Sergei Aleksandrovich Lobovikov was born in 1870 in the village of Belaya, Glazovsky district, Vyatka province, into the family of a deacon. He graduated from a rural school and studied in Glazovsky for two years. religious school. At the age of 14 he was orphaned. In 1885, he was sent by his guardian as an apprentice in the photo studio of Pyotr Grigorievich Tikhonov in Vyatka. In 1892 he was taken into active military service (in 1893 he was released for health reasons). In 1893, he worked for a short time in the photography of K. Bulla in St. Petersburg. In 1894 he returned to Vyatka and opened his own photo workshop (in 1904 he bought a house on the corner of Moskovskaya and Tsarevskaya streets, where his photographs were kept for 30 years). Since 1899, he has participated in exhibitions in Russia and abroad, and has repeatedly received top awards. In 1900, he toured Europe and participated in the Paris World Exhibition (bronze medal).

In 1908 he was elected chairman of the Vyatka Photographic Society and received a gold medal for his photographs at the International Exhibition in Kyiv. In 1909, he made a second trip abroad and participated in an exhibition in Dresden. In 1909-1912. - Chairman of Vyatsky art club, did a lot of work on organizing an art historical museum in Vyatka (traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg to visit artists and collectors, collected paintings). In 1909, he received first prize at the competition of the Russian Photographic Society. In 1913-1914 - vowel of the Vyatka City Duma. Since 1918 - as a member of the board of the Provincial Subdepartment for Museum Affairs and the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquity. In 1918, many photographic studios were nationalized, Lobovikov’s teacher Tikhonov was arrested by the Cheka as a hostage and executed (at the age of 66). Lobovikov managed to avoid nationalization of the workshop; in 1920 he received a safe conduct letter from Lunacharsky. In 1921-26. Lobovikov participated in the assessment of confiscated church valuables, compiled a collection of 617 items of antique utensils and asked to leave it in Vyatka (despite repeated petitions, the collection was taken to Moscow). In 1927, Lobovikov’s personal exhibition was held in Moscow in honor of the 40th anniversary of his photographic activity. In those same years, the work of old Russian photographers was criticized as “narrowly aesthetic, divorced from Soviet reality.” Since 1920, Lobovikov taught a photography course at the Vyatka Pedagogical Institute. In 1932, he donated his house and darkroom to the Pedagogical Institute. By decision of the institute's management, the laboratory was soon liquidated, and the house was turned into a student dormitory (the photographer himself and his family were forced to huddle in a small part of the house). In 1934, he received an academic pension, moved to Leningrad, and worked in the film and photo laboratory of the Academy of Sciences. He died in November 1941 in besieged Leningrad. In 1954, the photo archive of S.A. Lobovikov was given by his heirs as a gift to the Kirov Art Museum. Lobovikov's house in Vyatka (Kirov) was demolished in the late 1950s.

From the diary of S.A. Lobovikova: “December 9, 1899. I pass by L...va’s house. A couple of trotters are standing at the porch. A poor little man in poor clothes, all cold, stopped at the gate; he looked at the horses, turned away, went his way and just sighed deeply and heavily.” -he-he-he-e." How many words and feelings are expressed in this “e-he-he-e-e”; these exclamations fall so deeply into the soul, one feels ashamed in front of this poor man... Wrapped in a new fur coat, let him yourself, and why do you care that others are cold and don’t have warm clothes... Yes, our souls are callous, cold - only our fur coats keep us warm!”

A. Koltsov

Why are you sleeping, man?
After all, spring is just around the corner;
After all, your neighbors
They've been working for a long time.
Get up, wake up, rise up,
Look at yourself:
What were you? and what happened?
And what do you have?
On the threshing floor - not a sheaf;
There is not a grain in the bins;
In the yard, on the grass -
At least roll a ball.
From the cages of the brownie
I swept away the litter with a broom;
And horses for debt
He spread it among the neighbors.
And under the bench there is a chest
Lying overturned;
And, bent over, the hut,
She stands there like an old lady.
Remember your time:
How it rolled
Through fields and meadows
Golden river!
From the yard and threshing floor
Along the big path,
Through villages, cities,
For trading people!
And how are the doors to him
Dissolved everywhere
And in a corner of honor
There was your place!
And now under the window
You are sitting in need
And all day on the stove
You lie awake.
And in the fields as an orphan
The bread is not cut.
The wind sharpens the grain!
The bird pecks him!
Why are you sleeping, man?
After all, summer has already passed,
After all, autumn is already in the yard
He looks through the spinning wheel.
Winter follows her
He walks in a warm fur coat,
The path is covered with snow,
It crunches under the sleigh.
All the neighbors are on them
They bring and sell bread,
Collecting the treasury -
They drink the mash by the ladle.

Lobovikov’s favorite filming location was the village of Fileyskoye, which stood near the city on the banks of the Vyatka River.

Lullaby

The sun is setting
And the day gets dark,
Fell from the mountain
There is shade in the village.
Only the church dome
Illuminated by the sun,
And the church is open
And the bell rings.
Bell for Vespers
Christian is calling;
Tomorrow is Sunday -
Rest from work.
And heard in the field
The bells are calling,
Villager to the village
I've already driven the cows.
And in the village there is a church
It's so full of people
And sparkle with lights
Lots of candles.
Labor candles
They burn brighter than the stars,
And people pray
They create in simplicity.

Ivan Nikitin
Grandfather

Bald, with a white beard,
Grandfather is sitting.
Cup with bread and water
Standing in front of him.
White as a harrier, there are wrinkles on the forehead,
With a worn-out face.
He saw a lot of sadness
Forever.
It's all gone; the strength is gone,
The gaze became dull;
Death put me in the grave
Children and grandchildren.
With him in the smoky hut
The cat lives alone.
He is old too, and sleeps all day long,
He won't jump off the stove.
The old man needs a little:
Weave bast shoes and sell them -
So I'm full. His joy is
IN God's temple walk.
To the wall, near the threshold,
He will stand there, groaning,
And he praises God for his sorrows,
God's child.
He's glad to live, he doesn't mind going to the grave -
In a dark corner.
Where did you get this strength?
Poor little guy?

Russian painting of the 19th century.

A remarkable painter, the creator of a unique national-romantic movement in Russian painting was Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov (1780-1847) , Borovikovsky's favorite student. Venetsianov created a unique style, combining in his works the traditions of capital academicism and Russian romanticism early XIX V. and the idealization of peasant life. He became the founder of the Russian everyday genre. At the beginning of 1819, the artist left for the small estate of Safonkovo, Tver province. At the age of forty, it is as if he begins to work in painting again. He was attracted by people from the people, serfs, who courageously and heroically fought in the war with Napoleon, who preserved high human dignity and nobility, despite the heavy oppression of serfdom. And although in further artist occasionally returned to portraits; his main interests from the early 1820s were associated with the everyday genre. Already Venetsianov’s first paintings in the new genre: pastels “Beet Peeling”, “Reaper” - convincingly testified that Venetsianov consciously strived for realistic fidelity to the image, considering the main task of the painter “to depict nothing other than in nature, which is to obey her alone without any admixture of any artist’s manner.”

Russian peasants as depicted by Venetsianov are people filled with spiritual beauty and nobility, moral purity and inner integrity. In an effort to poeticize the Russian people, to affirm his high dignity, the artist somewhat idealized the work and life of the peasants and did not show the true hardships of serf labor. But the very fact of addressing such a “base” topic of peasant life from the point of view of official aesthetics deserves special attention. Venetsianov, like no other artist of the first half of the 19th century, boldly and confidently, with unusual consistency, asserted in art the right to depict ordinary peasants. Its true heyday creative talent falls on the 20-30s of the 19th century. It was during this period that such masterpieces as “On the arable land. Spring”, “At the harvest. Summer”, “Children in the field” and a number of sketches appeared.

The working peasants in Venetsianov’s paintings are beautiful and full of nobility. In the painting "On the Plowed Field. Spring" the theme of labor is intertwined with the theme of motherhood, with the theme of beauty native nature. The best and most artistically perfect genre painting artist - "At the Harvest. Summer" is distinguished by its lyrical-epic perception of the surrounding reality. If in the first painting Venetsianov depicted a spring landscape with wide expanses of fields, the first shoots of foliage, light clouds in the blue sky, then in the second the artist made one feel the height of the Russian summer - the time of village suffering - with sparkling golden fields, a sultry sky. Both canvases are painted with light, clear colors.
In 1824, Venetsianov’s paintings were presented at an exhibition in St. Petersburg, which evoked an enthusiastic response from the progressive Russian public. “Finally, we have waited for an artist who turned his wonderful talent to the depiction of one native, to the representation of objects surrounding him, close to his heart and to ours...” wrote P. P. Svinin, the creator of the “Russian Museum” in St. Petersburg. In subsequent years, Venetsianov painted many portraits of young peasant girls: "Peasant Woman", "Peasant Woman with Mushrooms in the Forest", "Girl with Sewing", "Peasant Woman with Cornflowers" and others. With all the originality of each of these works, they are united by the artist’s desire to embody new ideas about beauty in art, about folk beauty, spiritual and noble.

Venetsianov’s significance in the history of Russian art is extremely great. He was one of the first artists who devoted his work to depicting peasants and established the everyday genre as an equal and important area in art. In the artist’s canvases, folk images appeared, filled with spiritual nobility and great human dignity.
At the same time, romanticism, which at that time combined with academic classicism, was dominant in official artistic life.

In the 30s and 40s years XIX V. The leading role in the fine arts belonged to painting, mainly historical painting. Its characteristic feature was the reflection of events ancient history at tragic climactic moments. In contrast to the historical painting of the previous era (A.P. Losenko), which gravitated towards national history with moralizing subjects, where the bright beginning triumphs over the forces of evil, the historical compositions of K.P. Bryullova, F.A. Bruni, A.A. Ivanov are of an abstract symbolic nature. As a rule, their paintings are painted on religious subjects, the emphasis in the image is transferred from the central figure of the main character to the crowd at a critical moment.
The leading role here belongs Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852) , who combined in his work a romantic concept with the classic canon of images. Contemporaries unanimously considered Bryullov’s main work to be a large historical canvas "The last day of Pompeii". Having visited the vicinity of Naples, where the archaeological excavations ancient Roman cities - Pompeii and Herculaneum - he finally determined the theme of his future painting. Shocked by the sight of the city buried under a layer of lava and ash during the eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79, he began to implement his plan.

The artist is fascinated by fidelity, sublime love and ineradicable faith in justice. The raging elements only helped to reveal their extraordinary spiritual beauty in people. The three foreground groups on the right represent these high feelings. The sons are trying to save on the shoulders of their frail old father, who cannot come to terms with the death of the white marble gods falling down from the roofs of the palaces. Their fall is perceived as the collapse of his ideals about a rationally arranged life. Young Pliny, carefully lifting and persuading his mother to gather the rest of her strength and try to escape, cannot leave the most dear person in the world. The young groom, not noticing the lightning and not hearing the roar of falling stones, holds the dead bride in his arms. The best day in their lives became the last day of their earthly happiness. The idea of ​​the painting was based on a romantic emotional contrast between the perfection of the people depicted and the inevitability of their death: buildings collapse, marble idols fall, and no one, be they brave, beautiful or noble, can be saved during a catastrophe. K. P. Bryullov refuses the classicist requirements for highlighting the main character. The entire human mass becomes his hero, where everyone is an equal participant in the historical drama, everyone experiences the power of an inevitable natural disaster.

Bryullov was also one of the most significant and popular Russian portrait painters of his time. He is a master primarily of ceremonial oil portraits, where a person is presented at full height in a solemn setting, as well as excellent pencil and watercolor portraits. Bryullov's portraits reflect the romantic ideal of a beautiful and proud personality, standing above his surroundings. Such is, for example, “The Horsewoman,” executed in shining golden-fawn, pink and greenish-brown tones, reminiscent of lush valerine painting of the 18th century.
In its full splendor, Bryullov’s enormous talent, despite his academic training, manifested itself in two portraits of Countess Yu.P. Samoilova- with the pupil Giovannina and the little black and with the pupil Amacillia in a masquerade. IN last portrait the simplicity of the composition and laconic coloring, built on the rich color contrast of blue and red, give the canvas a special decorativeness and at the same time monumentality. The countess’s beautiful, cold face framed by black curls against the backdrop of a bright red curtain, her attire of a masquerade queen, her young companion in oriental attire, a motley crowd of masks in the back of the hall - everything contributes to the creation of a bright romantic image.
Bryullov's name became a symbol of a new pictorial academicism with elements of romance.

Even more academic romanticism manifested itself in creativity Fyodor Antonovich Bruni (1799-1875) . The artist worked on the painting “The Copper Serpent” for fifteen years, and this is explained not only by the huge size of the canvas, but also by the difficulty of comprehending and writing the Old Testament plot, which is deep in philosophical content. Rescued from Egyptian captivity, the Jewish people, under the leadership of Moses, wandered in the waterless desert for forty long years. The tired people, tormented by thirst and hunger, grumbled, and the Lord sent punishment on them - a rain of poisonous snakes. Then the people repented and began to pray for mercy, to which the Lord commanded Moses to erect a colossus and place a serpent on it. Anyone who looks at him with true faith in salvation through the Lord will have mercy.

The artist set himself a difficult task - to depict the varied reactions of a diverse crowd, to show the degree of faith and submission to the divine will of each person. But the people represented on the canvas are more likely to be gripped by fear than filled with deep humility to the commands of Heaven. The artist’s attempt to imagine the action in night lighting, capturing figurative compositions moonlight, gives the picture a note of symbolism and produces a mystical impression. His “Copper Serpent” belongs entirely to its era: faces merge into a crowd gripped by common fear and slavish obedience. The rhythm of the distribution of human figures, the distribution of light and shadow seems to repeat the rhythm in which the emotions of the crowd rise and fall. The religious and mystical orientation of the painting reflected the fashionable mood at court and in high society circles.

The most significant phenomenon in Russian painting of the 30-50s of the 19th century. – works Alexander Andreevich Ivanov (1806-1858) . Italy became Ivanov’s spiritual homeland, where he came to continue his studies and work. Here he carefully considered the theme of his future canvas, which he wanted to devote to a turning point in the life of mankind - the appearance of the Savior in the world. In history, he is looking for a perfect image that can shake the soul of an inexperienced viewer and become an impulse for his spiritual rebirth. Unlike Bryullov, who sang a hymn to the wonderful man of Antiquity, Ivanov plunges into the world of the New Testament, studies the history of spiritual insight and the formation of humanity, freely making its moral choice. He really hoped that the future work could also provide answers to many questions of our time. Majestic picture “The Appearance of Christ to the People (The Appearance of the Messiah)” became the main result of his creative biography.
It took the artist twenty years to implement his difficult plan. The persistent search for composition, persistent and constant work on nature were caused by the desire to achieve maximum persuasiveness. The skill of the academic school was clearly visible in the many created preparatory sketches, full-scale sketches, sketches (there are more than 300 of them!) related to separate fragments future canvas.
The substantive center of his canvas is not the actions of the heroes, but their reasons, not a deliberate demonstration of the ideal and heroic, but barely noticeable movements and transitions of feelings (from surprise, curiosity and distrust to awe and delight). Combining in the picture two evangelical events of different times - the preaching of John the Baptist and the appearance of Christ - he achieves an amazing integrity of perception of the significant event.
People of different ages and temperaments came to the banks of the Jordan in their own way, each has their own life experience behind them, each heard something different in the words of John the Baptist, each makes their own choice. Some are gladly ready to believe the inspired words of the prophet who announced the coming of the Savior, others remain indifferent to them, and others are filled with hopes of deliverance from suffering. Despite the fact that everyone is at a certain stage of their spiritual and moral development, all together they express the universal human dream of finding truth.

The embodiment of the author's main idea is reflected in the composition of the painting. At first glance it seems quite traditional. Following the classical principle, the artist places the participants in the scene in the foreground along the picture plane, balancing both of its parts and focusing the audience’s attention on the figure of John the Baptist. At the same time, he directs the movement deeper, where the figure of the walking Christ is depicted. The multidirectional movement along and inside the space is greatly enhanced by the turns and glances of the characters turned towards Christ. This is understandable, because it is here, according to the author’s plan, that the center of the entire composition is located. All the invisible threads connecting disparate groups of people reach out to him. It is no coincidence that the cross in the hands of John and the spear of the Roman horseman are directed in his direction. Let us also pay attention to the fact that Jesus does not go to the righteous (John’s group), but to the Pharisees, accompanied by Roman horsemen.

A natural school with inherent features critical realism and acute social orientation, arose in the middle of the 19th century. initially in Russian literature and appeared in the works of N.V. Gogol, N.A. Nekrasova, F.M. Dostoevsky, I.A. Goncharova, D.V. Grigorovich. At the same time with new literature, whose representatives strived for “naturalness, naturalness, an image of life without embellishment,” by the mid-40s of the 19th century. a whole generation of artists appeared - adherents natural school. And the first among them should be considered Pavel Andreevich Fedotov (1815-1852) , whose paintings represent scenes from life, where the tragic essence of the situation is hidden under the cover of the everyday. These are a kind of moral sermons, the purpose of which is the correction of others. These are “Fresh Cavalier”, “The Picky Bride”, “Breakfast of an Aristocrat”, “Major’s Matchmaking”.
In the picture “Major's Matchmaking” There was a typical phenomenon of life at that time - a marriage of convenience: a rich merchant and his entire family dream of going “from rags to riches” through the marriage of his daughter to a bankrupt major. Here, the art of mise-en-scène, characteristic of Fedotov, is most noticeable: in the center, the cutesy bride breaks away from the hands of her mother, who roughly grabs her by the skirt to hold her in the room, the rest of the characters are united in groups, each of which in its own way “tells” about the patriarchal merchant life. The extraordinary precision, expressiveness of the characters’ poses, gestures, and facial expressions allow us to see for a moment the true morals of this family. In a minute, the daughter will straighten her dress, the mother will smile kindly and bow, the cook and household members will disappear into the back rooms. The characters were chosen by Fedotov with an amazing knowledge of Russian life and represent a curious and precious collection of physiognomies characteristic of the 40s.
The painting is a true masterpiece in terms of painting: its color scheme is based on an expressive juxtaposition of pink, lilac, greenish-ocher and yellow. The shimmer of thick silk fabric, the shimmer of old bronze, and the shine of transparent glass are conveyed with a remarkable sense of material. In the soft lines of the bride’s thrown back head, in her gesture, in addition to affectation, there is a lot of femininity, emphasized by the airiness of the white and pink fabrics of her outfit. In all this, in addition to Fedotov the satirist, one senses Fedotov the poet.

The painting "Fresh Cavalier" was painted in 1846. This is a painting by P.A. Fedotova conveys to the viewer an episode from the life of an official. The official received his first award - an order - and appears to us as the main character of the picture. His pride and arrogance attracts the eye. The artist depicted his hero in a caricature that makes the viewer smile. After all, the order received by an official is the lowest award that an official of those times could receive. But the main character, a minor official, sees this award as a career advancement. He dreams of a different life. The furnishings in the hero’s room are poor and explain the hero’s reaction to such a low reward.

The comical nature of the image was achieved due to the contrast of his image. In the painting he is depicted in a huge robe, barefoot, wearing curler curls, standing in a squalid room. There is an award on the robe. A serious facial expression against the backdrop of a robe and homely furnishings makes you smile. After all, the gentleman boasts to his maid. Most likely, he has no one else to show his reward to. The maid's gaze is condescending. She has not stopped performing her daily chores, and is standing next to the gentleman, holding a boot in her hands. The hero’s room is small, many things are piled on top of each other. On the dining table, which is most likely a work table, there is sausage cut on newspaper. There are fish bones lying under the table. Every corner of the room is a mess, things are piled on top of each other. The uniform is hanging on two chairs, and there are some things lying around. The cat is tearing the upholstery on one of the chairs. The hero's curling irons and curling irons, which lie right there on the table, speak of the hero's desire to be fashionable and well-groomed. But all the hero’s things don’t have proper care. The image of the hero and his desire to be higher in rank than he is looks ridiculous and ridiculous. Even the cat on the chair is thin and unkempt.

In the 60s, they began to demand from the artist “content,” “explanation of life,” and even “a verdict on the phenomena depicted.” The main thing in Russian painting was the predominance of moral and social principles over the artistic. This feature was most clearly manifested in the work of democratically minded artists. In 1863, the Academy of Arts set a program for a gold medal with a plot from Scandinavian mythology. All thirteen applicants, among them I.N. Kramskoy, K.G. Makovsky, A.D. Litovchenko, who did not agree with this program and with programs in general, refused to participate in the competition and left the Academy. Having defiantly left the Academy, the rebels organized the “Artel of Artists”, and in 1870, together with Moscow painters - “Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions”. Starting with Perov and ending with Levitan, all outstanding representatives of Russian painting were participants in these exhibitions - the Wanderers.
The Peredvizhniki artists turned their gaze to their difficult fate common man. In the portrait gallery Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy(1837-1887) There are many wonderful peasant types who express faith in the people, their spiritual strength, intelligence, talent and kindness. Best paintings artist on this topic - "The man in the bullet-ridden hat" and “Mina Moiseev.” Kramskoy’s “preaching” activities to a certain extent hindered him as a painter: he tried to solve by pictorial means what only journalism could do, and his plans did not find adequate pictorial embodiment. That’s why he moved from “Christ in the Desert” to “Mermaids”, from “Herodias” to “Inconsolable Grief”, from “Moonlit Night” to “Unknown”. And yet it should be said that it was Kramskoy’s brush that created portraits of such geniuses of Russian literature as L.N., remarkable in their depth of psychological characterization. Tolstoy and N.A. Nekrasov. From the portrait of Tolstoy, an intelligent, wise and extremely vigilant man looks at us.

The plot of the picture "Christ in the Desert" associated with the forty-day fast of Jesus Christ described in the New Testament; in the desert, where he retired after his baptism, and with the temptation of Christ by the devil, which occurred during this fast. According to the artist, he wanted to capture the dramatic situation of moral choice, inevitable in the life of every person.
The painting depicts Christ sitting on a gray stone located on a hill in the same gray rocky desert. Kramskoy uses cool colors to depict early morning - the dawn is just beginning. The horizon line is quite low and divides the picture approximately in half. In the lower part there is a cold rocky desert, and in the upper part there is a pre-dawn sky, a symbol of light, hope and future transformation. As a result, the figure of Christ, dressed in a dark cloak and red tunic, dominates the space of the picture, but at the same time is in harmony with the harsh landscape that surrounds it.
Restraint in the depiction of clothing allows the artist to give primary importance to the face and hands of Christ, which create the psychological persuasiveness and humanity of his image. The tightly clenched hands are located almost in the very geometric center of the canvas. Together with the face of Christ, they represent the semantic and emotional center of the composition, attracting the viewer’s attention.

"Unknown" considered one of the most significant and famous works Ivan Kramskoy. By giving the canvas such a name, the artist gave it an aura of mystery and intrigue. In ideological and artistic terms of the content of the image of the “Unknown”, the painter managed to create a work that stood on the verge of a portrait and a thematic painting.

Among the first Russian artists who, in the spirit of the progressive press of the 60s, turned their paintings into flagellating sermons, was Vasily Grigorievich Perov (1834-1882) . Already in his first film “Sermon in the village”, published in the year of the liberation of the peasants, there was not a trace left of Fedotov’s harmless ridicule: the obese landowner, indifferent to the priest’s words, fell asleep on the chair; his young wife, seizing the moment, whispers with her admirer, thereby demonstrating disdain for spiritual values ​​on the part of the “enlightened” society. Next picture “Procession for Easter” was quite “Bazarov-esque” in its sharpness and consonant with the darkest accusatory novels of that time.
A procession in full force with banners and icons leaves the tsesovalnik, having just treated themselves there to glory: drunken pilgrims tumble out of the tavern in disarray and splash through the spring slush; the priest, barely moving his feet, leaves the porch with great difficulty; the deacon with the censer stumbled and fell.

Both clergy and men are presented in the most unattractive form, leaving no doubt that everything in Russia is worthless and requires a radical overhaul and reconstruction. All other paintings by Perov, with the exception of “The arrival of the governess” and “Troikas,” more of a sad rather than accusatory nature, filled with sorrow for “poor humanity.” Compared with early paintings, characterized by excessive narrative details, fragmentation of form and lack of a sense of color, in later works Perov's integrity appeared. Especially good portraits of F.M. Dostoevsky and A.N. Ostrovsky, great Russian writers. These works rightfully allow us to rank Perov among the founders of the psychological portrait in Russian painting - he was able to accurately and completely show the spirituality of his heroes. Despite the “ideological” nature of his art, Perov remains a very great master in the accuracy and persuasiveness of his characterizations.
One of the most expressive is the picture "Seeing off the dead man". Written

upon Perov's return from abroad, where he studied painting, it brought him the first prize from the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. The skinny horse slowly and dejectedly trudges along the hill towards the gusts of wind. In the sleigh there is a roughly put together coffin, covered with matting and tied with ropes. On both sides of him, children perched on sleighs. The girl looks sad. Opposite is a boy in a huge fur hat that slides down over his eyes. He is shivering from the cold, wrapping himself in his father’s large sheepskin coat. A dog runs next to the sleigh, seeing off its owner on his last journey, further emphasizing the loneliness and homelessness of the orphaned peasant family. We don’t see the mother’s face, but how eloquent are her bowed head and drooping shoulders! No one is around, no one is accompanying them on their last journey to the only breadwinner of a peasant family. And because they have no sympathizers, we feel the tragedy of what is happening even more. This impression is reinforced by the joyless, dull landscape: snow-covered fields, deepening twilight, low-hanging gloomy, leaden clouds. All around there is cold silence and endless, painful silence...

Among the Itinerant artists, the largest is Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930) . He, like the rest of the Peredvizhniki, saw the content of paintings in what could be subtracted from them, so he constantly resorted to literary topics, tried to write an evil satire as expressively as possible (“Procession in Kursk province"), a cheerful sermon (“Cossacks”), a gloomy tragedy (“Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan November 16, 1581”), everyday scene with political overtones (“Arrest of a propagandist”, “Seeing off a recruit”, “We weren’t expecting”). In almost every one of his paintings one can feel not only rationality, but also a burning temperament, albeit with a dose of theatricality, and absolute psychological accuracy. The characters in his paintings, very precisely positioned, expressively gesticulating, are still actors playing a role, and not deeply feeling people. Only in “Barge Haulers on the Volga,” written in teenage years under the direct impression of what he saw during the trip along the Volga, the drama is simply and clearly expressed.
From a painting "Barge Haulers on the Volga", which became the highest achievement of the art of realism in the 1870s, began his “glory throughout Great Rus'.” In it, he abandoned the edification and reproof usual for everyday painting, and for the first time expressed not only the suffering of people in hard labor, but also a formidable social force. With amazing skill, Repin gave a socio-psychological “biography” of the people and recreated the unique individuality of each character. In eleven figures of barge haulers, a typical portrait of folk Rus' was created, and all classes of Russian society appeared before the viewer. In a letter to V.V. Stasov about this painting, Repin wrote: “The judge is now a man, and therefore it is necessary to reproduce his interests.” It was not the barge haulers that inspired the author with contemptuous disgust, but rather respect and admiration for their inner strength and beauty. According to F. M. Dostoevsky, the true truth was revealed on the canvas “without any special explanations or labels.” Dostoevsky gave the artist his greatest credit for the fact that not a single one of his barge haulers shouts from the painting: “Look how unhappy I am and to what extent you are in debt to the people.”

The multifaceted talent of I. E. Repin was clearly expressed in historical canvases, striking with the authenticity of the depiction of events and the depth psychological characteristics. In events that went into the distant past, he looked for the culminating moments of life, dramatic situations in which the true essence of a person was most fully manifested. He could masterfully show his heroes at turning points in their lives, taking them by surprise, in moments of extreme stress of mental strength. At the same time, Repin was generously gifted with the ability to sense continuity and draw parallels between the historical past and the present.
So, the idea of ​​the painting "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan" arose in connection with the murder of Alexander II by the Narodnaya Volya. “Feelings were overloaded with the horrors of our time,” Repin wrote in those days. Repin found “a way out for the painful in history” in the depiction of the terrible moment of insight of the son-killer, who suddenly realized the impossibility of changing anything in his life. The picture clearly conveyed the idea of ​​the crime of murder, of violating the immutable commandment “thou shalt not kill.” Equally terrible are the loneliness and repentance of the crouching old man, trying to lift the heavy body of his son, and the merciful gesture of forgiveness of the son, touching his father’s weakening hand. The polysemy and versatility, the psychological depth of the work could not leave anyone indifferent.

The picture is filled with other life-affirming content “The Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish Sultan”, expressing the element of the people's character, the spirit of their chivalry and camaraderie. With a sense of optimism, Repin managed to convey the strength of the Cossack freemen, her inexhaustible sense of humor and desire for freedom. For the first time in Russian painting, the feeling of unity between the masses and the leader - the leader of the military brotherhood - was conveyed. In a huge canvas (203 x 358 cm), he created a kind of hymn to the national spirit, an entire “symphony of laughter.” Repin worked on this painting for more than 15 years: the work never let go of the artist’s imagination. He wrote with pleasure to V.V. Stasov about its heroes: “What a bunch of people!!! Their din and noise makes your head spin, you can’t part with them! Damn people!

I. E. Repin made a significant contribution to the art of portraiture. Successfully developing the best traditions of Russian painting, in each work of this genre he revealed the “dialectics of the soul”, the complex emotional world and the unique characteristics of each individual person. In each portrait of the artist, rare observation, psychological vigilance, the desire for truthfulness, and rejection of falsehood were expressed. Repin never “corrected” individuality, did not strive to “improve” or idealize it, he did not like it when models deliberately “posed for him.” In most cases, the portrait was born in an atmosphere of lively communication, conversation, and sometimes heated debate. That is why their artistic solutions are so diverse.
Repin could paint a portrait in one session, on a sudden impulse, captured by the world of his model, but at the same time he could work long and painfully, rewriting and changing canvases more than once. With exceptional interest, he wrote about people close to him in spirit, “dear to the nation, its best sons,” with many of them he had deep friendships. Even when he painted the same face several times, he discovered something new and unique in it.
The pinnacle of the artist’s portrait art is portraits of the composer M. P. Mussorgsky and the writer L. N. Tolstoy, in which the “power of the immortal spirit” is conveyed, the impression of the integrity of the individual and the harmony of being.
The portrait has always remained the artist’s favorite genre; he turned to it throughout his entire creative life. Researchers have repeatedly argued that if Repin would have painted only portraits, he would have remained a great artist in the history of Russian art.

An outstanding contribution to the development of the historical genre of painting was made by Vasily Ivanovich Surikov (1848-1916). For his canvases, he chose historically significant, turning points in the life of Russia, showing their incredible complexity, tragedy and psychological depth. He fully mastered the art of identifying general historical patterns in specific, real facts and showing the sources of internal national contradictions. Creating an artistic image of the historical past, he often saw it through the fate of an individual who embodied the “heroic soul of his people” (M. V. Nesterov). At the same time, he drew material for his paintings from modern reality, seeing in it suitable associations, characteristic strokes and significant details. Surikov never denounced, passed sentences or made assessments. In everything he portrayed, he allowed himself only empathy and emotional objectivity.
As a master of historical painting, Surikov loudly announced himself for the first time in the film "Morning of the Streltsy Execution", which reflected the consequences of the revolt of the archers, who supported Princess Sophia in 1698 and opposed the legitimate power that belonged to her younger brother- Peter I. The author wanted to convey not blood or execution in this work, but a people’s national tragedy, to talk about the terrible price paid by the people living in an era of change and falling under the wheel of history. The author saw the dramatic sound of the canvas in the “solemnity of the last minutes” experienced by the archers.
Each image in the crowd represents an individual, portrait character, which was created in an intense search for sitters and in careful work on sketches. All Sagittarius experience the tragedy in their own way, expressing defiance, rebellious spirit and indignation. On their faces and in their poses there is a whole range of feelings: gloomy silence and sad farewell, stubborn anger, brooding and dull resignation.
The emotional center of the composition is a silent duel, a “duel of glances,” a confrontation between the two main characters - Peter I and the red-bearded archer. The head of the irreconcilable rebel, not broken by torture, is proudly raised, directing his gaze, full of indomitable hatred, towards the young king. He alone did not take off his hat in front of him and frantically clutches a burning candle in his hands. Peter I is depicted against the backdrop of the Kremlin wall - the stronghold of state power. There is a feeling of greatness throughout his entire figure. inner strength and confidence in the rightness of their struggle. In this confrontation there is no right and wrong; everyone has their own grievance and their own truth. Reflecting on the reasons for the collapse of many of the undertakings of the reformer tsar, the author expresses the idea of ​​his moral defeat and tragic disunity with the people.
With great skill, Surikov painted bright female characters in whom the people's tragedy is perceived especially tangibly and emotionally. The old women sitting motionless in the road mess in the foreground, the desperately crying little girl in a red scarf, the heart-rending screaming young woman, whose husband is already being led to execution, remain in the viewers’ memories for a long time. Despite the fact that the artist in most cases does not show their faces, the viewer is conveyed a feeling of the last degree of their grief and despair. Every female image, created by the painter, is distinguished by stunning life truth and psychological persuasiveness.
The artistic design of the painting is subordinated to the author’s ideological plan. Its architectural frame plays an important semantic and compositional role. To the motley heads and the asymmetrical forms of St. Basil's Cathedral are contrasted with the severity of the powerful Kremlin walls, and the spontaneous mass of the people's crowd is contrasted with the strict regularity of Peter the Great's regiments. The upper edge of the picture with the domes of St. Basil's Cathedral is cut off. As if decapitated, the cathedral is perceived as a symbol of pre-Petrine Rus' and the rebellious archers.

It is difficult to find a single compositional center in the picture: separate groups are formed around some figures of the archers, symbolically embodying the elements of the people's grief. Data in various turns and angles, all of them are subject to strict internal logic that meets the author's intention. Surikov said more than once that the composition “needs to be properly arranged, so that the figures do not become separated in the picture, but are all tightly connected to each other.” So the “crowdedness” of the crowd of archers can be perceived as a conscious author’s technique of uniting the people into a single, holistic artistic image.

In the picture "Menshikov in Berezovo" echoes of the “senseless and merciless” “Russian revolt” are also heard. Here is presented the tragedy of the family of a man who was once one of the most influential figures of Peter's time, exiled with his family to distant Berezov. Surikov invites the viewer to peer into the face of a man, symbolizing for the artist a whole historical era. The lonely “chick of Petrov’s nest,” immersed in his hopeless thoughts, seemed frozen in a cramped, small house. The size of his figure clearly contrasts with the size of the room, which the author I. N. Kramskoy drew attention to: “After all, if your Menshikov gets up, he will break through the ceiling with his head.” But this compositional irregularity was completely justified, since the artist really wanted to emphasize the scale of his hero’s personality. The amazing contrast between the intimacy of space and the monumental psychological scale allows the artist to achieve the integrity of the figurative solution of the work.
Nothing happens in the picture, but against the backdrop of this eventlessness, the story of the past and future is told by objects surrounding people. Surikov fills every detail with deep figurative meaning. Menshikov’s not yet grown hair is bristling, reminding that quite recently this head was adorned with a wig with lush long curls. In the wretched interior of the hut there are remnants of former luxury (a candlestick, a prince’s ring, Mary’s chain) and Siberian realities (a bear skin, a bed rug, a deer warmer youngest daughter, the prince's boots) look very eloquent and expressive. The light of a burning lamp in ancient icons is perceived as a symbol that gives hope for change for the better.

Vasnetsov Viktor Mikhailovich (1848-1926)- the founder of a special “Russian style” within pan-European symbolism and modernity. The painter Vasnetsov transformed the Russian historical genre, combining medieval motifs with the exciting atmosphere of a poetic legend or fairy tale; however, the fairy tales themselves often become the themes of his large canvases. Among these picturesque epics and fairy tales of Vasnetsov are paintings "The Knight at the Crossroads" (1878), "After the massacre of Igor Svyatoslavich with the Polovtsians"(based on the legend “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, 1880), “Alyonushka” (1881), “Three Heroes” (1898), "Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible"(1897). Some of these works (“Three Princesses of the Underground Kingdom,” 1881, ibid.) represent decorative panel paintings that are already typical of Art Nouveau, transporting the viewer to the world of dreams.

V.M. Vasnetsov. "Three heroes"

He especially appreciated the power, scope and grandeur of Russian nature Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832-1898), who is rightly called the “singer of the Russian forest”. In the history of world painting there is hardly another artist who would so clearly, calmly and majestically show the hidden beauty of the vast forest expanses. Before Shishkin, the motif of the heroic strength of the Russian forest, its qualities, surprisingly consonant with the character of the Russian person, had never sounded so vividly in painting.
A poetic depiction of the forest, trees of any species in their various combinations, in groups and individually, in different times years: barely touched by the first greenery, luxurious in their summer decoration, sternly and dully rustling in the autumn, covered with heavy and lush caps of snow in the winter - this is what became the main and favorite theme of this artist’s work.

I.I. Shishkin. "Morning in a pine forest"

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) entered the history of world painting as a “fiery poet of the sea.” He devoted his entire life to this topic and never betrayed it. In the created marinas (by the artist’s own admission, there were about three thousand) he remained faithful to the romantic ideal of beautiful and spiritualized nature. If in his youth he was more interested in the serene silence of the sea, flooded with gold sun rays or the silvery light of the moon, then later he turns to the image of a powerful, raging element, foreshadowing grandiose catastrophes.
Aivazovsky’s painting “The Ninth Wave” caused a real pilgrimage of admiring spectators. A huge wave of the raging sea is ready to fall on people frantically clinging to the wreckage of the masts of the lost ship. All night the crew fearlessly fought against the sea elements. But then the first rays of the sun pierced the water, illuminating it with thousands of bright highlights and subtle shades of colors. The water seems transparent, as if it glows from within, absorbing the seething fury of the waves, and therefore giving a fragile hope of salvation. According to sailors, the ninth wave heralds the last gust of a storm. Will people be able to resist? Will they emerge victorious from a mortal battle with the raging elements? It is difficult to answer this question, but the color scheme of the picture, full of optimism, inspires such confidence.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910) - the brightest representative of symbolism in Russian fine art. The images he created reflected not only the spiritual searches of the master himself, but also the internal contradictions of the difficult times in which he lived. The era recognized itself in his works; he himself was “our era” (K.S. Petrov-Vodkin). It combines the philosophical nature inherent in Russian culture and the moral intensity of individual creative manner. Vrubel was one of the first Russian artists who tried to discern another, more important internal reality behind the real reality and express it in the language of painting, combining decorative and expressive properties. He saw existence split into a non-existent world visible objects and the mysterious world of invisible entities.
Sincerely believed in world-transforming beauty, in knowledge of the essence of phenomena in the process artistic creativity, he expressed his creative credo in these words: “It is impossible and not necessary to paint nature, one must capture its beauty.” He looked for his own concept of beauty and harmony in the world of mysterious dreams, myths, mystical visions and vague premonitions. A characteristic feature of M. A. Vrubel’s work is the organic unity of the real and the fantastic, symbol and myth. Only Vrubel could see reality from angles that were unknown to anyone else. He created new reality- beautiful and tragic world, capable of development, movement and transformation. In his creative imagination, unclear outlines of objects arose, which either alarmingly “sank” in a barely visible space, or suddenly flared up, flickered, shimmering with mysterious reflections of light. In this mysterious world its mythological, fairy-tale and epic characters lived and acted: "The Swan Princess", “Muse” , “Pan” , "Six-Winged Seraphim", “Prophet”, “Bogatyr”, "Mikula Selyaninovich", “Snow Maiden”, “Volkhova”.

M.A. Vrubel "The Swan Princess"

Painting by M. A. Vrubel "Demon Seated" full of symbolic generalizations that express the ideals and dreams of the author himself. The canvas, created based on the plot of Lermontov’s poem, was literally created by the artist. This is how he himself described it: “A half-naked, winged, young, sadly pensive figure sits, hugging his knees, against the backdrop of the sunset and looks at a blooming meadow, from which branches stretch out to her, bending under the flowers.”
Vrubel's demon is far from the traditional embodiment of deceit and evil; it is not just an artistic allegory reflecting the contradictory world of a lone rebel, rejected by the outside world and cast down from heaven for his pride. Like any symbol, this image is based on several aspects, and therefore cannot be deciphered unambiguously. What did the author want to capture in it? Your own loneliness, spirit of rebellion, anxiety and dreams of beauty? What does his rebellious soul conceal within itself, forced to remain inactive? According to Vrubel, the sad Demon is “a spirit that is not so much evil as suffering and sorrowful, but at the same time powerful... majestic.” Here is the key to understanding the essence of this image as a creature personifying the “eternal struggle of the restless human spirit,” seeking and not finding answers either in heaven or on earth.
The figure, which occupies almost the entire space of the canvas, is too cramped within the picture, so the author deliberately cuts it off at the top and bottom. The Demon's hands are tragically clasped, his gaze is sad, his concentrated and tense thought is frozen on his brow. His entire figure is perceived as a symbol of the suffering of a captive spirit and absolute loneliness in the shackles of alien earthly matter. Bizarre fractures of rocks, motionless clouds frozen in the sky, glittering petals of unprecedented fairy-tale flowers and crystals, refracting the pink-yellow reflections of the setting sun in their faces, enhance the supernaturalness and unreality of this image. The color scheme, represented by a combination of crimson, violet, purple-golden and ash-gray tones, also helps to create an almost unreal, fantastic world. Against the background of this grandiose color mystery, the blue clothes of the young titan look especially expressive, symbolizing the fulfillment of his hopes and ideals.

Vrubel's Demon is a deeply tragic nature, a symbol of the spirit of the times, expectation of change and fear of the unknown. It reflects not only the artist’s personal experiences, but also time itself with its kinks and contradictions. Vrubel did not consider this painting to be the final embodiment of the plan; he planned to paint his “monumental” Demon later. Soon he continued the cycle he had begun with the painting “The Flying Demon,” imbued with a premonition of death and the doom of the world. He completed the cycle with “The Defeated Demon,” which did not leave the slightest hope for change for the better, becoming a visible embodiment of the artist’s own tragedy.

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Nikolay Nevrev. "Bargaining. A scene from serf life." 1866

One landowner sells a serf girl to another. Imposingly shows the buyer five fingers - five hundred rubles. 500 rubles - the average price of a Russian serf in the first half of the 19th century. The girl's seller is a European-educated nobleman. Pictures on the walls, books. The girl humbly awaits her fate, other slaves crowd at the door and watch how the bargaining will end. Yearning.

Vasily Perov. "Rural procession at Easter". 1861

Russian village of the 19th century. Orthodox Easter. Everyone is drunk as hell, including the priest. The guy in the center is carrying the icon upside down and is about to fall. Some have already fallen. Funny! The essence of the picture is that the Russian people’s commitment to Orthodoxy is exaggerated. Addiction to alcohol is clearly stronger. Perov was a recognized master genre painting and a portrait. But this painting of his was prohibited from being shown or reproduced in Tsarist Russia. Censorship!

Grigory Myasoedov. "The zemstvo is having lunch." 1872

Times of Alexander II. Serfdom cancelled. Local self-government - zemstvos - was introduced. Peasants were also chosen there. But between them and the higher classes there is an abyss. Therefore - dining apartheid. Gentlemen are in the house, with waiters, peasants are at the door.

Fedor Vasiliev. "Village". 1869

1869 The landscape is beautiful, but the village, if you look closely, is poor. Poor houses, leaky roofs, the road is buried in mud.

Jan Hendrik Verheyen. "Dutch village with figures of people." 1st half 19th century.
Well, that's it, for comparison :)

Alexey Korzukhin. "Return from the city." 1870

The situation in the house is poor, a child is crawling on the shabby floor, and for an older daughter, her father brought a modest gift from the city - a bunch of bagels. True, there are many children in the family - only in the picture there are three of them, plus perhaps another one in a homemade cradle.

Sergey Korovin. "On the World". 1893

This is already a village of the late 19th century. There are no more serfs, but a division has appeared - fists. At a village gathering there is some kind of dispute between a poor man and a kulak. For the poor man, the topic is apparently vitally important; he almost sobs. The rich fist laughs at him. The other fists in the background are also giggling at the loser beggar. But the comrade to the poor man’s right was imbued with his words. There are already two ready-made members of the committee; all that remains is to wait until 1917.

Vasily Maksimov. "Auction for arrears". 1881-82.

The tax office is furious. Tsarist officials auction samovars, cast iron pots and other peasant belongings. The heaviest taxes on peasants were redemption payments. Alexander II “the Liberator” actually freed the peasants for money - they were then obliged to pay their native state for many years for the plots of land that were given to them along with their will. In fact, the peasants had this land before; they used it for many generations while they were serfs. But when they became free, they were forced to pay for this land. Payment had to be made in installments, right up to 1932. In 1907, against the backdrop of the revolution, the authorities abolished these taxes.

Vladimir Makovsky. "On the boulevard." 1886-1887

At the end of the 19th century. Industrialization came to Russia. Young people go to the city. She's going crazy there. Their old life is no longer interesting to them. And this young hard worker is not even interested in his peasant wife, who came to him from the village. She's not advanced. The girl is terrified. The proletarian with an accordion doesn’t care.

Vladimir Makovsky. "Date". 1883

There is poverty in the village. The boy was given away to the public. Those. sent to the city to work for an owner who exploits child labor. The mother came to visit her son. Tom obviously has a hard life, his mother sees everything. The boy greedily eats the bread he brought.

Vladimir Makovsky. "Bank collapse." 1881

A crowd of defrauded depositors in a bank office. Everyone is in shock. The rogue banker (on the right) is quietly getting away with the dough. The policeman looks in the other direction, as if he doesn’t see him.

Pavel Fedotov. "Fresh Cavalier" 1846

The young official received his first order. They washed it all night. The next morning, putting the cross directly on his robe, he shows it to the cook. A crazy look full of arrogance. The cook, personifying the people, looks at him with irony. Fedotov would be a master of such psychological paintings. The meaning of this: flashing lights are not on cars, but in heads.

Pavel Fedotov. "Aristocrat's Breakfast". 1849-1850.

Morning, the impoverished nobleman was taken by surprise by unexpected guests. He hastily covers up his breakfast (a piece of black bread) with a French novel. Nobles (3% of the population) were a privileged class in old Russia. They owned a huge amount of land, but they rarely made good farmers. Not a lord's business. The result is poverty, debt, everything is mortgaged and re-mortgaged in banks. In Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, the estate of the landowner Ranevskaya is sold for debts. Buyers (rich merchants) are destroying the estate, and one of them really needs a lordly The Cherry Orchard(to resell as dachas). The reason for the problems of the Ranevsky family is idleness over several generations. No one was taking care of the estate, and the owner herself had been living abroad for the last 5 years and wasting money.

Boris Kustodiev. "Merchant". 1918

Provincial merchants are Kustodiev’s favorite topic. While the nobles in Paris squandered their estates, these people rose from the bottom, making money in a huge country, where there was plenty of room to invest their hands and capital. It is noteworthy that the picture was painted in 1918, when the Kustodiev merchants and merchant women throughout the country were already being pushed to the wall by fighters against the bourgeoisie.

Ilya Repin. "Religious procession in the Kursk province." 1880-1883

Different layers of society come to the religious procession, and Repin depicted them all. They carry a lantern with candles in front, an icon behind it, then they walk the best people- officials in uniforms, priests in gold, merchants, nobles. On the sides there are guards (on horseback), then there are ordinary people. People on the side of the road periodically rake in order not to cut off the bosses and get into his lane. Tretyakov did not like the police officer in the picture (on the right, in white, beating someone from the crowd with all his might). He asked the artist to remove this cop chaos from the plot. But Repin refused. But Tretyakov bought the painting anyway. For 10,000 rubles, which was simply a colossal amount at that time.

Ilya Repin. "Gathering". 1883

But these young guys in another painting by Repin no longer go with the crowd to all sorts of religious processions. They have their own way - terror. This is "People's Will", an underground organization of revolutionaries who killed Tsar Alexander II.

Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky. "Oral calculation. At the public school of S.A. Rachinsky." 1895

Rural school. Peasant children in bast shoes. But there is a desire to learn. The teacher is in a European suit with a bow tie. This is a real person - Sergei Rachinsky. Mathematician, professor at Moscow University. On a voluntary basis he taught at a rural school in the village. Tatevo (now Tver region), where he had an estate. Great deal. According to the 1897 census, the literacy rate in Russia was only 21%.

Jan Matejko. "Chained Poland". 1863

According to the 1897 census, literate people in the country were 21%, and Great Russians - 44%. Empire! Interethnic relations in the country have never been smooth. The painting by Polish artist Jan Matejko was written in memory of the anti-Russian uprising of 1863. Russian officers with angry faces shackle a girl (Poland), defeated, but not broken. Behind her sits another girl (blonde), who symbolizes Lithuania. She is groped dirty by another Russian. The Pole on the right, sitting facing the viewer, is the spitting image of Dzerzhinsky.

Nikolay Pimomenko. "Victim of fanaticism." 1899

The painting depicts a real case that took place in the city of Kremenets (Western Ukraine). A Jewish girl fell in love with a Ukrainian blacksmith. The newlyweds decided to get married with the bride converting to Christianity. This worried the local Jewish community. They behaved extremely intolerantly. The parents (on the right in the picture) disowned their daughter, and the girl was obstructed. The victim has a cross on his neck, in front of her is a rabbi with fists, behind him is a concerned public with clubs.

Franz Roubo. "Assault on the village of Gimry." 1891

Caucasian War of the 19th century. Hellish mixture of Dags and Chechens by the tsarist army. The village of Gimry (Shamil’s ancestral village) fell on October 17, 1832. By the way, since 2007, a counter-terrorist operation regime has been in effect in the village of Gimry again. The last (at the time of writing this post) clearing by riot police was on April 11, 2013. The first is in the picture below:

Vasily Vereshchagin. "Opium eaters." 1868

The painting was painted by Vereshchagin in Tashkent during one of the Turkestan campaigns of the Russian army. middle Asia was then annexed to Russia. How the participants in the campaigns saw the ancestors of today's guest workers - Vereshchagin left paintings and memoirs about this. Dirt, poverty, drugs...

Peter Belousov. "We will go the other way!".1951
And finally, the main event in the history of Russia in the 19th century. On April 22, 1870, Volodya Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk. His elder brother, a Narodnaya Volya member, tried himself, perhaps, in the sphere of individual terror - he was preparing an attempt on the life of the Tsar. But the attempt failed and the brother was hanged. That’s when young Volodya, according to legend, told his mother: “We will go a different way!” And let's go.

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.” The last two 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 pastorals is far from real life, and only by the beginning of the Enlightenment, realism began to prevail in pastoral painting, for example, the works of the 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, a certain poetry sometimes creeps into his works. rural life“Harvesters”, “Angelus”, “Winner”, “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”, “Harvesting Potatoes”) of “socialist realism” - embellishment of reality, but they are unique for their clearly expressed national character and folk images. This is how artists from different countries and eras saw the difficult and thankless peasant labor, which, however, is 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 a specific meaning in Europe: 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 Russia XIX 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. Its appearance was sanctioned by a 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 of the 17th century: in verbose genre scenes, peasants appeared as a funny, sometimes rude, intemperate audience and therefore worthy of a cheerful smile or evil ridicule, which raised the urban 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 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 more or less followed the customs of their ancestors, which deprived the two parts of the nation of a common language. The second most important factor was serfdom, which was abolished only on February 19, 1861, which was evidence of the deep moral vice 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 the Patriotic War of 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 of the 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 being based on the ancient canon and offering ready-made solutions academic school, the artist made his own serfs the heroes of his paintings. 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!”

In the wake of social upsurge caused by the Great Reforms of the 1860s (primarily the emancipation of serfs), Russian art, following literature, included in its field of vision an exceptionally wide range of everyday phenomena. 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 play out typical situations from the life of various strata of society in front of the audience. 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 religious 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 section of the World Exhibition 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. So, for example, realism, professed by members of the most influential artistic association of the second half of the 19th 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 toolkit psychological analysis, developed by literature and built up by realistic painting XIX century, should have been 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 the final version, he created a canvas whose paradoxical nature eludes the modern viewer. Before us large canvas, instantly stopping 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."

The assessment of the canvas was summed up by 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 specific in folk images, allowed us 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 tired hands of the peasant nina, which could 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 artless simplicity 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

The 1870s brought 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 difficult 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 staged 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 perfect image 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 painting “The Arrest of the Propagandist,” which took almost a decade. Naturally, the peasants were to become important participants in the scene. But if the central image of the picture—the agitator tied to a pole and therefore evoking associations with the scourged Christ—remained practically unchanged compositionally, then 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 the other witnesses to the event, including the royal family, are crowded into 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 the peasant world is becoming for artists not so much a social phenomenon, but rather a bearer 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.