Canvas, oil. 71x122 cm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
The life of the Russian post-reform village was hard. All the growing landlessness of the peasantry, frequent crop failures, the inexorable hand of hunger forced the inhabitants of many provinces of Russia to leave their miserable, but familiar home. “Like a fairy-tale dragon, need held the masses in its claws, drove them, staggered, overturned and strangled them,” noted realist writer N. Teleshov, a village writer of everyday life. Pursued by want, lack of rights and arbitrariness, the peasants went to the city to work. Many rushed to new lands, most often to Siberia, in order to find salvation from hunger and need in its vast expanses. The settlers, weighed down by miserable belongings, rose in whole villages from their homes, where their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers had lived for centuries, and stretched in long lines along the dusty roads of Russia from the Kursk, Tambov, Penza, Yaroslavl, Chernigov provinces. Few survived the ordeal of the arduous journey. Diseases, hunger and cold, the arbitrariness of the tsarist officials, complete defenselessness - this is what has become their lot from now on. Death mercilessly mowed down the rapidly thinning ranks of settlers. Often, having spent all the funds on the road, they returned back, and those who reached the place were expected by the same poverty and the same orders and officials as in their homeland.
The so-called resettlement issue worried many representatives of advanced Russian culture and art in those years. Even V. G. Perov, the founder of critical realism, did not pass by this topic. Known, for example, his drawing "The Death of a Settler".
The settlers made a painful impression on A.P. Chekhov, who traveled in 1890 on the road to Sakhalin through all of Siberia. Under the influence of conversations with Chekhov, he traveled along the Volga and Kama, to the Urals, and from there to Siberia and N. Teleshov. “Beyond the Urals, I saw the exhausting life of our settlers,” he recalled, “almost fabulous hardships and hardships of the people’s peasant life.” A series of stories by Teleshov, depicting the fate of these people, is the closest analogy to the painting by Sergei Vasilievich Ivanov “On the Road. Death of a migrant.
Ivanov spent a good half of his life traveling around Russia, carefully, with keen interest, getting acquainted with the life of the many-sided working people. In these incessant wanderings, he also got acquainted with the life of the settlers. “Many dozens of miles he walked with them in the dust of the roads, in the rain, bad weather and the scorching sun in the steppes,” Ivanov’s friends say, “he spent many nights with them, filling his albums with drawings and notes, many tragic scenes passed before his eyes.” Powerless to help these people, the artist thought with pain about the immense tragedy of their situation and the deceitfulness of their dreams of "happiness", which they were not destined to find in the conditions of tsarist Russia.
In the late 1880s, Ivanov conceived a large series of paintings that consistently told about the life of the settlers. In the first picture - "Rus' is coming" - the artist wanted to show the beginning of their journey, when people are still cheerful, healthy and full of bright hopes. In the following pictures, it was supposed to acquaint the viewer with the difficulties of the road and the first hardships. The series was to be concluded with dramatic scenes of suffering and tragic death of the settlers. However, only a few links of this cycle were brought to completion by the artist. Ivanov embodied in artistic images only the most characteristic and life impressions that most cut into his consciousness.
One of the final pictures of the cycle is “On the road. The Death of a Settler” is the strongest work of the planned series. Other works on this subject, created earlier and later by a number of writers and artists, did not reveal so deeply and at the same time so simply the tragedy of the settlers in all its terrible truth.
Steppe incandescent heat. A light haze extinguishes the horizon line. This sun-scorched desert land seems boundless. Here is a lonely immigrant family. Apparently, the last extreme forced her to stop at this bare place, which was not protected by anything from the scorching sun. The head of the family, the breadwinner, died. What awaits the unfortunate mother and daughter in the future - such a question everyone involuntarily asks himself when looking at the picture. And the answer is clear. It is read in the figure of a mother stretched out on the bare ground. There are no words and no tears for a heartbroken woman. In mute desperation, she scratches the dry earth with crooked fingers. We read the same answer in the bewildered, blackened, like an extinct coal, face of the girl, in her eyes frozen with horror, in her entire numb, emaciated figure. There is no hope for any help!
But quite recently, life was glimmering in a small transport house. The fire was crackling, a meager dinner was being prepared, the hostess was busy near the fire. The whole family dreamed that somewhere far away, in an unknown, blessed land, a new, happy life would soon begin for her.
Now everything collapsed. The main worker died, obviously, the exhausted horse also fell. The collar and the arc are no longer needed: they are carelessly thrown near the cart. The fire in the hearth went out. An overturned bucket, the bare sticks of an empty tripod, outstretched, like arms, empty shafts in mute anguish - how hopelessly sad and tragic all this is!
Ivanov consciously sought just such an impression. Like Perov in "Seeing the Dead", he closed the grief with a narrow circle of family, abandoning the figures of sympathetic women who were in the preliminary sketch of the picture. Wanting to further emphasize the doom of the settlers, the artist decided not to include the horse, which was also in the sketch, into the picture.
The power of Ivanov's painting is not limited to the truthful transmission of a particular moment. This work is a typical image of peasant life in post-reform Russia. That is why it was met with vicious blasphemy of reactionary criticism, which claimed that the death of settlers on the way was an accidental and by no means typical phenomenon, and that the content of the picture was invented by the artist within the walls of his studio. Ivanov was not stopped by the sharp attacks of the enemies of advanced, vitally truthful art. His work was only one of the first results of the artist's deep study of the social truth of contemporary Russian life. It was followed by many other significant works, in which not only the suffering of the people was expressed, but also the angry protest that was brewing among the masses against the oppression of the exploiters.
The younger generation of the Wanderers made a great contribution to the development of Russian democratic art, reflecting in different ways the proletarian stage of the liberation movement in Russia. The ideological content and expressive means of art were noticeably enriched, and creative individualities manifested themselves in various ways.
S. A. Korovin(1858-1908). Through all the work of Sergei Alekseevich Korovin, the peasant theme runs like a red thread. The stratification of the Russian countryside, the emergence of world-eating fists who oppressed the landless peasantry, is vividly and expressively revealed in his painting "On the World" (1893, ill. 181). The village appeared completely new here: there is no former patriarchy, the appearance of the peasants has also changed, relations between them have become different. Korovin worked on the composition for a long time, wrote many sketches. In everything one can see the observant eye of an artist who knew well modern peasant psychology.
The composition immediately introduces the viewer into the space of the picture, revealing the plot - a dispute between the poor and the fist. And the coloring, sustained in a gray-ocher tonality, conveys the state of a cloudy day, emphasizing the dramatic content of the plot.
Truthfully and convincingly shows the general mood of those gathered at the meeting. The majority are still unable to understand the essence of the changes that took shape along with the invasion of the life of the countryside by the capitalist order. The crowd of peasants is shackled in silence, on some faces - bewilderment. A grave doubt is expressed in the old man sitting with his back to the viewer.
Korovin contrasted the closedness of the crowd of peasants with an open display of feelings among the arguing themselves. The face of the poor man, distorted by grief, the sharp movement of the figure depicts the mental anguish of a man driven to despair. In the image of a fist - calmness, hypocrisy and cunning.
Deeply and aptly, avoiding petty details, but accurately conveying the situation, Korovin reveals the meaning of social contradictions in the village, revealing a distinct civic position. The artistic and cognitive significance of the picture is great - this document of the era revived in the images.
A. E. Arkhipov(1862-1930). Among the younger Wanderers, the artist of original talent, Abram Efimovich Arkhipov, stands out. He came from peasants and knew well the forced life of the people. Most of his works, like those of S. A. Korovin, are devoted to the peasant theme. They are laconic in composition and are always full of light, air, picturesque finds.
In one of Arkhipov's first paintings, "Visit to the Sick" (1885), attention is directed to a thorough and truthful depiction of the life of a poor peasant family and a sad conversation between two elderly women. The sunny landscape in the open door speaks of new coloristic searches.
An outstanding work was the painting "On the River Oka" (1889, ill. 182), where Arkhipov depicted a group of peasants sitting on a barge. They are so characteristic, written with such warmth and knowledge of folk characters, and the summer landscape is so bright and beautiful that the picture was greeted by contemporaries as an artistic revelation.
Arkhipov loved the modest beauty of Russian nature and poetically captured it. His "Reverse" (1896) is deeply lyrical. The composition is originally built: the chaise is half cut off by the lower edge of the canvas, the coachman sits with his back to the viewer - it seems that we ourselves are driving through this wide field, the bell rings and a wild soulful song flows. The melting pinkish tones of the fading sky, the muted color of the grass and the dusty road subtly convey the mood of the dying day and a slight unaccountable sadness.
The image of a female worker is dedicated by Arkhipov to the painting "Dayworkers at an iron foundry" (1896); Most clearly, the hopeless lot of the Russian toiler is reflected in one of the best works of Arkhipov, The Washerwomen, known in two versions - in the State Tretyakov Gallery and the State Russian Museum (late 1890s, ill. XIII).
The artist takes the viewer to the dark, stuffy basement of a miserable laundry room, depicting it in fragments. The composition seems snatched from life. As if by chance, we looked into this room and stopped in front of the opened spectacle. With quick broad strokes of faded tones, Arkhipov conveyed the figures of working laundresses, the wet floor of the laundry, the air saturated with moisture, the twilight light pouring from the window. Unforgettable is the image of an old woman in the foreground, sitting down to rest: a wearily bent back, a head falling on her hand, a heavy thought on her face. The artist seems to be talking about the fate of all workers.
Reflecting the bleak life of the working people, Arkhipov never lost faith in his inexhaustible strength, hope for a better future. A bright optimistic beginning dominated in most of his works, which is especially noticeable in the 1900s, on the eve of great revolutionary events.
In Arkhipov's northern landscapes, there are simple and at first glance unremarkable motifs of harsh nature. Lonely huts, the edge of the sky, sometimes transparent, sometimes cloudy, the smooth surface of the river. But what charm the artist extracts from these motifs and modest gray scale! Arkhipov's paintings are imbued with a cheerful, life-affirming feeling of a simple Russian person, born in close communion with his native nature.
The bright sun permeates the works of Arkhipov, dedicated to peasant life. His colorful canvases express admiration for the physical and moral health of the Russian people. It is no coincidence that his palette has also changed, becoming more contrasting and decoratively generous. Arkhipov continued this series of works after the Great October Socialist Revolution.
S. V. Ivanov(1864-1910). One of the most consistent followers of the traditions of critical realism was Sergei Vasilyevich Ivanov. In the new historical conditions, he was able to see the deep contradictions of Russian reality and answered many pressing questions with his works.
Ivanov devoted a large series of works to the difficult fate of the migrant peasants, their forced wanderings around Rus'. The sad fate of a family that has lost its breadwinner is reflected in the best picture of this series - "On the Road. Death of a Settler" (1889, ill. 184).
With an incorruptible sense of truth, SV Ivanov leads a picturesque story full of heartfelt content. The whole scene, thoughtfully selected everyday details are written with a careful hand and give the plot the authenticity of a live event taking place before our eyes. The scale of the figures is skillfully found in relation to the space of the landscape: going to the distant horizon, it reminds of a long and difficult journey through the land parched by heat. A lonely, defenseless, suffering person in the midst of the silence of nature is the essence of the artist's creative concept.
In the early 1890s, Ivanov became one of the first chroniclers of the revolutionary struggle in Russia. Back in 1889, he painted the painting "Riot in the Village", which tells about the growing social protest among the peasants, and in 1891 - "Stage". The terrible sight of prisoners lying side by side on the floor at the transit point, bare feet in shackles struck the artist. Only in the depths do you notice the piercing gaze of some convict directed at you.
In the mid-1890s, Ivanov often turned to themes from Russian history of the 16th-17th centuries. In his historical paintings there are features common to the work of most contemporary painters - everyday interpretation of plots and decorative color. But unlike many Ivanov did not lose interest in the social side of the depicted. Such, for example, are the paintings "Arrival of Foreigners in Moscow of the 17th century" (1901, ill. 185), which perfectly conveyed the historically correct appearance of the ancient capital and the characters of its inhabitants, and "Tsar. XVI century" (1902), which was perceived by contemporaries as a satirical image autocracy.
The events of the revolution of 1905-1907 captured Ivanov and caused a new creative upsurge. Even on the eve of it, he dedicated the painting "The Strike" to the workers who rebelled at the factory. In all his strength, his talent manifested itself in the relatively small canvas "Execution" (1905). It is one of the most significant works that reflected the bloody massacre of tsarism over the people. This is a severe laconic image, built on the contrast of clear picturesque plans.
On the canvas - a deserted square, flooded with the evening sun, closed by a line of shaded houses, and a lonely dark silhouette of a murdered worker. From this large light plane and motionless figure, the artist leads the viewer's eye into the depths. To the left you can see the first rows of Cossacks in powder smoke, to the right - the demonstrators. The red banner - the brightest spot - highlights this part of the composition. It gives the impression of a living, tragic event taking place before our eyes.
Ivanov's painting is perceived as a symbol not only of the massacre of the insurgent people, as the artist intended, but of the entire fate of the first Russian revolution, brutally suppressed by tsarism.
N. A. Kasatkin(1859-1930). A student of V. G. Perov, Nikolai Alekseevich Kasatkin, in his early works, turned to folk images and dramatic plots. Soon the leading theme of his work was the life of the working class and the revolutionary struggle of the Russian proletariat.
Already in 1892, Kasatkin painted the painting "It's Hard", depicting the sad rendezvous of a wounded young worker with his bride - a poor seamstress. The expression of sadness and anxiety on the face of the girl contrasts with the determination and confidence of the worker. Initially, the painting was called "Petrel", but the artist was forced to change the name for censorship reasons. And yet the political content of the canvas reached the viewer, reminiscent of the strikes that constantly flared up then.
In the same year, Kasatkin visited the Donets Basin for the first time, and since then, for nine years, he has been constantly among the miners, studying their life and work. At first they were distrustful of the artist, mistaking him for a sent spy, but then they sincerely fell in love. They helped him a lot in working on images that Russian art did not yet know.
Kasatkin's first work about the life of Donetsk miners was the painting "Collecting Coal by the Poor in a Run-Down Mine" (1894). Lively typical images, accurate drawing and modest painting sustained in a common tonality distinguish this canvas.
Kasatkin himself descended underground, observed the incredible conditions of truly hard labor of miners and wrote bitterly: "... where an animal cannot work, a person replaces it." This idea is reflected in a small painting "The miner-tagolytsik" (1896). Dark color with reddish reflections of miner's bulbs; like a beast of burden, a worker crawls under the overhanging vaults of the drift and pulls a sledge loaded with coal.
The result of Kasatkin's work on the theme of miner's life and numerous sketches is the canvas "Coal Miners. Change" (1895, ill. 186). It was the first work of Russian painting that showed the growing solidarity of the working class. The faint lights of the miner's lamps and the flickering whites of the eyes in the impenetrable darkness give the picture tension. In the center of the composition is an elderly miner. With the butt in his hands, he steps straight at the viewer like a formidable impending force.
In a number of works, Kasatkin revealed the spiritual world of the oppressed proletarian in many ways and with great feeling. The artist achieved a special power of penetration into the image in the canvas "The Factory Worker's Wife" (1901), removed from the exhibition by the tsarist censorship.
It seems that all the sad fate of a still young, but much experienced woman is captured in a wearily drooping figure, in a fixed look, a hand that fell to her knees. A difficult state of mind is conveyed on an exhausted face. Here, pain, and bitterness, and nascent anger - everything that was naturally associated with the political events of that time and made the viewer think. Subdued colors of clothing are immersed in a grayish-ocher environment. The earthy pallor of the face is emphasized by a white scarf thrown over the shoulders.
Kasatkin's merit is enormous in that he saw not only the plight of the working class in Russia, but was able to notice and embody its strength, energy, and optimism. From the image of "Miner" (1894, ill. 187) breathes the poetry of life, youth, physical and spiritual health. The warm silver color of this canvas is harmonious. Surprisingly true is the relaxed movement of the figure, softly inscribed in a light landscape.
Kasatkin, who knew the life and moods of the workers well, deeply sympathized with them, enthusiastically met the revolution of 1905-1907. He was in a hurry to capture new situations and images, looking for new subjects. Many sketches, sketches and paintings were the result of a great creative work.
In the difficult conditions of turbulent times, not everything that struck Kasatkin was able to find a complete and complete display, but each, even a cursory sketch, had an important documentary and artistic value. The artist's paintings, created at that time, are significant in ideological content and testify to the search for an emotionally intense composition. One example is the painting "The Last Path of a Spy" (1905).
Kasatkin enthusiastically worked on the multi-figure composition "Attack of the Factory by Workers" (1906), which unfolded a complex dramatic action. With expression, the movement of a huge seething crowd, a variety of gestures are conveyed here. Individual sketches for this painting are remembered, especially the image of an elderly woman, angry, calling for an uprising.
Exceptionally ideological and artistic significance of a small canvas "A worker-militant" (1905, ill. 188). Kasatkin saw and captured the characteristic type of an active participant in the first Russian revolution. Appearance, posture, gait, stern face - everything speaks of the spiritual world of a man of modern times - courage and determination, calmness and inflexibility, awareness of the importance of one's goal and noble modesty. Such a person could indeed go at the head of revolutionary fighting detachments. The image echoes the hero of the story "Mother" by A. M. Gorky.
L. V. Popov(1873-1914). Lukyan Vasilyevich Popov also belongs to the younger representatives of the Wanderers. With particular sensitivity, he noticed social changes in the countryside, which at that time was actively penetrating revolutionary sentiments. His paintings To Sunset. Agitator in the Village (1906), In the Village (Get up, get up! heroes - a true document of peasant life on the eve and the period of the revolution of 1905-1907.
The work of A.P. Ryabushkin and M.V. Nesterov was also associated with the traditions of the Wanderers. However, in their works, new creative searches appeared in a special way and earlier in time, which became typical of the art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.
A. P. Ryabushkin(1861-1904). Andrei Petrovich Ryabushkin can be called a people's artist. All his life and work after his student years spent at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, as well as at the Academy of Arts, took place in the village. His art was a kind of reaction to the historical processes of the capitalization of Russia, when "the old foundations of peasant economy and peasant life, foundations that really held out for centuries, were demolished with extraordinary speed" * . Ryabushkin poeticized the antiquity dear to his heart, the traditional everyday way of life, the stable features of the national image.
* (Lenin V. I. Leo Tolstoy as a mirror of the Russian revolution. - Full. coll. cit., vol. 17, p. 210.)
Ryabushkin's genre paintings are characterized by features of calmness and silence. Depicting the patriarchal setting of a village wedding ("Waiting for the newlyweds from the crown in the Novgorod province", 1891), the artist emphasizes the sedateness and decorum of the seated peasants.
In the 1890s, Ryabushkin appeared as the original master of Russian historical and everyday painting. In Russia's distant past, he is most attracted to the everyday life of old Moscow. Revival reigns during the spring thaw in the painting "Moscow Street of the 17th century on a holiday" (1895). Here is a girl in a red summer coat, carefully carrying a candle, and rustic guys in long-sleeved clothes, and an arrogant boyar driving along a dirty street, and a blind beggar. Colorful clothes decorated with Russian ornaments, blue reflections of the sky in puddles, colorful domes of churches and the general liveliness of movement make this picture festive.
The bright individuality of Ryabushkin was most fully expressed in the paintings of 1901 "They are coming" (ill. 189) and "Wedding train in Moscow (XVII century)" (ill. 190). The first of them, distinguished by its bold and unusual composition, depicts residents of Moscow waiting for foreigners. It is, as it were, a fragment snatched from the picture of the life of Russian people of the 17th century. Curiosity, naivety and self-esteem were reflected on their faces. Large patches of color in the yellow, red and green caftans of the archers and the colorful clothes of the townspeople give the picture a major tone and a pronounced decorative character.
The poetry of Russian antiquity is imbued with the painting "Wedding Train in Moscow (XVII century)". The silence of the spring evening, in which Moscow is immersed in a lilac haze, and the lonely figure of a sad Muscovite woman are opposed by the swiftly sweeping magnificent festive train. Sketchy painting, contrasting with a more densely painted landscape, light, like a fresco, color, subtly found rhythm in the entire central group - all this allowed Ryabushkin to convey the everyday look of a Russian city of a distant time.
Ryabushkin's "Tea Party" (1903), written a year before his death, is unusually expressive and figuratively succinct. This is a socio-critical work. If earlier for his genre paintings Ryabushkin selected the positive, kind, beautiful in peasant life, now he depicted the world of the village rich. There is something of petty-bourgeois well-being in the elegance and cold formality of tea drinking; in the grotesqueness of the images, in the rigidity of pictorial plasticity, unusual for Ryabushkin, reminiscent of ancient parsuns, one can read the artist's rejection of this alien world.
M. V. Nesterov(1862-1942). The pre-revolutionary period of Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov's work is complex and contradictory.
He began his journey in art with genre paintings close to those of the Wanderers, but at the end of the 1880s a sharp turning point took place in his work. The artist goes into the world of the ideally beautiful, singing the purity of religious feelings, depicting the inhabitants of monasteries and sketes.
The old hermit Nesterova in the painting "The Hermit" (1888-1889), slowly wandering along the shore of a mirror-smooth lake, is infinitely far from life's worries. His image is inextricably linked with the beauty of peaceful nature, its serene tranquility.
Landscape plays a huge role in Nesterov's work. The poet of Russian nature Nesterov, being able to penetrate deeply into the inner world of a person, always connects the experiences of his heroes with the state and character of the landscape.
In the painting "Vision to the lad Bartholomew" (1889-1890, ill. 191), the only character is a pale lad with thin hands convulsively clenched in prayer ecstasy. But the main character of the artist is still the landscape of the Central Russian strip, spiritualized nature, where the artist truly gives life to every blade of grass, each participates in the glorification of the motherland.
In the late 1890s - early 1900s, the artist created a series of paintings dedicated to the tragic fate of a Russian woman, submissive and suffering ("Beyond the Volga", "On the Mountains"). In "Great tonsure" (1898), he shows a sad procession of the inhabitants of a small skete, hidden in the middle of a dense forest, escorting a young, still full of strength woman to the monastery. Mournful faces, dark silhouettes of figures, trembling lights of huge candles... Sadness is deep, but next to it is again the beautiful world of nature, virgin forests and Nesterov's thin-stemmed young birch trees.
In the early 1900s, the skill of Nesterov as a portrait painter took shape. Here, the realistic side of the artist's work manifested itself to the fullest extent. Most of the portraits of this time, Nesterov writes against the backdrop of the landscape, as well as in the paintings, asserting the inextricable link between man and nature. In the portrait of O. M. Nesterova (1906, ill. 192), the figure of a girl in a black Amazon stands out in a beautiful silhouette against the background of a lyrical evening landscape. Graceful and graceful, with a soulful, slightly dreamy look, this girl personifies for the artist the ideal of youth, the beauty of life and harmony.
Back in the 1880s, the work of three outstanding Russian artists, K. A. Korovin, M. A. Vrubel and V. A. Serov, was being formed. They most fully determined the artistic achievements of the era, its complexity and richness.
V. A. Serov(1865-1911). The greatest artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov. His work continued the development of realistic art, deepening its content and expanding its expressive possibilities.
Serov's art is bright and diverse. First of all, he is a master of psychological, pictorial and graphic portraiture, but his talent also manifested itself in landscape, historical genre, book illustration, decorative and monumental decorative art. From childhood, Serov was surrounded by an atmosphere of art. His father, A. N. Serov, is a famous composer and musician, and his mother is a gifted pianist. Serov's teachers were I. E. Repin and at the Academy of Arts - P. P. Chistyakov. The first one largely contributed to the formation of the democratic foundations of Serov's work and the awakening of interest in the inquisitive study of life, the second he was indebted to a deep understanding of the professional laws of form.
Already Serov's early works - his famous portraits "Girl with Peaches" (1887, ill. X) and "Girl Illuminated by the Sun" (1888) - glorified the young artist and most fully characterized the art of early Serov.
"Girl with Peaches" was written in "Abramtsevo", the estate of S. I. Mamontov, from his daughter Vera. In this excellent portrait, the image created by the artist, thanks to the fullness of life, outgrows the framework of an individual portrait, embodying the universal human principle. In a teenage girl with a serious face and a stern look, in her calm restraint and spontaneity, the artist managed to convey the high poetry of bright and pure youth.
This portrait is amazingly beautiful in its painting. It is written in full light, very lightly and at the same time materially. His transparent colors, unusually pure, are filled with light, air, and vividly convey reflexes from lighting. The freshness of the coloring of "Girl with Peaches", which at one time so struck contemporaries, as well as the natural simplicity of the well-thought-out composition, put the picture on a par with the best works of world painting.
Serov develops the same theme of youth in "The Girl Illuminated by the Sun". The content of the portrait is the same gratifying feeling of the spiritual beauty of a person and the fullness of his being.
The 1890s are the next stage in Serov's work. During these years, the artist most often paints people of art, and now he wants to reveal their creative individuality first of all. With a special gaze of N. S. Leskov (1894), he conveys the vigilance of an inquisitive realist writer. The thoughtfulness of I. I. Levitan is akin to the poetic feelings of the artist, the ease of posture of K. A. Korovin (1891, ill. 193) is a kind of expression of the freedom and immediacy of his art.
Back in the 1880s, in addition to portraits, Serov also painted landscapes. Most often, he found motifs in Abramtsevo and Domotkanov, where the estate of his friends Dervizov was located. In the 1890s, the image of simple rural nature began to occupy an increasing place in Serov's landscape art. Often the artist introduces the figures of peasants into his paintings, as if bringing the landscape closer to the everyday genre ("October. Domotkanovo", 1895, ill. 194, "A woman with a horse", 1898). I. E. Grabar called the artist "peasant Serov" precisely for the landscapes. The democratism of his art was especially evident in them.
In the 1900s, Serov's work became noticeably more complex. The main place in it is still occupied by portraits. In addition, he continues to paint landscapes, working on illustrations for the fables of I. A. Krylov, begun back in the 1890s. The circle of his interests now constantly includes historical and monumental-decorative painting.
In the 1900s, Serov's portrait work became much more diverse. Numerous secular ceremonial portraits are added to the portraits of people close to him. The artist still remains incorruptibly truthful in his characteristics and inexorably demanding of himself, not allowing the slightest carelessness or dampness in his performance. As before, the psychological disclosure of the image remains the basis of his portrait art, but Serov now focuses his attention on the social characteristics of the models. In portraits of leading representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, he strives to capture and emphasize their most typical, outstanding social qualities with greater clarity than before. In the portrait of A. M. Gorky (1905, ill. 195), the artist emphasizes the democracy of the proletarian writer with the simplicity of his whole appearance, the clothes of a craftsman, the gesture of an agitator. The portrait of M. N. Yermolova (1905, ill. 196) is a kind of majestic monument to the famous tragic actress. And the artist subordinates all visual means to the revelation of this thought. The lobby of Yermolova's mansion, in which she posed for Serov, is perceived as a stage, and thanks to the reflection in the mirror of a fragment of the colonnade, as an auditorium. Yermolova herself, in her strict and solemn black dress, adorned with only a string of pearls, is majestic and inspired.
Serov's portraits of his noble customers are completely different. Ceremonial portraits of the spouses Yusupovs, S. M. Botkina, O. K. Orlova (ill. 197) and many others resemble portraits of the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries, exquisite furnishings, elegant ladies' toilets are written with brilliant skill. In the depiction of the people themselves, Serov emphasized their typical social qualities that characterize the class to which they belonged. These portraits, as V. Ya. Bryusov said, are always a trial of contemporaries, all the more terrible because the skill of the artist makes this trial categorical.
Among such portraits of Serov, one of the first places is occupied by the portrait of M. A. Morozov (1902), depicted against the backdrop of the living room of his beautifully furnished mansion. This man is educated, known for his broad philanthropic activities and understanding of art, but the basis of the money-grubbing merchant of Ostrovsky's times is still alive in him. Here he stands, as if alive, this Europeanized merchant of the late 19th century, filling the narrow format of the canvas with a heavy figure and looking straight ahead with a piercing gaze. Morozov's authority is not only his personal property, it betrays an industrialist in him, just as the arrogance of Princess O. K. Orlova makes her a typical representative of the high society aristocratic circles of the early 20th century. During this period, Serov achieves great expressiveness of portraits due to the richness of the visual means used, the variation of the artistic manner depending on the features of the work being created. So, in the portrait of the banker V. O. Girshman (1911), Serov is laconic in a poster-like way, and in the portrait of Princess Orlova, his brush becomes refined and cold.
As mentioned above, a significant place in the work of Serov in the 1900s is occupied by work on historical compositions. He is especially captivated by the stormy, impetuous in its development life of Russia in the time of Peter the Great. In the best picture of this cycle, "Peter I" (1907, ill. 198), the artist depicts Peter as a mighty reformer of the state. It is no coincidence that he is much taller than his satellites. The impetuous movement of Peter and the courtiers barely keeping up with him, the tense rhythm of impetuous, angular lines sharply delineating silhouettes, the excitement of the landscape - all this creates the mood of the stormy Peter's era.
Captivated by the vibrant beauty of Greece, which Serov visited in 1907, he also worked for a long time and with enthusiasm on mythological subjects ("The Rape of Europa", "Odysseus and Nausicaa"). As always, he builds these works on the basis of natural work, careful observations. But, solving them in terms of a monumental-decorative panel, the artist somewhat simplifies and primitivizes the plastic form, while retaining, however, the vitality of the impression.
One of Serov's significant works of the late 1890s - early 1900s - a series of illustrations for the fables of I. A. Krylov - was the subject of his tireless care and attention. The artist overcame descriptiveness, which hindered him in the sheets of the initial period of work on fables, and gained wise laconicism and expressiveness of a cleverly found form. The best of these sheets are masterpieces of Serov's art. Following Krylov, the artist did not destroy the allegory of the fables and sought to convey their moralizing meaning in the drawings. Purely human qualities were revealed in the images of animals: Serov’s lion is always the embodiment of strength, intelligence and greatness, the donkey, as expected, the personification of stupidity, the hare is an incorrigible coward.
Il. 199. V. A. Serov. "Soldiers, brave children, where is your glory?" K., tempera. 47.5 X 71.5. 1905. GRM
Serov's work characterizes him as a democratic artist, standing in the forefront of progressive figures in Russian culture. Serov proved his loyalty to democratic principles not only by his art, but also by his social position, especially during the revolution of 1905-1907. As a witness of Bloody Sunday on January 9, he left the full membership of the Academy of Arts, because the commander of the troops that massacred the people was the President of the Academy - Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich. A sharp protest against the violence and cruelty of the autocracy can also be heard in the artist’s bold accusatory drawings, published in satirical magazines during the days of the revolution (“Soldiers, brave children, where is your glory?” (ill. 199), “Views of the harvest”, “Dispersal of the demonstration ").
K. A. Korovin(1861-1939). Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin is one of those masters who pave new paths in art and whose work is a school for many artists of subsequent generations.
Korovin is a pupil of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, the landscape workshop of A. K. Savrasov, V. D. Polenov. His work was formed in line with Russian plein-air painting of the 1880s ("Bridge", "Northern Idyll", "By the Balcony. Spaniards Leonora and Ampara", ill. XI).
Since the 1890s, the time has come for Korovin's creative maturity. His talent is equally brightly revealed both in easel painting, primarily in landscape, and in theatrical and decorative art.
The charm of Korovin's art lies in the warmth, sunshine, in the artist's ability to directly and vividly convey impressions, in the generosity of his palette, in the color richness of artistic painting.
In the same 1890s, significant changes took place in Korovin's work. He tends to convey the visible at times in an imitationistically fluent way. Prolonged observation of nature gives way to the transmission of its sensations. The pictorial and plastic structure of Korovin's art is also changing. The role of etude forms of painting increases, while it itself becomes more impulsive, pasty, broad; the color takes on a greater decorative sonority, tension and richness ("In Winter", 1894, ill. 200; "In Summer", 1895; "Roses and Violets", 1912, ill. 201; "Wind", 1916).
Korovin's theatrical creativity was formed in the environment of the figures of the Russian Private Opera S. I. Mamontov, but he achieved the greatest fame while working in the imperial theaters in the 1900s - 1910s. For more than twenty years, Korovin headed the production department of the Bolshoi Theatre. He actively participated in the struggle against the conservatism and routine that prevailed on the official stage, bringing a high pictorial culture to these theaters, and, together with a number of other famous masters, raised the importance of a theater artist to the level of a co-author of a performance. Korovin is a brilliant master of pictorial scenery, effective, emotional, life-true. His performances were truly a feast for the eyes.
The best theatrical works of Korovin are usually associated with national themes, with Russia, its epic and fairy tales, its history and, above all, its nature (N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Snow Maiden, 1909; M. P. Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina , 1911).
M. A. Vrubel(1856-1910). Nature was generous to Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel. She endowed him with brilliant coloristic abilities, a rare gift of a muralist, he drew beautifully, the flight of his imagination is truly amazing. Vrubel's work is deeply meaningful and complex. He was always worried about high ideals and great human feelings. He dreamed of "waking the soul from the little things of everyday life with majestic images." His art, alien to indifference, is always romantically agitated and soulful.
But Vrubel's ideals developed in the harsh environment of life. Wanting to get away from her screaming contradictions, the artist tried to withdraw into the world of abstract images. However, being a great artist, he still could not isolate himself from reality. His art reflects it, bears the features of the era.
Even in his student years, Vrubel was different from his peers. He went to mastery, almost bypassing school shyness and stiffness. This was manifested in his multi-figure compositions on a given theme, which came to him unusually easily ("The Betrothal of Mary with Joseph"), and in fluency in watercolor technique, and in the fine plasticity of his portraits.
An important role in shaping Vrubel's work was played by his teacher P. P. Chistyakov, who instilled in him a constructive understanding of form in art, as well as by leading artists, members of the Abramtsevo circle. Vrubel owes these connections, as well as his acquaintance with N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, to the formation of national foundations in his work.
Vrubel stayed at the Academy of Arts for four years. In 1884 he left for Kyiv to restore and renew the wall paintings of St. Cyril's Church. Already in these works and in the unrealized sketches for the murals of the Vladimir Cathedral, the artist’s enormous gift is revealed. Using the traditions of Byzantine and Old Russian painting, the art of the Renaissance, Vrubel remains deeply original. Emphasized expression of feelings, intense coloring, temperament of writing give his images a special drama.
In 1889 Vrubel moved to Moscow. From that time on, it was time for his creative flourishing. He is well versed in many genres of art. This is an easel painting, and book illustration, and a monumental and decorative panel, and theatrical scenery. Vrubel draws a lot from nature, is fond of majolica. The artist tirelessly improves his skills, he is sure that "technique is the artist's language", that without it he will not be able to tell people about his feelings, about the beauty he has seen. The expressiveness of his works increases even more thanks to dynamic painting, color that shimmers like a jewel, and spiritualized drawing.
One of the central in the work of Vrubel is the theme of the Demon, inspired by the poem by M. Yu. Lermontov. Captured by the high romance of the poem, he illustrates it ("Tamara in the Coffin", 1890-1891) and creates images of the central characters close to Lermontov's in spirit, power of expression and skill. At the same time, the artist endows them with features of increased expressiveness and brokenness, which will soon become the seal of his time. For more than ten years, Vrubel returns to the image of the Demon again and again. His evolution is a kind of tragic confession of the artist. He imagined this evil spirit of heaven beautiful, proud, but infinitely lonely. At first, mighty, in the prime of his life, still believing that he would find happiness on earth ("The Demon Seated", 1890, ill. XIV), the Demon is later depicted as unconquered, but already broken, with a broken body, stretched out among the cold stone mountains ("Demon defeated", 1902). In his eyes burning with anger and stubbornly compressed mouth, one can feel both a rebellious spirit and tragic doom.
In the 1890s, Vrubel's work gradually became dominated by another theme, primordially Russian, folklore. The artist is still attracted by titanic strong heroes, but now they carry goodness and peace in themselves. In the monumental and decorative panel "Mikula Selyaninovich" (1896), Vrubel portrayed the epic hero as a simple farmer, saw in him the personification of the strength of the Russian land. Such is the "Bogatyr" (1898), as if merged with his horse, a mighty knight - not at war, but vigilantly guarding the peace of his homeland.
Wonderful fairy-tale images of Vrubel. They happily combine the truth of observation, deep poetry, sublime romance and fantasy that transforms everything ordinary. It is inextricably linked with nature. In fact, the spiritualization of nature, its poetic personification is the basis of Vrubel's fairy tales. Mysteriously, mysteriously, his "Toward the Night" (1900). In "Pan" (1899, ill. 204), depicting the goat-footed god of the forests, there is a lot of humanity. In his faded eyes, faded for a long time, both kindness and age-old wisdom shine. At the same time, he is like a revived birch trunk. Gray curls, like curls of white bark, and fingers - clumsy knots. "The Swan Princess" (1900, ill. 203) is both a blue-eyed princess girl with a long braid to the waist and a royally beautiful bird with swan wings floating in the blue sea.
Great thoughts and feelings, a wide scope of fantasy pulled Vrubel into the world of monumental art, and it became one of the main directions in his work. Since the 1890s, having found the form of monumental and decorative panels, the artist executed them on orders from enlightened patrons of the arts (panel "Spain", ill. 202, "Venice", a series dedicated to Goethe's poem "Faust"). Despite the monumental integrity of the form, they always retained the subtlety of plastic development and the psychological depth of the image.
Vrubel's portraits are also distinguished by originality and artistic significance. They are deep and very expressive; the artist gave each model a special spirituality, and sometimes even drama. Such are the portraits of S. I. Mamontov (1897), the poet Valery Bryusov (1906), numerous self-portraits (for example, 1904, ill. 205) and portraits of his wife, the famous singer N. I. Zabela-Vrubel.
The last ten years of his life were painful for Vrubel. His wonderful gift struggled with severe mental illness for a long time. No longer able to hold a brush in his hand, he painted a lot, striking those around him with the purity of the structural forms of the drawing. Gradually faded vision. Vrubel died in the prime of his creative life.
V. E. Borisov-Musatov(1870-1905). The tendency towards poetization of images, characteristic of Russian art in the 1890s and early 1900s, found expression in the work of Viktor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov. His lyrical talent began to manifest itself from the earliest student years in gentle images of a poetic nature, but only from the end of the 1890s did the circle of Musatov's favorite themes and the figurative-painting system of his art become determined. With all his might, the artist strives to comprehend harmony in the world and, not seeing it around, tries to recreate it in his imagination.
Musatov's best works are "Spring" (1901), "Reservoir" (1902, ill. 206), "Emerald Necklace" (1903-1904). The artist is still close to nature, but it seems to be reincarnated into elegiac images of his sincere dream, like images of literary symbolism, losing the clarity of life outlines in the vagueness of contours and the fragility of color spots. He inhabits his pensive parks with slow, as if dreaming girls, dresses them in dresses of past times, wraps them and everything around in a haze of light sadness.
"World of Art"- a significant phenomenon in the Russian artistic life of the late XIX - early XX century, which played a large role in the development of not only the fine arts in Russia, but also theater, music, architecture, and applied arts.
The cradle of the "World of Art" was a circle of the St. Petersburg intelligentsia, which arose in the 1890s. Among them were the artists A. N. Benois, K. A. Somov, L. S. Bakst. By the end of this decade, the "World of Art" took shape as an ideological and artistic association. V. A. Serov took part in it, supporting him with his authority. The core of the young group was replenished by E. E. Lansere and M. V. Dobuzhinsky. S. P. Diaghilev, devoted to the interests of art, played an important organizational role. From 1899 to 1904, the figures of the "World of Art" published a literary and artistic magazine. However, he was not unified in his direction. Its artistic department, headed by outstanding masters of the fine arts, differed sharply from the literary-philosophical department, which was of a symbolist-religious nature.
The main goal of the World of Art was the renewal of Russian art, the improvement of its artistic culture, mastery, wide familiarization with the traditions of foreign and domestic heritage. They worked hard and fruitfully not only as artists, but also as art historians, critics, popularizers of classical and contemporary art.
The World of Art played a particularly important role in Russian artistic life during the first period of its existence, which lasted about ten years. Miriskusniki arranged extensive exhibitions of domestic and foreign art, and were the initiators of many artistic endeavors. They then declared themselves opponents of both the routine academicism and the petty everyday life of some of the late Wanderers.
In their creative practice, the World of Arts proceeded from specific life observations, depicting contemporary nature and man, and from historical and artistic materials, referring to their favorite retrospective subjects, but at the same time they sought to convey the world in a transformed form, in decorative-raised forms and one one of the main tasks was the search for synthetic art of the "grand style".
In the early years of the life of the association, the World of Art paid tribute to the individualism that permeated the European culture of those years, and the theory of "art for art's sake". Later, in the pre-revolutionary decade, they largely revised their aesthetic positions, recognizing individualism as detrimental to art. During this period, modernism became their main ideological opponent.
In two types of art, the artists of the "World of Art" achieved particularly significant success: in theatrical and decorative art, which embodied their dream of the harmony of the arts, of their synthesis, and in graphics.
Graphics attracted the World of Arts as one of the mass art forms, they were also impressed by its chamber forms, common in those years in many art forms. In addition, graphics demanded special attention, as they were much less developed than painting. Finally, the development of graphics was also facilitated by achievements in domestic printing.
The landscapes of old St. Petersburg and its suburbs, the beauty of which the artists sang, as well as the portrait, which in their work occupied essentially an equal place with the picturesque, became a peculiarity of the easel graphics of the World of Art. A. P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva made a great contribution to the graphics of the early 20th century; in her work, woodcut is established as an independent art form. The romantic work of V. D. Falileev, who developed the art of engraving on linoleum, was peculiar.
The most significant phenomenon in the field of etching was the work of V. A. Serov. They were distinguished by simplicity, rigor of form and excellent mastery of drawing. Serov also advanced the development of lithography, creating a number of remarkable portraits in this technique, distinguished by their expressiveness with an amazing economy of artistic means.
Masters of the "World of Art" achieved great success in the field of book illustration, raising the artistic culture of the book to a high level. Particularly significant in this regard is the role of A. N. Benois, E. E. Lansere, and M. V. Dobuzhinsky. I. Ya. Bilibin, D. N. Kardovsky, G. I. Narbut, D. I. Mitrokhin, S. V. Chekhonin and others worked fruitfully in book graphics.
The best achievements of the art of graphics at the beginning of the century, and in the first place of the "World of Art", contained the prerequisites for the widespread development of Soviet graphics.
A. N. Benois(1870-1960). Alexander Nikolaevich Benois acted as the ideologist of the "World of Art". Mind, broad education, the universality of deep knowledge in the field of art characterize Benois. Unusually versatile creative activity of Benois. He achieved a lot in book and easel graphics, was one of the leading theater artists and figures, art critics and art critics.
Like other World of Art scholars, Benois preferred themes from past eras. He was a poet of Versailles (the most famous are his two Versailles series - "The Last Walks of Louis XIV", 1897-1898 and a series of 1905-1906, ill. 208). The creative imagination of the artist caught fire when he visited the palaces and parks of the St. Petersburg suburbs. Russian history is also reflected in the work of Benois. In 1907-1910, he, along with other Russian artists, enthusiastically worked on paintings on this subject for the publishing house I. Knebel ("Parade under Paul I", 1907; "Exit of Empress Catherine II in the Tsarskoye Selo Palace", 1909).
Benois populated his detailed historical compositions, executed with great imagination and skill, with small figures of people and carefully, lovingly reproduced monuments of art and the everyday appearance of the era.
Benois made a major contribution to book graphics. Most of the artist's works in this area are associated with the work of A. S. Pushkin. In his best work - illustrations for the poem "The Bronze Horseman" (1903-1923), Benois chose the path of an artist-co-author, characteristic of the "World of Art", characteristic of the "World of Art". He followed the text line by line, although he sometimes deviated from it by introducing his own plots. Benois paid the main attention to the beauty of old St. Petersburg, rediscovered by the World of Art, following Pushkin, depicting the city either clear and quiet, or romantically confused in the terrible days of the flood.
Benois's illustrations for Pushkin's The Queen of Spades are also executed with great professional skill. But they differ in a more free interpretation of Pushkin's text, sometimes ignoring the psychologism that permeates the story.
Benois was engaged in theatrical activities for almost his entire creative life. He proved himself to be an excellent theater artist, a subtle critic of the theater. In the 1910s, at the time of his creative heyday, Benois worked at the Moscow Art Theater together with K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, often not only as an artist, but also as a director, and in the first years of its existence "Russian Seasons" in Europe carried out their artistic direction. His theatrical works are also characterized by accuracy in recreating the artistic and everyday signs of the era, compliance with the author's dramatic intention and high artistic taste. Favorite theatrical brainchild of Benois is the famous ballet of I. F. Stravinsky "Petrushka" (1911). Benoit owned not only its design. He was the author of the libretto and took an active part in its production.
K. A. Somov(1869-1939). No less typical for the "World of Art" and the work of Konstantin Andreevich Somov. Unlike many of his colleagues in the World of Art, Somov received a systematic art education. He studied at the Academy of Arts, where he chose the workshop of I. E. Repin. The strong professional skills acquired by him here Somov tirelessly honed in the future, and his brilliant skill soon became widely known.
In the early years of his work, Somov followed realistic traditions (portrait of his father, 1897). In the painting "Lady in a Blue Dress" (portrait of the artist E. M. Martynova, 1897-1900), there is also a psychologically subtle and deep penetration into the image that bears the stamp of the tragic fate of the young artist. However, Somov’s desire to connect him with a long past time (Martynova is dressed in an old dress), the scene of a lady and a gentleman carelessly playing music in the spirit of the 18th century, and the painting that has become more rigid herald a new search for the artist.
In the early 1900s, Somov's work finally took shape. Like all the world of art, he willingly painted landscapes. Always starting from nature, he created his own, Somian image of nature, romantically elevated, with a thin lace of frozen foliage on trees and a complex graphic pattern of their branches, with enhanced sonority of color. But the main place in the artist's work was occupied by retrospective compositions. Their usual characters are mannered, doll-like ladies in high powdered wigs and crinolines. Together with languid gentlemen, they dream, have fun, flirt. Somov painted these paintings clearly under the influence of the old masters. His painting became smooth, as if varnished, but sophisticated in a modern way ("Winter. Skating rink", 1915, ill. 210).
A significant place in the work of Somov is a portrait. His gallery of portraits of representatives of the artistic intelligentsia is truly a landmark of the time. The best of them are portraits of A. A. Blok (1907, ill. 209), M. A. Kuzmin and S. V. Rachmaninov. They are distinguished by accuracy, expressiveness of characteristics and artistry of execution. The artist, as it were, raises all the models above everyday life, endowing them with the general ideal qualities of the hero of his time - intellect and refinement.
E. E. Lansere(1875-1946). Evgeny Evgenievich Lansere is one of the multifaceted masters of the "World of Art". He was engaged in easel and monumental painting, graphics, was a theater artist, created sketches for works of applied art. His work is characteristic of the "World of Art", and at the same time, a bright originality distinguishes Lansere from the World of Art environment. He was also attracted to the 18th century, he liked to create impressive compositions on this topic, but they are distinguished by a greater variety of interpretations of the content and democratism of images. So, the painting "Ships of the times of Peter I" (1909, 1911) is fanned with the spirit of the heroic romance of Peter the Great's time, and the gouache "Empress Elizaveta Petrovna in Tsarskoye Selo" (1905) is characterized by a sober, life-like truth of images.
The most significant place in the work of Lansere is occupied by graphics - easel, book and magazine. His graphic works are elegant, sometimes sophisticatedly patterned, imbued with the spirit of the era and classically clear. The central work of the artist is a large series of illustrations for L. N. Tolstoy's story "Hadji Murad". In them, Lancer managed to recreate Tolstoy's wise simplicity with a romantic general mood and bright expressive characters. In the future, Lansere worked a lot and fruitfully as a Soviet artist.
M. V. Dobuzhinsky(1875-1957). Like Lancer, Dobuzhinsky belonged to the younger generation of artists of the World of Art. His work, like Lansere, is typical of this association and at the same time deeply original. In easel art, Dobuzhinsky preferred the urban landscape. But he was not only its singer, but also a psychologist, not only sang of its beauties, but portrayed the reverse side of a modern capitalist city, coldly mechanistic, an octopus city ("The Devil", 1906), spiritually devastating people ("The Man with Glasses" , 1905-1906).
Both in book graphics and in theatrical and decorative art, Dobuzhinsky is characterized by an individual psychological approach to the interpretation of the illustrated work. The Andersenian artist is kind and witty in elegant color drawings for the fairy tale "Swineherd", lyrical and tenderly sentimental in illustrations for "Poor Lisa" by N. M. Karamzin and deeply dramatic in the famous series of illustrations for F. M. Dostoevsky's story "White nights" (1922). The best theatrical works of Dobuzhinsky are those that he performed at the Moscow Art Theater ("A Month in the Country" by I. S. Turgenev, 1909, "Nikolai Stavrogin" by F. M. Dostoevsky, 1913).
The work of many masters of the beginning of the century - V. A. Serov, Z. E. Serebryakova, I. Ya. Bilibin, B. M. Kustodiev, I. E. Grabar and others - is connected to the "World of Art" to one degree or another. In the same row - Nicholas Roerich(1874-1947) - advanced artist, scientist, prominent public figure. In the artistic environment of that time, Roerich was distinguished by his love for ancient Russian history and archeology, for the art of Ancient Rus'. In his work, he sought to penetrate deep into the centuries, into the living and integral world of distant ancestors, to connect it with the progressive development of mankind, with the ideals of humanism, heroism and beauty ("Overseas guests", 1902, ill. 211; "The city is being built", 1902 ).
"Union of Russian Artists". The Union of Russian Artists (1903-1923) played a significant role in the artistic life of Russia at the beginning of the century. Its prehistory was the "Exhibitions of 36 Artists" organized in 1901 and 1902 in Moscow. The "Union of Russian Artists" was founded on the initiative of Muscovites in order to strengthen the young artistic organization. Many leading masters of both capitals became its members, but the core of the "Union of Russian Artists" continued to be Moscow painters - K. A. Korovin, A. E. Arkhipov, S. A. Vinogradov, S. Yu. Zhukovsky, L. V. Turzhansky , A. M. Vasnetsov, S. V. Malyutin, A. S. Stepanov. A. A. Rylov, K. F. Yuon, I. I. Brodsky, F. A. Malyavin were close to the Union of Russian Artists in their artistic positions and active participants in its exhibitions. In 1910, the "Union of Russian Artists" was divided. A St. Petersburg group of artists emerged from its composition, which restored the former name "World of Art", a grouping that ceased to exist as an exhibition union in 1903.
Landscape is the main genre in the art of most of the masters of the "Union of Russian Artists". They were the successors of landscape painting of the second half of the 19th century, expanded the range of topics - depicted nature and central Russia, and the sunny south, and the harsh north, and ancient Russian cities with their wonderful architectural monuments, and poetic old estates, often introduced elements of the genre into their canvases , sometimes still life. They drew the joy of life from nature and loved to paint directly from nature with a temperamental wide brush juicy, bright and colorful, developing and multiplying the achievements of plein air and impressionistic painting.
The works of the masters of the "Union of Russian Artists" clearly expressed the creative individuality of each, but they also had many similar features - a heightened interest in the rapid visual coverage of the world, a craving for a fragmentary dynamic composition, erasing clear boundaries between a compositional picture and a natural study. Their painting was characterized by the integrity of the plastic-colorful cover of the canvas, a wide relief brushstroke molding the shape and sonority of color.
Art 1905-1907. The events of the first Russian revolution, which left their mark on the entire subsequent course of Russian and world history, were clearly reflected in the fine arts. Never before has Russian art played such an effective role in the political life of the country as it does today. "The drawings themselves excite an uprising," Minister of the Interior I. N. Durnovo informed the tsar in a report.
With the greatest depth, the revolution of 1905-1907 was reflected in easel painting in the works of I. E. Repin ("Manifestation in honor of October 17, 1905"), V. E. Makovsky ("January 9, 1905 on Vasilyevsky Island"), and I. Brodsky ("Red Funeral"), V. A. Serov ("Bauman's Funeral"), S. V. Ivanov ("Execution"). We have already mentioned numerous works on the revolutionary theme by N. A. Kasatkin, in particular, about such canvases as "Worker-Militant".
In the revolution of 1905-1907, satirical graphics reached an unprecedented flowering - the most mobile and mass form of art. 380 titles of satirical magazines are known, published in 1905-1907 in the amount of 40 million copies. Due to its wide scope, the revolution rallied artists of various trends into a large and friendly detachment. Among the participants in satirical magazines were such great masters as V. A. Serov, B. M. Kustodiev, E. E. Lansere, M. V. Dobuzhinsky, I. Ya. Bilibin, and students of art schools, and non-professional artists .
Most satirical magazines were liberal in direction. The tsarist government, even by issuing a manifesto on freedom of the press, actually did not allow the publication of political satirical magazines of the Bolshevik Party. The only magazine of the Bolshevik orientation - Sting, in which A. M. Gorky participated, was banned after the release of the first issue, and its editorial office was destroyed. Nevertheless, the best satirical magazines of 1905-1907, due to their accusatory content, sharpness of topical political thought and purposefulness, were of great educational value.
Most often, their satire, both in the text and in the pictorial part, was directed against the autocracy. The ruling elite of Russia and Tsar Nicholas II himself were especially sharply criticized. A common theme was also the denunciation of the bloody repressions of the tsarist government.
A very bold magazine of those years was Machine Gun, which owed much to the enterprise and ingenuity of its editor N. G. Shebuev and the artist I. M. Grabovsky. Generalized images of participants in the revolution - a worker, a soldier, a sailor, a peasant - repeatedly appeared on his sheets. On the cover of one of the issues of "Machine Gun", against the backdrop of smoking factory chimneys, Grabovsky placed the image of a worker and made a significant inscription "His Working Majesty the All-Russian Proletarian."
Il. 212. M. V. Dobuzhinsky. October idyll. "Bogey", 1905, No. 1
A combative tone characterized many magazines ("The Spectator", the most durable of them, "Leshy", "Zhupel" and its continuation "Hell's Mail"). VA Serov and many members of the World of Art collaborated in the last two journals. Both of these magazines were distinguished by the artistry of their illustrations. Serov's well-known compositions "Soldiers, brave children, where is your glory?" appeared in the first one. (ill. 199), Dobuzhinsky "October idyll" (ill. 212), Lansere - "Feast" (ill. 213); in the second - Kustodievsky "Olympus" - caustic caricatures of members of the State Council. Often the drawings of satirical magazines were in the nature of everyday sketches - scenes on the topic of the day. Allegory, sometimes using popular easel works by Russian artists, sometimes using folklore images, was a common form of disguise for satire. The activity of most satirical magazines of 1905-1907 was born of the revolution and froze along with the intensification of government reaction.
Art 1907-1917. The pre-October decade in Russia after the defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907 is a time of severe trials, rampant Black Hundred reaction. In 1914, the first world imperialist war began. In difficult conditions, the Bolshevik Party gathered forces for the offensive, and from 1910 a wave of a new upsurge of the revolutionary movement was growing, preparations were underway for the overthrow of the autocracy. Russia stood on the eve of the greatest historical events.
The tense situation in the country further complicated Russian artistic life. A lot of artists were in the grip of confusion, vague moods, passionate but groundless impulses, fruitless subjective experiences, struggle between artistic movements. Various idealistic theories that separated art from reality and democratic traditions became widespread. These theories were subjected to merciless criticism by V. I. Lenin.
But even in such a difficult situation, the development of Russian realistic art did not stop. A number of prominent Wanderers and members of the Union of Russian Artists continued to work actively. Among the artists of the largest creative associations, there have been tendencies towards rapprochement, points of contact on some fundamental issues. During these years, the World of Art criticized the spread of individualism, advocated the strengthening of a professional art school, and their search for art of great style became even more purposeful. N. K. Roerich expressed the idea that the directional struggle does not exclude the possibility of raising the banner of "heroic realism" corresponding to the time.
The interaction of individual genres of painting intensified, the domestic and classical heritage was rethought, V. A. Serov was one of the first in the 20th century to cleanse ancient mythology from the old academic pseudo-classical interpretation, and revealed a realistic beginning in it. In the pre-revolutionary decade, only a small number of large, significant paintings were created, but it was not by chance that V. I. Surikov's "Stepan Razin" appeared at that time, which meets the lofty goal of national art - to reflect the great ideas of modernity. Significant evidence of the progress of Russian art was the desire of a number of painters - A. E. Arkhipov, L. V. Popov, K. S. Petrov-Vodkin, Z. E. Serebryakova and others - to connect the image of the people with the thought of the Motherland, with their native land .
Z. E. Serebryakova(1884-1967). Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova sang in her best works the peasant life of the working people. A great role in the formation of her art was played by the legacy of A. G. Venetsianov and the great masters of the Renaissance. The austerity of monumental images, the harmony and balance of the composition, solid dense colors distinguish her best paintings. The "Harvest" (1915) and "The Whitening of the Canvas" (1917, ill. XII) stand out especially, in which the figures shown from a low point of view are so large-scale, and the rhythm of the movements is majestic. The canvas is perceived as a monument to peasant labor.
K. S. Petrov-Vodkin(1878-1939). In the early period of his work, Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin paid tribute to abstract symbolist tendencies. A close study of the best traditions of the European Renaissance and, most importantly, the line of Russian art that can be traced in the works of painters of Ancient Rus' helped the artist to show a democratic outlook on the world. In the canvases "Mother" (1913 and 1915, ill. 214) and "Morning" (1917), the images of peasant women reflect the high moral purity of the spiritual world of a Russian person. The painting "Bathing the Red Horse" (1912) is imbued with a premonition of future social changes. The lofty ideological content corresponds to the laconicism of the composition, the dynamics of space, the classical rigor of the drawing and the harmony of color, built on the main colors of the spectrum.
P. V. Kuznetsov(1878-1968). At the beginning of his career, Pavel Varfolomeevich Kuznetsov also experienced the influence of symbolism. The Kyrgyz suite of his paintings ("Mirage in the Steppe", 1912, ill. 215; "Sheep Shearing", 1912) reflected a poetic understanding of the image of a working person in the world around him. Simple life scenes, unhurried gestures and calm faces of people engaged in their usual work in their native land, the musical structure of color, the solemnity of the landscape - everything recreates a holistic harmonious image.
Il. 215. P. V. Kuznetsov. Mirage in the steppe. X., tempera. 95 X 103. 1912. Tretyakov Gallery
M. S. Saryan(1880-1972). In a series of paintings based on the impressions of trips to the countries of the East, Martiros Sergeevich Saryan also poeticizes the folk life depicted by him ("Street. Noon. Constantinople", 1910; "Date Palm. Egypt", 1911, etc.). His laconic works are built on bright and solid color silhouettes, contrasts of rhythm, light and shadow. The colors are emphatically decorative, spatial plans are clearly drawn. The poetic nature of Saryan's art images is determined by his ability to preserve a vivid sense of life with intense sonority and beauty of the pictorial palette.
The best works of the artists mentioned above, who later made an invaluable contribution to Soviet art, opened up the prospect of further development of monumental realistic art, the creation of which already belonged to a new historical era.
portraits with in-depth psychological images did not receive such a wide development in the pre-revolutionary decade as in the previous period, however, a number of examples show their enrichment in the work of outstanding masters. Suffice it to recall the self-portraits of V. I. Surikov and M. V. Nesterov, where the complex spiritual world of a man of art is revealed with his anxieties, reflections on life, or the sharp portrait characteristics of V. A. Serov.
The continuation of this line of the portrait genre can also be seen in the works of S. V. Malyutin (for example, portraits of V. N. Baksheev, 1914, ill. 216, K. F. Yuon, 1916). Posture, posture, gesture and facial expressions convey character, testify to the originality of the personality of representatives of Russian art. In the same plan, I. I. Brodsky painted a portrait of A. M. Gorky (1910).
Significant in the psychological interpretation of the image is the painting "The Nun" (1908, ill. 218) by B. M. Kustodiev. Although the author did not set the task of creating an accusatory work, the power of realistic penetration into the spiritual world of the person being portrayed gave this image a certain symbolic meaning. Before us is the guardian of church foundations: both kind, and cunning, and gracious, and domineering, merciless. However, full of optimism, Kustodiev's art is primarily drawn to the traditions of Russian antiquity, folk customs and festivities. In his canvases, he combines a lively observation of nature, imagery and bright decorativeness ("Merchant", 1915, ill. 219; "Maslenitsa", 1916).
The 1910s are associated with great success in the field of a new genre - theatrical portrait, where the artist faces a difficult creative task - to show the inspiration of the actor, his transformation into a stage image. The championship here belongs to A. Ya. Golovin. Knowing perfectly well the features of the stage and dramaturgy, he created a majestic and tragic image in the portrait of F. I. Chaliapin in the role of Boris Godunov (1912, ill. 220).
The landscape in one way or another attracted all artists: they were united in this genre by pictorial and coloristic searches. However, for many, the image of nature turned into a solution to an etude, rather than a picture problem, as was the case in the 19th century. In the pre-revolutionary period, only a few major masters managed to convey the epic feeling of the homeland by depicting nature - lyrical motifs prevailed. A. A. Rylov (Green Noise, 1904, ill. 217) turned to the traditions of landscape painting. His romantic canvas "Swans over the Kama" (1912) foreshadowed the painting "In the Blue Space", created after the Great October Socialist Revolution. The ever-increasing interest in the national heritage caused the appearance of a number of pictorial suites dedicated to ancient Russian cities. Including everyday scenes in the composition, the artists showed nature and man equally acting in a landscape painting ("In Sergiev Posad" by K. F. Yuon and others).
Landscape painters, mostly representatives of the "Union of Russian Artists", have significantly enriched their painting skills. It was here that etudes, lyrical interpretation of motifs, often rural ones, dating back to A.K. Savrasov, V.D. Polenov and I.I. Levitan prevailed, which testified to the preservation of democratic traditions. Plein air painting was replenished with such whole-colored and poetic landscapes as "Kem" (1917) by K. A. Korovin, "Toward evening" by N. P. Krymov, the best works of S. A. Vinogradov ("Flower Garden", "Spring", 1911, ill. 221) and S. Yu. Zhukovsky ("Dam", 1909, ill. 222; "Joyful May", 1912).
Intensive development is being still life. Now this genre is represented by the works of a number of artists of various creative associations, diverse in motives, content and tasks. In his numerous still lifes, K. A. Korovin attached great importance to decorativeness, the beauty of color. The same beginning is typical for the works of S. Yu. Sudeikin and N. N. Sapunov. I. E. Grabar enriched the painting with the achievements of impressionism ("The Untidy Table", 1907, ill. 223, etc.).
In the field of still life, as well as landscape and portrait, the artists of the Jack of Diamonds association, which arose in 1910, actively worked: P. P. Konchalovsky, I. I. Mashkov, A. V. Lentulov, A. V. Kuprin and others. In search of the national identity of art, they used the traditions of the national primitive (lubok, signboards, painted trays, etc.), but they also found links with contemporary French art, primarily with Cezanne and his followers. In the best works of the masters of this group, written with material weight, with a decorative scope, cheerfulness and a great pictorial culture affected. Such, for example, are the grotesque "Portrait of G. B. Yakulov" (1910, ill. 224) and the still life "Agave" (1916) by P. P. Konchalovsky, "Pumpkin" (1914, ill. 225) and "Still Life with Brocade" (1917) I. I. Mashkov.
Theatrical and decorative art experienced a brilliant flowering: many leading painters worked for the theater. It is enough to mention the names of V. A. Simov, V. A. Serov, A. Ya. Golovin, A. N. Benois, K. A. Korovin, L. S. Bakst, N. K. Roerich, I. Ya. Bilibin , B. M. Kustodiev and a number of performances designed by them ("Petrushka" by I. F. Stravinsky - A. N. Benois; "Prince Igor" by A. N. Borodin - N. K. Roerich; "Masquerade" by M. Yu Lermontov - A. Ya. Golovina and others). "Russian Seasons" in Paris and other cities of Western Europe, organized by S. P. Diaghilev, in the design of productions of which many of these masters participated, glorified Russian art in the international arena. The high artistic level of scenery and costumes, the whole appearance of the stage action amazed foreigners with a synthesis of arts, a spectacle of extraordinary beauty and national originality.
As mentioned above, the process of development of realism in 1907-1917 was complicated by the crisis of bourgeois culture. The least stable part of the artistic intelligentsia, although it was captured by the general spirit of protest against bourgeois reality, succumbed to decadent moods, moved away from modernity and social life, denied democratic traditions in art, while this protest itself usually had the character of an anarchist revolt. Previously, these negative phenomena affected the works shown at the Blue Rose exhibition, organized in 1907 and bringing together symbolist artists. The members of this short-lived group asserted the dominance of intuitionism in artistic creativity, went into the world of mystical ghostly fantasies. But the most gifted and purposeful (P. V. Kuznetsov, M. S. Saryan and some others) already in the pre-October decade took the democratic path of development in their work.
A number of artists, especially young ones, were involved in the 1910s in the mainstream of modernist currents. Some of them - supporters of cubism, futurism - claimed that their form-creation corresponded to the age of engineering and technology, others - primitivists - on the contrary, sought to return to the immediacy of perception of the world by an uncivilized person. All these currents were intricately intertwined in the art of the pre-October decade. They touched upon the painting of the "Jack of Diamonds", while stylistic and primitivist tendencies were especially evident among representatives of the group with the boldly shocking name "Donkey's Tail". In the end, all varieties of formalism that then spread in Russian art led to a distortion of reality, the destruction of the objective world, or, finally, to the dead end of abstractionism (Rayonism, Suprematism) - the extreme expression of modernism.
The contradictions in Russian artistic life in 1907-1917 did not stop the progressive development of realistic art during this difficult time. The leading Russian masters felt the approach of social change, consciously or intuitively felt the need to bring their work into line with the scale of the events of a turbulent historical era. After the Great October Revolution, artists of all generations, some earlier, others later, joined in building a new socialist culture, placing their art at the service of the revolutionary people; under the influence of Soviet reality, there was a restructuring of those who had previously rejected realism as a method.
The life of the Russian village was hard. The so-called resettlement issue worried many representatives of advanced Russian culture and art in those years. Even V. G. Perov, the founder of critical realism, did not pass by this topic. Known, for example, his drawing "The Death of a Settler".
The settlers made a painful impression on A.P. Chekhov, who traveled in 1890 on the road to Sakhalin through all of Siberia. Under the influence of conversations with Chekhov, he traveled along the Volga and Kama, to the Urals, and from there to Siberia and N. Teleshov. “Beyond the Urals, I saw the exhausting life of our settlers,” he recalled, “almost fabulous hardships and hardships of the people’s peasant life.”
Ivanov spent a good half of his life traveling around Russia, carefully, with keen interest, getting acquainted with the life of the many-sided working people. In these incessant wanderings, he also got acquainted with the life of the settlers. “Many dozens of miles he walked with them in the dust of the roads, in the rain, bad weather and the scorching sun in the steppes,” Ivanov’s friends say, “he spent many nights with them, filling his albums with drawings and notes, many tragic scenes passed before his eyes.”
Powerless to help these people, the artist thought with pain about the immense tragedy of their situation and the deceitfulness of their dreams of "happiness", which they were not destined to find in the conditions of tsarist Russia.
In the late 1880s, Ivanov conceived a large series of paintings that consistently told about the life of the settlers. In the first picture - "Rus' is coming" - the artist wanted to show the beginning of their journey, when people are still cheerful, healthy and full of bright hopes. “Resettlers. Walkers. 1886 .
One of the final pictures of the cycle is “On the road. The Death of a Settler” is the strongest work of the planned series. Other works on this subject, created earlier and later by a number of writers and artists, did not reveal so deeply and at the same time so simply the tragedy of the settlers in all its terrible truth.
"On the road. Death of a migrant. 1889
Steppe incandescent heat. A light haze extinguishes the horizon line. This sun-scorched desert land seems boundless. Here is a lonely immigrant family. Apparently, the last extreme forced her to stop at this bare place, which was not protected by anything from the scorching sun.
The head of the family, the breadwinner, died. What awaits the unfortunate mother and daughter in the future - such a question everyone involuntarily asks himself when looking at the picture. And the answer is clear. It is read in the figure of a mother stretched out on the bare ground. There are no words and no tears for a heartbroken woman.
In mute desperation, she scratches the dry earth with crooked fingers. We read the same answer in the bewildered, blackened, like an extinct coal, face of the girl, in her eyes frozen with horror, in her entire numb, emaciated figure. There is no hope for any help!
But quite recently, life was glimmering in a small transport house. The fire was crackling, a meager dinner was being prepared, the hostess was busy near the fire. The whole family dreamed that somewhere far away, in an unknown, blessed land, a new, happy life would soon begin for her.
Now everything collapsed. The main worker died, obviously, the exhausted horse also fell. The collar and the arc are no longer needed: they are carelessly thrown near the cart. The fire in the hearth went out. An overturned bucket, the bare sticks of an empty tripod, outstretched, like arms, empty shafts in mute anguish - how hopelessly sad and tragic all this is!
Settlers (Return Settlers), 1888
Ivanov consciously sought just such an impression. Like Perov in "Seeing the Dead", he closed the grief with a narrow circle of family, abandoning the figures of sympathetic women who were in the preliminary sketch of the picture. Wanting to further emphasize the doom of the settlers, the artist decided not to include the horse, which was also in the sketch, into the picture..
The power of Ivanov's painting is not limited to the truthful transmission of a particular moment. This work is a typical image of peasant life in post-reform Russia.
Sources.
http://www.russianculture.ru/formp.asp?ID=80&full
http://www.rodon.org/art-080808191839
Let's start with the reasons for moving to Siberia. The main reason for resettlement in the post-reform era is economic. The peasants believed that they would live better in Siberia than at home, because in their homeland all suitable land had already been plowed up, the population was growing rapidly (1.7–2% per year) and the amount of land per person was correspondingly decreasing, while in Siberia the supply of suitable for cultivating the land is practically endless. Where rumors of a rich life in Siberia spread among the peasants, there was a desire for resettlement. The champions of the resettlement were the black earth, but at the same time densely populated and very poor Kursk, Voronezh and Tambov provinces. It is interesting that non-chernozem (and especially northern) peasants were inclined to resettlement to a much lesser extent, although they were deprived of the benefits of nature - they preferred to develop various non-agricultural side jobs.
Could it be that the unfortunate characters of the picture have traveled from the Tambov province to Siberia on this small cart? Of course not. Such hardcore ended as early as the 1850s. The railroad reached Tyumen in 1885. Those wishing to move to Siberia went to the nearest station to their place of residence and ordered a freight car. In such a wagon, small (6.4x2.7m) and not insulated, it was just that - in terrible crowding and in the cold - a peasant family with a horse, a cow, a supply of grain (for the first year and sowing) and hay, inventory and household items. The car was moving at a speed of 150-200 km per day, that is, the journey from Tambov took a couple of weeks.
It was necessary to get to Tyumen by the earliest possible time of opening the Irtysh, that is, by the beginning of March, and wait for the ice drift (which could happen either immediately, or in a month and a half). The living conditions for the settlers were Spartan - primitive plank barracks, and for the most unlucky and thatched huts on the shore. Recall that in March it is still cold in Tyumen, on average up to -10.
An ice drift passed, and from Tyumen, down the Irtysh and then up the Ob, a few and expensive steamboats departed (a steamboat is expensive and difficult to build on a river that does not communicate with the rest of the country either by sea or by rail). There was desperately not enough space on the ships, so they dragged behind them a string of primitive deckless barges. The barges, which did not even have a basic shelter from the rain, were so crowded with people that there was nowhere to lie down. And even such barges were not enough for everyone, and to stay until the second voyage to Tyumen would miss the whole summer, in which it was necessary to organize the economy. It is not surprising that the disorganization and seething passions of boarding the steamships resembled the evacuation of Denikin's army from Novorossiysk. The bulk of the settlers (and there were 30-40 thousand of them a year), heading for the Altai, got off the steamer in the rapidly growing Barnaul, and if the water was high, then even further, in Biysk. From Tyumen to Tomsk by water 2400 km, to Barnaul - more than 3000. For an old steamer, barely dragging along numerous rifts in the upper reaches of the river, this is one and a half to two months.
In Barnaul (or Biysk) the shortest, overland part of the journey began. Places available for settlement were in the foothills of Altai, 100–200–300 km from the pier. The settlers bought carts made by local artisans at the pier (and those who did not bring a horse with them - also horses) and set off. Of course, the entire peasant inventory and seed supply cannot fit on one cart (in the ideal case, lifting 700-800 kg), but the peasant needs just one cart on the farm. Therefore, those wishing to settle closer to the pier gave their property for storage and made several walkers, and those who went on a longer journey hired at least one more cart.
This circumstance can explain the absence in the migrant's cart in the picture of the bulky items necessary for the peasant - a plow, a harrow, a supply of grain in bags. Either this property is stored in a warehouse on the pier and is waiting for a second trip, or the peasant hired a cart and sent a teenage son and a cow with it, and he, with his wife, daughter and compact inventory, quickly went to the proposed place of settlement in order to choose a plot for himself.
Where exactly and on what legal grounds was our migrant going to settle? The practices then were different. Some followed the legal path and were assigned to existing rural societies. While the Siberian communities (consisting of the same settlers of previous years) had a large supply of land, they willingly accepted newcomers for nothing, then, after parsing the best lands, for an entrance fee, and then they began to refuse altogether. In some, completely insufficient amount, the treasury prepared and marked out resettlement areas. But the majority of settlers in the described era (1880s) were engaged in self-seizure of state (but completely unnecessary to the treasury) land, boldly founding illegal farms and settlements. The treasury did not understand how to document the current situation, and simply turned a blind eye, without interfering with the peasants and without driving them off the land - until 1917, the lands of the settlers were never registered as property. However, this did not prevent the treasury from taxing illegal peasants on a general basis.
What fate would have awaited the settler if he had not died? Nobody could have predicted this. Approximately one fifth of the settlers in that era did not manage to take root in Siberia. There were not enough hands, there was not enough money and inventory, the first year of management turned out to be cropless, illness or death of family members - all this led to a return to their homeland. At the same time, most often, the house of the returnees was sold, the money was lived - that is, they returned to settle down with their relatives, and this was the social bottom of the village. Note that those who chose the legal path, that is, those who left their rural society, found themselves in the worst position - their fellow villagers could simply not accept them back. Illegals, at least, had the right to return back and receive their allotment. Those who took root in Siberia had a variety of successes - the distribution into rich, middle and poor households did not differ significantly from the center of Russia. Without going into statistical details, we can say that a few really got rich (and those who were doing well in their homeland), while the rest were doing differently, but still better than in their previous lives.
What will happen to the family of the deceased now? To begin with, it should be noted that Russia is not the Wild West, and the dead cannot be simply buried by the road. In Russia, everyone who lives outside their place of registration has a passport, and the wife and children fit into the passport of the head of the family. Consequently, the widow needs to somehow communicate with the authorities, bury her husband with a priest, issue a metrical statement on the burial, and obtain new passports for herself and her children. Given the incredible sparseness and remoteness of officials in Siberia, and the slowness of official postal communications, solving this problem alone can take at least half a year from a poor woman. During this time, all the money will be lived.
Next, the widow will have to assess the situation. If she is young and has one child (or teenage sons who have already reached working age), you can recommend that she remarry on the spot (there have always been a shortage of women in Siberia) - this will be the most prosperous option. If the probability of marriage is low, then the poor woman will have to return to her homeland (and without money, this path will have to be done on foot, asking for alms along the way) and somehow take root with her relatives. A single woman does not have a chance to start a new independent household without an adult man (both in her homeland and in Siberia), the old farm has been sold. So the widow's crying is not in vain. Her husband not only died - all life plans associated with gaining independence and independence were forever broken.
It is noteworthy that the picture depicts by no means the most difficult stage of the migrant's journey. After a winter journey in an unheated freight car, life in a hut on the banks of the frozen Irtysh, two months on the deck of an overcrowded barge, a trip on their own cart across the flowering steppe was more rest and entertainment for the family. Unfortunately, the poor man could not bear the previous hardships and died on the way - like about 10% of children and 4% of adults from those who moved to Siberia in that era. His death can be attributed to the difficult living conditions, discomfort and unsanitary conditions that accompanied the resettlement. But, although it is not obvious at first glance, the picture does not indicate poverty - the property of the deceased, most likely, is not limited to a small number of things in the cart.
The call of the artist was not in vain. Since the opening of the Siberian railway (mid-1890s), the authorities gradually began to take care of the settlers. The famous "Stolypin" cars were built - insulated freight cars with an iron stove, partitions and bunks. At the junction stations, resettlement centers appeared with medical care, baths, laundries and free feeding of small children. The state began marking new plots for the settlers, issuing home improvement loans, and giving tax breaks. 15 years after the picture was written, such terrible scenes became noticeably less - although, of course, the resettlement continued to require hard work and remained a serious test of human strength and courage.
On the map you can trace the path from Tyumen to Barnaul on the water. I remind you that in the 1880s the railway ended in Tyumen.
Sometimes you have to argue with all sorts of monarchists who curse the Russian Bolsheviks for overthrowing the tsar (strange thing, I know that the tsar himself abdicated during the February bourgeois revolution), and destroyed a happy peasant life, uniting peasant farms into mechanized collective farms (the same collective farms that fed the country from front to front throughout the war).
They continue to resist when you tell them about the lawlessness and poverty into which the peasants were plunged by the German tsars and their Masonic-liberal entourage, about the regular famine in Tsarist Russia, which, due to climatic conditions and the low development of the productive forces of the villagers (animal traction, plow, manual labor ) was repeated every 11 years, and that Russian Bolshevism as a popular insurrectionary movement was generated by objective reasons. They say that this is disinformation and propaganda of “communized scoops”.
I do not want to discuss the shortcomings and merits of the “white” and “red” movements now ... This is a separate and difficult conversation for a Russian patriot. I wanted to go to the turn of the 19th century and look at the life of a simple Russian peasant through the eyes of an eyewitness.
Fortunately, objective documents of that time have survived to this day - these are paintings by our famous Russian Wanderers, who can hardly be suspected of sympathy for Soviet power or socialism.
It is impossible to challenge the history of Russian life captured by them.
Perov. "Tea drinking in Mytishchi" 1862
A year ago, serfdom was abolished. Obviously these beggars are father and son. Father on a prosthesis. Both are cut off to the extreme. They came to the Father for alms. Where else would they go?
The attitude of this Father towards the guests can be seen in the picture. The maid tries to drive them out.
The boy is ten years old in the picture. The October Revolution will take place in 55 years. He will then be 65 years old. It is unlikely that he will live to see this. The peasants died early. Well, what can you do ... Is this a happy life?
Perov. "Seeing the dead" 1865
And this is how the peasants buried each other. I want to draw the attention of monarchists to the happy faces of children.
There are 52 years left before the Russian Revolution.
Vladimir Makovsky. "Little Organ Grinders" 1868
It's more of an urban landscape. Children earning a living. Look at their simple Russian faces. I don't think they need to be described. The boy is 9-10 years old, the girl is 5-6 years old. 49 years left before the Russian Revolution. God knows if they will survive.
Vladimir Makovsky "Visit to the poor" 1873
This is no longer a village, but a small district Russian town. The picture shows the interior of the premises of a poor family. It's not a complete nightmare. They have a stove, and they are not completely disenfranchised. They simply do not know that they are happy, because they live in an autocratic state.
The girl in the picture is about 6 years old. The stratification of society begins to reach a dangerous level. There are 44 years left before the Russian Revolution. She will live. Will definitely live!
Ilya Repin "Barge haulers on the Volga" 1873
No comment. There are 44 years left before the Russian Revolution.
Vasily Perov "Monastery meal" 1875
The humble meal of the servants of God.
By the way, I read on the Internet from one "learned historian" that the church showed maximum concern for its flock.
The degradation of the church as an organization is evident. There are 42 years left before the Russian Revolution.
Vasily Perov. "Troika" 1880
Small children, like a traction force, dragging a tub of water. There are 37 years left before the Russian Revolution.
Vladimir Makovsky. "Date" 1883
The son works as an apprentice. His mother came to visit him and brought a present. She looks at her son with compassion. It is either late autumn or winter outside (mother is dressed warmly). But the son is standing barefoot.
There are 34 years left before the Russian Revolution. This boy must live.
Bogdanov Belsky. "Oral Account" 1895
Pay attention to the clothes and shoes of ordinary peasant children. And yet they can be called successful. They are studying. And they study not in a parochial school, but in a normal one. They were lucky. 70% of the population was illiterate. There are 22 years left before the revolution.
Then they will be about 40 years old. And after 66 years, the children of these guys will challenge the most powerful state in the world - the United States. Their children will launch a man into space and test a hydrogen bomb. And the children, these children will already live in two or three room apartments. They will not know unemployment, poverty, typhus, tuberculosis and will commit the most terrible crime - the destruction of their people's socialist state, the iron curtain and their social security.
Their great-grandchildren will wallow in the mess of liberalism, register at labor exchanges, lose their apartments, fight, hang themselves, drink too much and gradually approach a life that can be described as “Tea drinking in Mytishchi”.
The result of life, which is consistently displayed in the pictures presented above, is the picture:
Makovsky "January 9, 1905" 1905
This is Bloody Sunday. Execution of workers. Many Russian people died.
Will anyone, having looked at the pictures above, claim that the protest of the people was provoked by the Bolsheviks? Can a happy and contented person really be taken to a protest rally? What's with the "whites" and "reds"? The split in society was caused by objective reasons and grew into a massive violent protest. Poverty, degradation of all branches of government, fattening bourgeoisie, illiteracy, disease...
Whom of them had to be convinced, whom to agitate?!..
What does Lenin and Stalin have to do with it?.. The split and collapse in society became such that it became impossible to manage this state.
For the last 20 years liberals have been telling us on TV that Bloody Sunday is a Soviet myth. There was no shooting. And Pop Gapon was a normal kid. Well, drunken men gathered on the square, well, they staged a buzz. The policemen came with the Cossacks. Shot in the air. The crowd stopped. We talked with the peasants and ... parted ways.
Then what to do with the picture of Makovsky, which was written in this 1905? It turns out that the picture is lying, but Pozner, Svanidza and Novodvorskaya are telling the truth ??
Ivanov Sergey Vasilievich "Shooting". 1905
Ivanov Sergey Vasilievich "Riot in the Village" 1889
S.V. Ivanov. “They are going. Punishment Squad. Between 1905 and 1909
Repin. "The arrest of the propagandist" 1880-1889
N. A. Yaroshenko. "Life Everywhere" 1888
This is such a sad journey...
No one took power from anyone. The monarchy degenerated biologically, in conditional wartime, it was unable to govern the country and surrendered Russia to Western Freemasons. Two months before the capture of the Winter Palace, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who settled in the Masonic Provisional Government, said - "We do not feel any threat from the Bolsheviks." But the Russian Bolsheviks still took power.
What was tsarist Russia at the beginning of the 20th century? It was a backward agrarian country, with a primitive system of government, with a damned army that was not combat-ready, an illiterate, enslaved Russian people, a rotten estate system and a German degenerate idiot tsar, terribly far from the working people.
Where in 1913 they broke records for the sale of bread abroad, and the bastard Russian people fluff from hunger.
By 1917 it was a World War I wreck, with industry stalled, traffic stalled, deserting army and starving cities!
This was a poor, poor country, where there were 2 power plants and then supplying electricity to the residence of the king and his toilets. In addition, in this shitty estate system there was a horde of officials, bureaucrats, landowners, capitalists and other German-Polish-French-Jewish, Russophobic liberal-Masonic scum, aware of the tsar’s closeness and using it at the moment when it is necessary to shoot a hundred other Russian workers, then the cause of those who rebel against all these inhuman conditions!
And if the second Russian revolution had not happened, we would have collectively lost the possibility of space flights, and the victory in the Second World War, and industrialization, and the nuclear power plant with moon rovers, and thermonuclear bombs, and our parents who hardly lived to see their birth.
By the way, the White Guard armies spat on the king, the monarchy and capitalism three times! And a hundred more times they spat on the working Russian people!
And if it weren’t for the year 17 and the victory of the Russian workers’ and peasants’ army (the Russian insurrectionary movement), then Russia as a state would have ceased to exist even then and would have become a colony of the Entente and the USA (which supplied the white movement with tanks, weapons, food and money), broke up into the Siberian-Ural republics, the Far East, internecine Cossacks and other bunch of independent, insignificant principalities that, in place of Kolchak_Yude-niche_Wrangel, would have shared power for another 50 years.
Kolchak, although a Russian officer with an admixture of blacks, was such a wonderful guy that he was appointed by England no less than the "supreme ruler of Russia", and at the same time an English resident. But the peasants didn’t understand his “good” somehow. And they decided that he would receive a bullet quite deservedly.
And if it weren’t for the Russian revolution and the “bad” Bolsheviks, who gathered the country and the Russian nation from rags by the year 23 and turned it into one big military industrial camp, we would certainly be crawling on our knees with Western countries, for the right to life under the sun.