedented clarity, embodied this process of visual self-knowledge of the country and the formation of the image of the peasantry as the backbone of Russia.

I must say that by the second half XVIII century European painting knew only a few basic models for depicting the peasantry. The first took shape in Venice in the 16th century. Her appearance was sanctioned literary tradition, dating back to the poem “Georgics” by the Roman poet Virgil, in which the hard work of farmers was the key to harmony with nature. The reward for him was the agreement with the laws of natural existence established from time to time, which the inhabitants of the cities were deprived of. The second mode developed in urbanized Holland XVII century: in verbose genre scenes, peasants appeared as a funny, sometimes rude, intemperate audience and somehow worthy of a cheerful smile or evil ridicule, which raised the city viewer in their own eyes. Finally, in the Age of Enlightenment, another way of representing the peasant was born as a noble, sensitive villager, whose natural morality stemmed from closeness to nature and served as a reproach to the corrupt man of civilization.

Ivan Argunov. Portrait of an unknown woman in Russian costume. 1784

Mikhail Shibanov. Celebration of the wedding contract. 1777State Tretyakov Gallery

Ivan Ermenev. Singing blind men. Watercolor from the series “Beggars”. 1764–1765

In this respect, Russia, which survived the 18th century, did not stand out against the European background. We can find isolated examples of depictions of representatives of lower social strata, and the circumstances of the creation of some works of this kind are not always clear. Such are the artless “Portrait of an Unknown Woman in Russian Costume” by Ivan Argunov (1784), the calm nobility of “Celebration of the Wedding Contract” by Mikhail Shibanov (1777) or the brutally truthful images of beggars by Ivan Ermenev. Visual understanding of the “folk” space of Russia initially took place within the framework of ethnography. Atlases - descriptions of the empire were provided with detailed illustrations representing social and ethnic types: from the peasants of European provinces to the inhabitants of Kamchatka. Naturally, the artist’s focus was primarily on the unique costumes, hairstyles, and physiognomic features that emphasized the uniqueness of the characters depicted, and in this respect, such engravings differed slightly from illustrations of descriptions of exotic lands—America or Oceania.

The situation changed in the 19th century, when a person “from the plow” began to be perceived as the bearer of the spirit of the nation. But if in France or Germany of that time, in the image of the “people” as a whole, the peasantry occupied only a certain, albeit important, share, in Russia there were two decisive circumstances that made the problem of its image a key one. The first is the Westernization of the elite that occurred under Peter. The dramatic social difference between the minority and the majority was at the same time a cultural difference: the nobility lived “in a European way,” and the overwhelming majority of the people, to one degree or another, followed the customs of their ancestors, which deprived the two parts of the nation common language. The second most important factor was serfdom, which was abolished only on February 19, 1861, which was evidence of the deep moral flaw that underlay Russian life. Thus, the suffering peasant, the peasant victim of injustice, became the bearer of genuine values ​​- social and cultural.

The turning point was Patriotic War 1812, when, in the fight against foreign invasion, Russia, at least in the person of the upper strata, realized itself as united. It was the patriotic upsurge that first set the task of the visible embodiment of the nation. In the propaganda cartoons of Ivan Terebenev and Alexei Venetsianov, the Russian people who defeated the French were in most cases presented in the image of a peasant. But “high” art, oriented toward the universal ancient ideal, was unable to solve this problem. In 1813, Vasily Demut-Malinovsky created the statue “Russian Scaevola”, which reproduced an implausible story spread by patriotic propaganda. The sculpture depicts a peasant who uses an ax to cut off his hand with the Napoleonic mark and thus follows the example of the legendary Roman hero. The rural worker is endowed here with the ideal, evenly developed body of the heroes ancient Greek sculptor Praxiteles. A curly beard seems to be a true sign of nationality, but even a cursory comparison of the statue’s head with images of the Roman emperors Lucius Verus or Marcus Aurelius destroys this illusion. Of the obvious signs of ethnic and social affiliation, only the Orthodox pectoral cross and the peasant ax remain.

"Russian Scaevola". Sculpture by Vasily Demut-Malinovsky. 1813 State Tretyakov Gallery

Venetsianov’s painting became a new word on this path. Free from the academic school based on the ancient canon and offering ready-made solutions, the artist made his own serfs the heroes of his canvases. Venetsianov's peasant women and peasants are for the most part devoid of sentimental idealization, which is characteristic, for example, of similar images of Vasily Tropinin. On the other hand, they are immersed in a special harmonious world, only partly related to reality. Venetsianov often depicts peasants in moments of relaxation, sometimes completely inconsistent with their activities. Such, for example, are the paintings of the 1820s “The Sleeping Shepherd” and “The Reapers”: a mother and son with sickles in their hands, frozen for a moment so as not to frighten away the hives that sat on their hands. For a second, a frozen butterfly conveys the fleeting nature of a frozen moment. But what is important here is that Venetsianov immortalizes his workers in a short moment of rest, thus giving them the privilege in the eyes of the viewer free man- leisure.

Alexey Venetsianov. Sleeping shepherdess. 1823–1826State Russian Museum

Alexey Venetsianov. Reapers. Late 1820sState Russian Museum

An important milestone in the understanding of the peasant was the “Notes of a Hunter” by Turgenev (1847-1852). In them, the man was seen as an equal, worthy of the same close gaze and attentive insight into character as the noble heroes of the novels. The trend that gradually unfolded in mid-century Russian literature, which opened up the life of the people, can be described in the words of Nekrasov, known from the memoirs of a contemporary:

“...I increased the material processed by poetry, the personalities of the peasants... Millions of living beings stood before me, never depicted! They asked for a loving look! And every man is a martyr, every life is a tragedy!”

On the wave of social upsurge caused by the Great Reforms of the 1860s (primarily the emancipation of the serfs), Russian art following literature, it included in its field of vision exclusively wide circle phenomena of everyday life. The main thing is that it moved from neutral descriptiveness to social and moral assessment. It is no coincidence that at this time the everyday genre clearly dominated in painting. It allowed the artist to present various types and characters, to act out typical situations from life in front of the audience. different layers society. The peasantry was so far only one of the objects of interest of artists - however, it was precisely scenes from rural life that allowed the appearance of works in which the accusatory pathos of the “sixties” manifested itself most clearly.

Rural procession at Easter. Painting by Vasily Perov. 1861 State Tretyakov Gallery

In 1862, at the insistence of the Synod, the painting “Rural Procession at Easter” (1861) by the leader of the new artistic generation Vasily Perov was removed from the permanent exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. The procession stretching out under a gloomy sky, kneading the spring mud with its feet, made it possible to show a cross-section of the village world, where vice captured everyone - from the priest and wealthy peasants to the last poor. If the well-dressed participants in the procession only turned pink from drinking and eating, then other characters demonstrate deeper stages of degradation and profanation of shrines: a ragged man carries an image upside down, and a drunken priest, walking from the porch, crushes an Easter egg.

At the same time, a new image of the peasants’ habitat, free from idealization, came into Russian painting. The most impressive example is “Afternoon in the Village” by Pyotr Sukhodolsky (1864). This is a protocol-accurate image of a specific area - the village of Zhelny, Mosalsky district, Kaluga province: scattered huts and sheds with perpetually leaky roofs (only in the background is the construction of a new house visible), skinny trees, a swampy stream. The summer heat found the inhabitants engaged in everyday activities: women fetching water or washing clothes, children playing near the barn, men sleeping in the sun, representing the same element of the landscape as a spotted pig fallen on its side, a harrow thrown straight into the grass, or a plow stuck in a never-drying puddle. .

Noon in the village. Painting by Pyotr Sukhodolsky. 1864 State Russian Museum

From Gogol's colorful descriptions of roast rural day This view is distinguished by the painter’s objective, devoid of visible emotion. In a certain sense, this image of the Russian village is even more bleak than Perov’s demonstrative but tendentious picture. Meanwhile, the society of that time was obviously ready for such a spectacle: in 1864 Sukhodolsky received the Grand Gold Medal of the Academy of Arts for this painting, and in 1867 it was shown in the Russian department World's Fair in Paris. However, it should be noted that in more later years Russian painters painted the village as such relatively rarely, preferring to represent peasants in a different environment.

The depiction of characters from the people in the 1860s was, as a rule, distinguished by the openly stated position of the artist: it was a criticism of social injustice and moral decline, demanded by society, the main victims of which were “the humiliated and insulted.” Using the well-developed narrative tools of genre painting, the artist told “stories” that were close in their rhetoric to theatrical mise-en-scenes.

The next decade brought a more multidimensional image of the people, which is increasingly becoming associated with the lower social classes. Instead of a silent reproach to the educated classes, the “common” person becomes a moral example for them. This tendency was expressed in its own way in the novels and journalism of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Associated with it is the socialist ideology of populism with its idealization of the peasant community as not only the economic, but also the social and ethical core of the nation. But although Russian painting was in the general ideological context of the era, literal parallels between it, literature or journalism are not always appropriate. For example, realism, professed by members of the most influential artistic association of the second half of the 19th century century - the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions - can hardly be understood as a direct analogy to the populist understanding of the peasantry.

For centuries, the depiction of a man of the people in European and Russian art implied a distance between the character and the viewer, who invariably maintained his privileged position. Now the tools of psychological analysis, developed by literature and expanded by realistic painting of the 19th century, had to be applied to the commoner. “... His inner essence... is not something special and curious, but a universal human essence, drawing its originality exclusively from the external environment,” Saltykov-Shchedrin asserted in 1868. The aspirations of Peredvizhniki realism of the 1870s and 80s can be described in a similar way.

Illarion Pryanishnikov. Kalikas are walking. 1870State Tretyakov Gallery

Illarion Pryanishnikov. Fire victims. 1871Private collection / rusgenre.ru

Nikolay Yaroshenko. Blind people. 1879Samara Regional Art Museum

Ivan Kramskoy. Contemplator. 1876

Another side of the individualizing view was the construction of a psychological and social typology of the people. Ivan Kramskoy wrote in 1878: “...a type, and only one type today makes up the whole historical task our art." Russian painting was searching for such types throughout the 1870s. Among them stand out images of people who are in one way or another cut off from their roots, whose way of life or structure of thought are separated from the established way of life - a kind of children of the revolution carried out by the reform of 1861. Such are “The Walkers” (1870) and “The Firefighters” (1871) by Pryanish-nikova, “The Tramp” by Sharvin (1872), “The Blind” by Yaroshenko (1879) or “The Contemplator” by Kramskoy (1876), which Dostoevsky used in “The Brothers Karamazov” to characterize Smerdyakov:

“... in the forest, on the road, in a tattered cafta-niche and bast shoes, a little man stands alone, wandering in the deepest solitude... but he does not think, but “contemplates” something.<…>... Maybe suddenly, having accumulated impressions over many years, he will leave everything and go to Jerusalem, to wander and save himself, or maybe he will suddenly burn down his native village, or maybe both will happen together.”

Barge Haulers on the Volga. Painting by Ilya Repin. 1872-1873 State Russian Museum

The turning point in relation to folk images is associated with “Barge Haulers on the Volga” by Ilya Repin (1872-1873), the heroes of which were precisely people uprooted from their usual soil. By tracing how the artist’s attitude to the dramaturgy of his canvas changed, one can understand how in painting as a whole there was a transition from genre narrative and a patronizing and pitying look to an image where the folk organism becomes self-sufficient. Repin abandoned his original idea of ​​pitting the city’s “pure” society at a picnic against “dank, scary monsters” - from depicting an episode that he himself witnessed. IN final version he created a canvas whose paradoxical nature eludes the modern viewer. Before us is a large canvas that instantly stops the visitor to the exhibition: the blue sky, the blue of the river and the sand of the Volga banks create an exceptionally strong color chord. But this is not a landscape or a genre painting: Repin consistently refuses those compositional decisions that imply some kind of plot. He chooses the moment when one-twelve people almost stopped, as if posing for a painter. This is actually a group portrait of people at the very bottom of Russian society. Looking at the canvas, we can read the characters and origins of the barge haulers: from the stoic sage of the defrocked priest Kanin (the root of the human team) to the young Larka, as if resisting his fate (the brightest figure in the center of this gloomy row is the young barge hauler, in truth -laying the strap). On the other hand, eleven people pulling a huge bark turn into a multi-headed creature, making up a single body. If we take into account that the barge haulers are presented against the background of the river expanse, behind them is depicted the ship they are dragging (an old symbol of human community) under the Russian trade flag, then we will have to admit that we have before us a collective image of a people appearing simultaneously in desperate poverty and pristine natural force.

The public reaction to “Burlakov” is indicative: conservative criticism deliberately emphasized the “tendentiousness” of the picture, believing that “this is a poem by Nekrasov, transferred to canvas, a reflection of his “civilian tears.” But such diverse observers as Dostoevsky and Stasov saw in “Barge Haulers” an objective image of reality. Dostoevsky wrote:

“Not one of them shouts from the picture to the viewer: “Look how unhappy I am and to what extent you are in debt to the people!” ... The two leading barge haulers almost laugh, at least they don’t cry at all, and they certainly don’t think about social -in his position."

A kind of summary of the evaluation of the canvas was summed up Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich, who purchased it for 3,000 rubles. “Barge Haulers” remained in his palace until .

Vasily Petrov. Fomushka-owl. 1868State Tretyakov Gallery

Ilya Repin. A timid guy. 1877Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum

Ilya Repin. The man with the evil eye. 1877State Tretyakov Gallery

In the 1870s, realistic painting strives not only to show “social ills,” but also to find a positive beginning in Russian life. In the works of the Itinerant artists, it is embodied in landscape (Savrasov, Shishkin) and portraits of the intelligentsia (Kramskoy, Perov, Repin). It was the portrait genre that opened up the possibility of combining the typical and the concrete in folk images, which made it possible to focus primarily on the character of a person and accept him as an equal. These are “Fomushka the Owl” by Perov (1868), “The Timid Peasant” and “The Peasant with the Evil Eye” by Repin (both 1877). But at exhibitions, it was not by chance that images of specific peasants were called “studies”: portraits still retained the status of a social privilege.

Forest worker. Painting by Ivan Kramskoy. 1874 State Tretyakov Gallery

Kramskoy moved further along the path of creating a strong and independent peasant character. Commenting in a letter to the collector Pavel Tretyakov on the sketch “Woodman” (1874), depicting a forester in a bullet-ridden hat, Kramskoy wrote:

“... one of those types... who understand much of the social and political structure of people’s life with their minds and in whom there is a deep-rooted displeasure bordering on hatred. From such people, in difficult moments, the Stenka Razins and Pugachevs gather their gangs, and in ordinary times they act alone, wherever and however necessary, but they never make peace.”

Ivan Kramskoy. Peasant with a bridle. 1883National Museum "Kiev Art Gallery"

Ivan Kramskoy. Mina Moiseev. 1882State Russian Museum

The most perfect embodiment of this approach to the folk type was Kramskoy’s “Peasant with a Bridle” (1883). This is a rare case when we know the hero of the canvas - a resident of the village of Siversky near St. Petersburg. The sketch preceding the painting by only one year bears the name of the model - “Mina Moiseev”. A man with a gray beard and a wrinkled, tanned face in a casual blue shirt crossed his arms over his chest and leaned forward, as if participating in a conversation. The characteristic pose, which leaves a feeling of the hero’s involvement in some process external to the picture, and the gaze directed outward and to the side, do not allow this canvas to be classified as portraits in the strict sense of the word. On the contrary, the title of the canvas, where the image of Mina Moiseev is given worthy solidity, no longer contains the name of its hero, now representing the peasant as such. This generalized character of the image was recognized by Kramskoy himself. In a letter to businessman Tereshchenko, who later acquired the painting, the artist wrote that he was offering “a large sketch of a ‘Russian peasant’, in the form of how they discuss their village affairs.”

It is the type portrait that Kramskoy creates: Mina Moiseev is depicted standing upright, wearing the same blue, worn shirt. A coat is thrown over it, and a bridle hangs on the elbow of the left arm. The peasant is shown with undisguised sympathy, but it is unlikely that he himself would agree to appear before posterity in this form: his hair is hastily combed, the collar of his shirt is open, and the rough clothes thrown over his shoulders are torn somewhere and patched somewhere. If the hero of the canvas had ordered his image himself, he would have been depicted with well-groomed hair and a beard, dressed in the best outfit and, most likely, with some sign of wealth, for example a samovar: this is what we see in photographs of wealthy peasants of that time.

Of course, the addressee of this canvas was an educated visitor to the exhibition, and it was his visual experience that Kramskoy was counting on when creating this deliberately ascetic and noble-colored canvas. The figure of a peasant, depicted knee-deep, turns into a pyramid - a simple monumental form. The viewer looks at him as if a little from below. This technique, in its accelerated version, was used by Baroque portrait painters to convey an impression of majesty to their heroes. The stick in the weary hands of the peasant-nina, which may well be the handle of a pitchfork or shovel, seems to be a staff, that is, a traditional sign of authority, and the poor, holey mantle appears as the embodiment of the artless simplicity of a noble man. With these laconic but effective means, Kramskoy forms the image of his hero as a person endowed with an unostentatious sense of self-worth and internal benevolent strength, “common sense, clarity and positivity in the mind,” as Belinsky once wrote about the properties of the Russian peasant.

The arrival of a sorcerer at a peasant wedding. Painting by Vasily Maksimov. 1875 State Tretyakov Gallery

1870s brought out genre painting to a new level. At the VI traveling exhibition in 1875, Vasily Maksimov showed the painting “The Arrival of a Sorcerer at a Peasant Wedding.” The artist himself came from a peasant family, knew rural life well, and the painting was based on his childhood memory of the appearance of a mysterious and somewhat sinister village character at the wedding of his older brother. This multi-figure composition, larger than a standard genre picture, gives the peasant subjects a new dimension. The city viewer is faced with a situation where he is a complete stranger, he has no key to what is happening, and the peasants - young and old - are built into a finely nuanced mise-en-scène, where everything - both the measured ritual of the holiday and the appearance of an uninvited guest - inalienably belongs to the peasant world. Maksimov organizes his narrative without explicit action, skillfully creating the psychological tension of a situation, the meaning of which may not be entirely clear to an outside viewer. This is the peasants’ own world, in which they behave appropriately, without thinking about an outside observer. Maksimov seemed to answer Shchedrin’s expectation:

Vasily Maksimov. Blind owner. 1884State Russian Museum

Vasily Maksimov. Family section. 1876State Tretyakov Gallery

Vladimir Makovsky. On the boulevard. 1886State Tretyakov Gallery

Edgar Degas. Absinthe. 1876 Musée d'Orsay

Maksimov more than once later turned to village life, his most notable works told about the hard lot of the people (“The Sick Husband”, 1881; “The Blind Master”, 1884). In his “Family Division” (1876), as if on a theater stage, in the presence of representatives of the community, a family feud is committed - the division of property. Opinions have been expressed that such a deliberately played out conflict goes against traditional ways of resolving disputes within the community, but be that as it may, this painting testifies to the fact that Peredvizhniki painting was able to challenge the ideal image of the peasant world constructed by the populist intelligentsia. Another conflict, dictated by the social transformations of the era, is presented in Vladimir Makovsky’s painting “On the Boulevard” (1886). On a bench sit a young, festively dressed, tipsy craftsman with a fashionable accordion, and his wife and baby, who have come to see him from the village on a date: this is one of the most poignant images of irreversible mutual alienation in Russian painting, evoking images of “loneliness.” together" by Edgar Degas (for example, his "Absinthe", 1875-1876).

Ilya Repin. Arrest of a propagandist. 1892 State Tretyakov Gallery

The failure of the “going to the people” - a campaign of revolutionary propaganda in the countryside, crushed by the government in 1877 - showed the illusory nature of the populist hope for the socialist and collectivist principles of the Russian peasantry. This dramatic story for the opposition intelligentsia prompted Repin to work on the canvas “The Arrest of the Propagandist,” which took almost a decade. Naturally, the peasants were to become important participants in the scene. But if central image While the painting - an agitator tied to a pole and therefore evoking associations with the scourged Christ - remained practically unchanged compositionally, the characters responsible for his capture were radically transformed. In early sketches, the propagandist is tightly surrounded by local residents who have grabbed him (one of them is rummaging through a suitcase with proclamations). But gradually Repin actually relieves the common people of direct blame for the catastrophic mutual misunderstanding between the peasantry and the intelligentsia, which became the basis for the failure of the populist sermon: in later versions of the composition, the peasants gradually left the proscenium, and in the final version of the canvas, completed in 1892, they are almost completely relieved of responsibility for the arrest, present as silent witnesses in the far corner of the hut. Only one of them helps the gendarme restrain the furious captive, and the search is carried out by officials and police.

Ilya Repin. Reception of volost elders by Emperor Alexander III in the courtyard of the Petrovsky Palace in Moscow on May 5, 1883. 1885-1886 State Tretyakov Gallery

The peasant occupied a central place not only in populist and Slavic-philic views, but also in the ideology of the Orthodox kingdom of Alexander III. The state has not yet considered art as a means of propaganda, and the image of the loyal peasantry is rarely found in Russian painting. But a noteworthy exception is Repin’s painting “Reception of the volost elders by Emperor Alexander III in the courtyard of the Petrovsky Palace in Moscow on May 5, 1883” (1885-1886), commissioned by the Ministry of the Imperial Household. Although the artist was dissatisfied with the fact that on the magnificent frame of the canvas a quotation from the royal speech was placed, marking the beginning of the reaction, the painting successfully represents the basic myth of the reign of Alexander III - the mystical union between the self- holders and cultivators over the heads of the elites. The Emperor stands here in the middle of a sunlit courtyard, surrounded by an attentive crowd of elders, in which the entire empire is embodied: Great Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars and Poles. All other witnesses to the event, including royal family, crowding in the background.

In this vein lies the discovery by the artists of the Abramtsevo circle of the beauty of peasant art and attempts to renew urban culture with its help. But at the same time they mean that now peasant world becomes new for artists not so much social phenomenon, how many bearers of eternal, universal artistic and national values. With its power and beauty, it will be able to inspire painters for a long time - from Filipp Malyavin to Kazimir Malevich. But its artistic understanding is now gradually but irreversibly losing that social and political relevance that allowed Russian painting of the 1860s-80s to create a unique image of the Russian peasant as a bearer of core social and moral values.

How is the work of a Russian artist most often defined? sonorous surname Venetsianov? Paintings depicting genre scenes from peasant life, is called the beginning of the national everyday genre in painting, a phenomenon that would ultimately flourish in the era of the Itinerants.

But the magnitude artistic talent Venetsianov, the scale of his human personality had a huge impact on the development of Russian visual arts not only within one genre direction. This becomes especially noticeable when you look closely at his paintings.

"Portrait of a Mother" (1802)

Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov was born in 1780 into a Moscow merchant family whose ancestors came from Greece. They received the nickname Veneziano in Russia, which was later converted into a surname in the Russian way. When Alexey became interested in drawing, his activities did not seem something serious to his parents. Perhaps this is why he did not receive regular art education. It is believed that he received his first knowledge about painting techniques from an “uncle” - a teacher, and main source The artistic education that Venetsianov received included paintings by old masters in museums and creations of modern painters in salons and galleries.

The main genre in Russian painting of that time was the portrait, which is why Venetsianov’s first painting experience known to us belongs to this genre. mother - Anna Lukinichna, nee Kalashnikova.

It is noticeable how the twenty-two-year-old young man still lacks painting skills, how difficult it is for him to convey volume, air and light. But something else is also visible - his ability to convey different textures of fabric, sufficient confidence in the drawing. And most importantly, he managed to convey the feelings of his model: some embarrassment and tension of the mother from an unusual role for her and his tender attitude towards her.

"Self-Portrait" (1811)

After 1802, Venetsianov moved to St. Petersburg, where he tried to make a name for himself and start making a living through painting. Soon he is forced to enter the service as a minor official in the post office. A happy accident allowed him to meet the famous portrait painter V.L. Borovikovsky (1757-1825), who highly appreciated Venetsianov’s paintings and became his mentor both in his profession and in life. Perhaps thanks to his influence, Venetsianov submitted a petition to the Academy of Arts to receive the official title of painter. According to the Academy's charter, the applicant had to present his work. For this purpose, Venetsianov paints a self-portrait.

Already visible in this picture high level technical skill of the artist. This is an accurate and truthful work of a true realist, devoid of any romantic touch or embellishment. The psychological depth of the image created by the artist was also highly appreciated. There is both attentive concentration on work and a clearly felt sense of self-worth.

Venetsianov was designated by the Council of the Academy of Arts as “designated” - one of the formal qualification levels of the artist, which made it possible to receive the title of academician after completing a task assigned by the Council. Venetsianov becomes an academician after painting the assigned portrait of K. I. Golovachevsky.

"The Barn" (1821)

Soon after receiving the title of academician of painting, Venetsianov unexpectedly left the capital and service and settled on his Safonkovo ​​estate in the Tver province. Here he creates his most significant works, dedicated to the poeticization of peasant life.

Before starting work on the painting “The Threshing Barn,” the artist ordered his serfs to dismantle the front wall in the large barn where the grain was stored. He set himself the task of conveying depth, similar to those that struck him in the paintings of the French painter Francois Granet. In addition to the image of the room receding into the distance, amazing for that time, the carefully calibrated composition of the figures of peasants and animals frozen in different poses is impressive. They are full of ancient significance and amazing poetry.

The painting was highly appreciated by Emperor Alexander I, who bought it from the artist and also gave the author a diamond ring. This made his financial situation a little easier.

“On the arable land. Spring" (1820s)

Many paintings by Alexei Gavrilovich Venetsianov are full of secrets and mysteries that are still beyond the control of professionals and art lovers. This is a small canvas (65 x 51 cm) with an almost Botticelli title and a poetic sound commensurate with greatest masterpieces Renaissance. It is believed that this painting is part of a cycle dedicated to the seasons.

The scene of peasant labor appears as an action full of sacred, cosmic meaning. The figure of a young woman who went out to hard work, wearing her best clothes, a child on the edge of a field, making the plot look like an icon of the Virgin Mary, the mirror figure of another peasant woman disappearing into the depths - everything is full of mysteries. The landscape against which these ordinary and at the same time majestic events take place is filled with significance and great simplicity. Alexey Venetsianov, whose paintings are difficult to attribute to a specific genre, is considered one of the founders of the Russian poetic landscape.

"The Reapers" (1820s)

But the main genre for Venetsianov remains the portrait, and the main task he solves is the expression of genuine interest and respect for those whom he portrays. High pictorial skill, combined with laconicism and sophistication of the composition, enhances the impression that Venetsianov has on the viewer. the contents of which can be contained in a few phrases, amaze with their depth and versatility, even if their heroes are simple peasants.

Two butterflies landed on the hand of the reaper, who stopped for a minute to rest. A boy looks at them from over his shoulder, captivated by their beauty. The artist painted almost a trompe l'oeil - it seems that now light wings will flutter and disappear in the summer heat. The main characters are just as real - their faces, hands, clothes. The feelings expressed by the young woman and child seem real, and most importantly, you can tangibly feel how Venetsianov admires them.

"Morning of the Landowner" (1823)

Venetsianov's role as the founder of genre diversity in Russian painting is undeniable. He was one of the first to try to draw attention to the special beauty of Russian nature, paving the way for future brilliant landscape painters - Levitan, Shishkin, Kuindzhi, Savrasov. In the portrait he showed completely unusual main characters - people from the people. But the poeticization of the everyday genre was a particularly innovative phenomenon.

It is believed that the master made his wife, Marfa Afanasyevna, and her serf girls the heroines of his painting. This explains the warm feeling that permeates this canvas. There is no confrontation between the mistress and her forced maids - it is more like a family scene in which the girls have their own dignity and calm beauty. An equally important role is played by the environment in the picture: the lovingly painted interior content and - what especially catches the eye - the soft, but filling light.

"Zakharka" (1825)

Peasant children are frequent subjects in portraits and genre paintings, which Venetsianov wrote. The paintings “The Sleeping Shepherd Boy”, “Here Are Father’s Dinner”, “The Shepherd Boy with a Horn” depict children not as ethereal cherubs from icons and classical paintings - they are full-fledged heroes with their own character, experiencing powerful emotions, which are part of the harmony of our world. Such is Zakharka - main character With the names and descriptions of such works of the artist, his calling as a teacher, which left its mark on Russian painting, becomes clear.

He thought about the fate of talented children born as serfs when he saw a yard boy trying to draw something with chalk on a blackboard. Soon the “Venetsianov school” was born from this. In addition to teaching skills, he gave peasant children shelter, fed and watered them, and tried to redeem many to freedom. Among Venetsianov's students are the brilliant Grigory Soroka and about 70 artists, many of whom graduated from the capital's Academy of Arts. The school's activities proceeded in the face of opposition from official academicians, who did not honor Venetsianov with the title of teacher of painting.

“At the harvest. Summer" (182?)

His life cannot be called carefree; it was always filled with work and troubles. Its end was also tragic and unexpected - Alexey Gavrilovich died in 1847, when the horses harnessed to his cart suddenly got scared and bolted, and he, trying to stop them, fell onto the road.

Man on earth, the harmony of his relationships with nature, with the entire world around him - main topic the artist Venetsianov, the main essence and value of his heritage, for which his name is revered by connoisseurs and lovers of Russian painting. The painting depicting a reaper against the background of a recognizable Russian landscape, at the same time possessing cosmic significance, is one of the peaks of the work of the great Russian painter.

Peasant:

1. A villager whose main occupation is cultivating the land.

Besseldeevka consisted of only twenty-two peasant souls. ( Turgenev. Tchertophanov and Nedopyuskin.)

2. Representative of the lower tax-paying class in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Dictionary of the Russian language. Moscow. " Russian word" 1982.

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The peasant of the 16th century was a free tiller who lived on someone else's land under an agreement with the landowner; his freedom was expressed in a peasant exit or refusal, that is, in the right to leave one plot and move to another, from one landowner to another. Initially this right was not constrained by law; but the very nature of land relations imposed a mutual limitation both on this right of the peasant and on the arbitrariness of the landowner in relation to the peasant: the landowner, for example, could not drive the peasant off the land before the harvest, just as the peasant could not leave his plot without paying the owner at the end of the harvest. From these natural relations of agriculture followed the need for a uniform, legally established period for the peasant exit, when both parties could pay each other. The code of law of Ivan III established one for this mandatory period- a week before Saint George's Day (November 26) and the week following this day. However, in the Pskov land in the 16th century there was another legal deadline for peasants to leave, namely Filippovo (November 14).

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Their own and foreign observers, marveling at the greatness of the deeds of the reformer [Peter I], were amazed at the vast expanses of uncultivated fertile land, the multitude of wastelands, cultivated somehow, on site, and not introduced into normal national economic circulation. People who thought about the reasons for this neglect explained it, firstly, by the decline of the people from a long war, and then by the oppression of officials and nobles, who discouraged the common people from any desire to put their hands to anything: oppression of the spirit resulting from slavery, according to him Weber, has darkened the peasant’s every meaning to such an extent that he has ceased to understand his own benefit and thinks only about his daily meager food.

V. Klyuchevsky. Russian history. Moscow. "Exmo". 2000.

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Immediately after Peter’s death, the impatient Prosecutor General Yaguzhinsky, before anyone else, spoke about the plight of the peasants; then in the Supreme Privy Council there was lively talk about the need to alleviate this situation. “The poor peasantry” became a common government expression.

It was not the peasants themselves who were concerned, but their escapes, which robbed the government of recruits and tax payers. They fled not only in individual households, but also in entire villages; From some estates everyone fled without a trace; from 1719 to 1727 g

There were almost 200 thousand fugitives - an official figure that usually lagged behind reality.
The very area of ​​flight expanded widely: previously the serfs ran from one landowner to another, but now they flocked to the Don, to the Urals and to distant Siberian cities, to the Bashkirs, to the schism, even abroad, to Poland and Moldova. In the Supreme Privy Council under Catherine I, they reasoned that if things went like this, then it would come to the point that there would be no taxes or recruits to take from anyone, and in the note of Menshikov and other dignitaries the indisputable truth was expressed that if without an army it is impossible for the state to stand , then it is necessary to take care of the peasants, because the soldier is connected with the peasant, like the soul with the body, and if there is no peasant, then there will be no soldier.
To prevent escapes, the capitation tax was reduced and arrears were added up; the fugitives were returned to their old places, first simply, and then with corporal punishment. But here’s the problem: the returned fugitives fled again with new comrades, who were persuaded by stories about a free life on the run, in the steppe or in Poland.
The escapes were accompanied by small peasant riots caused by the arbitrariness of the owners and their managers. Elizabeth's reign was full of local, silent disturbances among the peasants, especially those in the monasteries. Pacifying teams were sent to beat the rebels or to be beaten by them, depending on who took them. These were small test outbreaks, which 20-30 years later merged into the Pugachev fire.

V. Klyuchevsky. Russian history. Moscow. "Exmo". 2000.

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A. Smirnov.Vasilisa Kozhina - partisan, peasant woman of the Sychevsky district of the Smolensk province.1813.

A. Smirnov.Gerasim Kurin - leader of the peasant partisan detachment in 1812year.1813.

Adrian van Ostade.Peasant family.1647.

Peasant woman with cornflowers.

Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov.Peasant girl with a sickle in rye.

Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi.The head of a Ukrainian peasant in a straw hat.1890-1895.

Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov.Peasant yard in Finland.1902.

Vasily Grigorievich Perov.Peasant in the field.1876.

Vasily Grigorievich Perov.Return of peasants from funerals in winter.Early 1880s.

Vasily Maksimovich Maksimov.Peasant girl.1865.

Vasily Maksimovich Maksimov.The arrival of a sorcerer at a peasant wedding.1875.

Wenceslas Hollar.Peasant wedding.1650.

Vladimir Makovsky.Peasant children.1890.

Evgraf Romanovich Reitern.A peasant woman from Willenshausen with a fallen child in her arms.1843.

I. Laminitis.Russian peasants.Engraving based on a drawing by E. Korneev.1812.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin.Peasant woman with cows.1873.

Ivan Petrovich Argunov.Portrait of an unknown peasant woman in Russian costume.1784.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Two female figures (Embracing peasant women).1878.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Bearded peasant.1879.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Peasant yard.1879.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Two Ukrainian peasants.1880.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Peasant girl.1880.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Ukrainian peasant.1880.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Old peasant.1885.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Portrait of a peasant.1889.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Peasant's head.

Konstantin Makovsky.Peasant lunch in the field.

Mikhail Shibanov.Peasant lunch.1774.

Olga Kablukova.A hundred-year-old Tsarskoye Selo peasant woman with her family.1815.

Militiaman of 1812 in a peasant hut.Lubok painting.