"Inconsolable grief"- a painting by the Russian artist Ivan Kramskoy (1837-1887), written in 1884. The painting is part of the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery (inv. 679). The size of the painting is 228 × 141 cm.
History and description[ | ]
The painting "Inconsolable grief" was conceived and painted under the impression of a personal tragedy that befell the artist - the death of his youngest son Mark in 1876. The painting depicts a mourning woman in a mourning black dress - in her features one can guess the resemblance to the artist's wife Sofya Nikolaevna.
Kramskoy worked on this painting for about four years. Before settling on the final compositional solution, he created several preliminary versions. Kramskoy spoke about the final version of the picture: “Finally, I settled on this form, because for more than two years this form did not cause criticism in me.”
In the final version of the picture, the artist is extremely restrained in showing the external manifestations of human feelings. They are mainly concentrated in the eyes of a woman and in her hands. With one hand she presses a handkerchief to her lips, the other hand is lowered. Eyes detached, full of hopeless longing.
| A woman in a black dress, undeniably simply, naturally, stopped at a box of flowers, one step away from the viewer, in the only fatal step that separates grief from the one who sympathizes with grief - surprisingly visible and complete lay down in the picture in front of the woman, this look is only an outlined emptiness . The woman's gaze (the eyes are not tragically dark, but routinely reddened) powerfully attracts the viewer's gaze, but does not respond to it. At the back of the room, on the left, behind a curtain (not behind a curtain-decoration, but a curtain - an ordinary and inconspicuous piece of furniture) a door is ajar, and there is also a void, an unusually expressive, narrow, high void, pierced by the dull red flame of wax candles (all , what is left of the light effect). |
Pencil sketch of a painting
When the picture was ready, Kramskoy wrote to Pavel Tretyakov: "Accept this tragic picture from me as a gift, if it is not superfluous in Russian painting and finds a place in your gallery." Tretyakov took the painting to his collection, but forced the artist to accept money for it.
In the poem “Moscow - Petushki”, the picture “Inconsolable grief” haunts the protagonist in a drunken delirium: for example, in the train car “a woman, all in black from head to toe, stood at the window and, staring blankly at the darkness outside the window, pressed a lace to her lips handkerchief."
Notes [ | ]
- State Tretyakov Gallery - collection catalog / Y. V. Brook, L. I. Iovleva. - Moscow: Red Square, 2001. - T. 4: Painting of the second half of the 19th century, book 1, A-M. - S. 316. - 528 p. - ISBN 5-900743-56-X.
- Kramskoy Ivan Nikolaevich - Inconsolable grief (indefinite) (HTML). State Tretyakov Gallery, www.tretyakovgallery.ru. Retrieved September 29, 2012. Archived from the original on November 1, 2012.
- Kramskoy Ivan Nikolaevich - Inconsolable grief, 1884 (indefinite) (HTML). www.art-catalog.ru Retrieved 29 September 2012.
Ivan Kramskoy. Inconsolable grief.
1884. Oil on canvas. 228 x 141. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
In February 1884, the twelfth traveling exhibition opened. Kramskoy gave the exhibition the painting "Inconsolable Grief" - about the grief of a mother who lost her child. The idea to paint such a picture arose long ago, several years after his two sons died one after another.
Not a single painting by Kramskoy has such an amount of preparatory material - options, sketches, sketches, sketches. In them, the artist goes to an ever greater rigor in the selection of artistic means. One of the first versions (State Russian Museum) depicts a young woman with a fixed, dead look, exhausted from tears, sank to the floor.
The variant, located in the Museum of Latvian and Russian Art in Riga, is distinguished by a greater severity of cold tones, a more sparse narrative. The coffin has been moved into the depths of the canvas, it is hidden by a curtain, which a woman in deep mourning clutched convulsively. However, the excessive frankness of too clearly expressed suffering was alien to Kramskoy, he is looking for an expression of a restrained, chaste feeling that is not carried out on people, for whom someone else's look is offensive.
In the final version (1884, State Tretyakov Gallery), all the power of expressiveness is concentrated on the face and figure of a standing woman.
Mother is standing by the table, alone... She looks straight ahead. She is wearing a black mourning dress, her hair is carelessly pinned up, a handkerchief is pressed to her lips. She no longer cries. Nearby on an armchair is a box with flowers, flowers on the floor. The baby lace dress is the last one she will wear for her child. The door to the next room is ajar. On the floor near the door there is a reflection of a reddish light: wax candles are burning near the coffin. Everything is over. A child has passed away, but everything around has remained the same: a carpet on the floor, pictures on the walls, an album with photographs, books on the table...
There is dead silence in this picture. All internal movement is concentrated in the eyes of the heroine, full of inescapable longing, and the hands pressing the handkerchief to her lips - these are the only bright spots in the composition, the rest seems to fade into the shadows. The bright wreath contrasts sharply with the grief-stricken mother's mourning dress and seems out of place next to him - this dissonance emphasizes the atmosphere of loss that reigns in the picture. Symbolic is a red flower in a pot stretching upwards. It has a strange unreliability that tells us how fragile human life is.
The mother seems to be alone with her grief, and her restraint gives the appearance of features of true greatness, tragedy. The universal meaning of the image is emphasized by a detail that was easily read by contemporaries: in the upper right corner of the composition, the artist places a fragment of I.K. Aivazovsky's painting The Black Sea, cut off by a frame, in which Kramskoy himself saw the embodiment of human thoughts about the fundamental principles of being. “This is one of the most grandiose paintings that I know of,” Kramskoy admitted. This detail also carries a symbolic meaning, bringing the life of a person closer to the life of the sea element, in which storms are replaced by calm.
This is one of the best paintings by Kramskoy. She made a terrific impression on her contemporaries and one cannot still look at her without excitement. After all, it was not for nothing that Repin said that "this is not a picture, but a reality."
“I was in no hurry to purchase this painting in St. Petersburg, knowing, probably, that it would not find buyers in terms of content, but at the same time I decided to purchase it,” Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov wrote to Kramskoy.
“It is quite fair that my painting “Inconsolable grief” will not meet a buyer,” Kramskoy answered the collector, “I know this just as well, maybe even better, but after all, the Russian artist is still on the way to the goal, as long as he considers that serving art is his task until he has mastered everything, he is not yet corrupted and therefore still able to write a thing without counting on sales. Right or wrong, but in this case I only wanted to serve art. If no one needs a picture now, it is not superfluous in the school of Russian painting in general. This is not self-delusion, because I sincerely sympathized with maternal grief, I was looking for a clean form for a long time and finally settled on this form because for more than 2 years this form did not arouse criticism in me ... "
Ivan Kramskoy - Inconsolable grief.
Year of creation: 1884
Canvas, oil.
Original size: 228 × 141 cm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Description of the painting by Ivan Kramskoy “Inconsolable grief”
This picture was painted by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy in a difficult period of his life for him. At that time, a terrible event happened in his family - the loss of two little sons. Ivan Kramskoy suffered greatly. And, like a true artist, he was able to convey his feelings in the picture.
The main character of the picture is a woman who is dressed in a mourning dress. The woman does not move, but simply stands. The main character is a middle-aged woman. Her hair was already graying. She nervously clutches a lace handkerchief in her hands, which she brought close to her lips.
It may seem that the woman is calm and has already come to terms with grief, but this is not so. She feels miserable. But her grief is not on the verge of insanity. This is conscious grief. The emotions of the heroine of the picture are very accurately conveyed in her sad, full of pain, look. As soon as you pay attention to her eyes, you will immediately feel the cold with which it is saturated. It is impossible not to empathize with the heroine of this canvas.
In her posture, look - hopelessness can be traced in everything. A woman can not find a way out of this situation. She stands and silently mourns near the coffin of her child. There is nothing worse for a mother than the funeral of her own child.
It is very difficult to accurately describe what the heroine of the picture feels. A woman is static and everything around seems to stop in ignorance. It may seem that the whole world froze in anticipation of something unknown. All sounds ceased, and the woman was left alone with the silence and her thoughts.
The coffin of the child is depicted at the very edge of the picture. The only bright spot in the entire canvas is a bright and colorful mourning wreath. And, standing on the floor near the coffin, a flower in a pot is like a small symbol of life, faith and hope that suffering will end sooner or later and life will certainly continue to go at a measured pace.
Keywords: inconsolable grief Kramskoy
Kramskoy Ivan
"Inconsolable grief" 1884
oil on canvas 228x141 cm
The picture was painted under the impression of a personal tragedy that befell the artist - the death of his youngest son Mark in 1876.
The painting depicts a mourning woman in a mourning black dress - in her features one can guess the resemblance to the artist's wife Sofya Nikolaevna.
Kramskoy worked on the painting for about four years, making several preliminary versions. From a letter: "I finally settled on this form, because for more than two years this form did not evoke criticism in me."
When the painting was ready, Kramskoy gave it as a gift to Pavel Tretyakov. Tretyakov took the painting to his collection, but still forced the artist to accept money for it.
I. N. Kramskoy. Inconsolable grief. 1884
This picture is one of the most famous in the artist's work. It tells about the grief of a mother who lost her child. The tragic plot of the picture was close to the artist, who in the 70s. lost two of his sons in a short time.
He worked on the painting by Kramskoy painfully and for a very long time. This is probably why the picture turned out, according to Repin, "like a living reality."
“I was in no hurry to purchase this painting in St. Petersburg, knowing, probably, that it would not find buyers in terms of content, but at the same time I decided to purchase it,” Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov wrote to Kramskoy.
“It is quite fair that my painting “Inconsolable grief” will not meet a buyer,” Kramskoy answered the collector, “I know this just as well, maybe even better, but after all, the Russian artist is still on the way to the goal, as long as he considers that serving art is his task until he has mastered everything, he is not yet corrupted and therefore still able to write a thing without counting on sales. Right or wrong, but in this case I only wanted to serve art.
In the main character of the picture, the features of the artist's wife are guessed.
The painting seems to be very simple to execute. The only heroine of the canvas is the mother of the deceased child. On the canvas, we do not see either a violent expression of maternal suffering, or sympathetic relatives.
Mother stands alone - she seems lost and as if petrified with grief. Her appearance is full of tragedy and - at the same time - amazing dignity. It seems that her gaze is directed inward to herself. Hair, smoothly combed yesterday, today, it seems, did not touch the comb. The woman had just put on her mourning dress. The eyes are full of endless longing, they are swollen, but there are no more tears. A crumpled handkerchief, wet with tears, the woman presses to her lips.
Vladimir Porudominsky wrote about this picture in his book about Kramskoy:
A woman in a black dress undeniably simply, naturally stopped at a box of flowers, one step away from the viewer, in the only fatal step that separates grief from the one who sympathizes with grief - amazingly visible and complete lay down in the picture in front of the woman this look only outlined emptiness.
The woman's gaze (the eyes are not tragically dark, but routinely reddened) powerfully attracts the viewer's gaze, but does not respond to it. At the back of the room, on the left, behind a curtain, a door is ajar, and there is also emptiness, an unusually expressive, narrow, high emptiness, pierced by the dull red flame of wax candles.
There is dead silence in this work. All internal movement is concentrated in the eyes of the heroine, full of inescapable longing, and the hands pressing the handkerchief to her lips - these are the only bright spots in the composition, the rest seems to fade into the shadows.
External attributes of grief are bright wreaths, flowers prepared for burial, and a yellowish glow of candles from behind the half-open door to the next room. Pictures in rich frames, curtains, carpets and books - all these things, indicating the prosperity of the family, are relegated by Kramskoy to the background as insignificant.
The large picture hanging on the wall is quite concrete - we have a fragment of Aivazovsky's "Black Sea" in front of us. “This is one of the most grandiose paintings that I know of,” Kramskoy admitted. This detail also carries a symbolic meaning, bringing the life of a person closer to the life of the sea element, in which storms are replaced by calm.
The bright wreath placed on the coffin contrasts sharply with the grief-stricken mother's mourning dress and seems out of place next to him - this dissonance emphasizes the atmosphere of lostness that reigns in the work.
In this deeply personal picture, Kramskoy tells how much strength a person needs to continue to live after a great grief. The artist managed to achieve in the picture a feeling of deep tragedy and amazing psychological persuasiveness and at the same time avoid the external melodramatic effects that are almost inevitable in such a plot.
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Reviews
this is a brilliant picture. the point is that there is no grief in the face of the heroine, there is nothing at all except a look into nowhere, because everything that a glance can stumble upon has become meaningless. this is the very state of a person when meaning has disappeared, all solid walls have collapsed, all laws have ceased to work, nothing is important anymore. a great masterpiece, no one else has seen such an understanding of key events in the human soul, only Kramskoy.
