Fantastic painting occupies a special place in the bouquet of paintings by Russian artists. This is due to our culture with many fairy tales and polytheistic beliefs. One of the artists who clearly caught the connection between the fictional and the real was Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy. In his canvases there is no obvious division into fiction and true story, these two factors are smoothly intertwined and give the viewer a whole story. The principle of a certain nebula or even “dullness” of the surface, careful selection of images and soft colors give the very fabulousness inherent in the paintings of Ivan Nikolaevich. For example, we can definitely say that “Mermaids” is a painting by Kramskoy, its description coincides with the characteristics of other paintings by this author: mysticism is adjacent to calm nature. By the way, if we talk about realism, then we can see quite familiar landscapes, huts and houses with clearly drawn details.
Kramskoy: from clerk to painter
The artist was born in May 1837. His father was a clerk, so he wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. And so it happened. After graduation, Ivan worked as a clerk at the Duma in his city. But in 1853, his attention turned to other activities, he began to process photographic images, he was taught this by Tulinov, who was a countryman of Kramskoy.
Thus began the path of the painter as an artist. Already in 1857 he entered the Art Academy in St. Petersburg. The successes of the young man were so obvious that Ivan Nikolaevich received a gold medal for one of the paintings.
Among the works of the draftsman were portraits of famous people, with the help of which he got his hand in this genre, but his most famous painting is “Christ in the Wilderness”. She became the peak of Kramskoy's development in religious painting.
An unimaginable number of paintings and photographs were left to the heirs in memory of a wonderful artist who died of heart problems at the age of fifty.
The mysticism of the painting “Mermaids”
Perhaps one of the most ardent lovers of mysticism in Russian painting is Kramskoy. The painting "Mermaid" has gathered around itself so many reckless opinions about her bad reputation that, unfortunately, it is impossible to list everything. The history of the work is connected, oddly enough, with Gogol and his story “May Night or the Drowned Woman”. According to popular rumor, drowned girls became mermaids after death, inviting travelers into their networks. It was them that the draftsman wanted to depict in the picture.
Why Gogol? As you know, Nikolai Vasilyevich was also not averse to writing about something mysterious, even remembering “Viya” or “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, and Kramskoy re-read these works several times. Probably, this attraction to Gogol became the starting point in the field of fantastic painting. The artist wanted to convey the atmosphere of the May night in Ukraine in small details, hence the co-presence effect. As Kramskoy himself said, the picture of the “Mermaid” does not fully meet his requirements, because he so wanted to depict the light of the moon, but he did not succeed in “catching” it. Although we see how the cold light of the night luminary glides over the images of the mysterious mermaids. But this is only part of what the author himself conceived.
It was believed that mystical stories were dangerous, and if you write them off from the works of Gogol, then in general you can go crazy. Kramskoy even joked about this: “It’s good that with such a plot I didn’t finally break my neck, and if I didn’t catch the moon, then something fantastic came out.”
Indeed, in galleries and exhibitions, she could never find a place. The paintings next to the “Mermaids” were falling, and a barely audible singing could be heard from the room and it was cool. But after the canvas was hung in a far corner, far from the sun, the supernatural stopped, probably the mermaids were too hot in the sunlight.
The picture is like a plausible fantasy dream
But no matter what Kramskoy himself says, the picture of the “Mermaid” was a success, because it made a strong impression on many, though not always positive. This is due to the fact that the artist wanted to depict on the canvas. And the faces of the drowned women, and nature itself seem to evoke unpleasant dreary thoughts.
The expression on the faces of the girls betrays sadness for life, dreams of the past, and hopelessness. The whole picture is a symbol of deep sadness. Unusual images of mermaid girls are immediately striking. They do not have tails, as you can see, they move very well on their own two on the ground, only the viewer gets the impression of weightlessness, since the white robes of the undines make them look like ghosts.
Although he was not entirely satisfied with the work of Kramskaya, the painting “Mermaid” was duly appreciated by professionals: many art critics equated this work with a magical dream, everything is so realistically depicted on it.
Pushkin's assessment
The sun of Russian poetry spoke extremely positively about the canvas of Ivan Nikolaevich. What amazed Pushkin in Kramskoy's "Mermaid"? Yes, everything is the same as all connoisseurs of good creativity. He felt the atmosphere that the author was trying to convey, he admired the shades of mood, because Alexander Sergeevich saw here playfulness, dreaminess, and sadness. In the images of girls, he caught the real thing, which, alas, sometimes you will not find in living people. It was this kind of psychologism, not usually characteristic of portrait painters, that captivated Pushkin.
This work turned the world of artists, it had a huge impact on the subsequent work of the same author, as well as on the work of his followers. As Kramskoy wanted, the painting “Mermaids” caught its moonlight, thanks to the competent use of folklore and culture of the Russian people on the canvas. Many schoolchildren consider the reproduction of the work as an illustration for Gogol's "May Nights", and then write their impressions of what they saw. However, an essay based on the painting “Mermaids” by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy requires not only the ability to correctly express one’s thoughts, but also to understand the feelings of not only the characters, but also the artist himself.
Let's talk a little more about the paintings in which the artists depicted mermaids.
Ivan Vladimirovich Kosmin.
Guesses about mermaids are found every time in the folklore of different countries.
In most cases, a mermaid is a water spirit. Less often terrible old women.
Artists are trying to depict mermaids with green hair.
In countries where mermaids were mistaken for water spirits, they were represented as girls with fish tails.
Sadko at the sea king. I. Repin.
On the full moon, the little mermaids will come out onto land and begin to comb their streaming
droplets of water always flow from the hair to the shoulders. These faces are pale, but they are endowed with
unearthly beauty! Mermaids sing charmingly with an unprecedented voice confusing
lost travelers. Woe to those who fall under their spell! He will fall under the strongest
the arms of a river maiden, and she will drag him to the bottom of a deep pool. No one has escaped her yet.
reservoir, no one would want to get away from such beauty. In the warm season, mermaids come out of
rivers and lakes and go to protect the rye and ride on the birch branches, and the moonlight becomes for them
even brighter.
Viktor Korolkov drew mermaids during Mermaid Week.
Mermaid Week always started on Trinity Day. Then no self-respecting girl
agree to go into the forest alone without girlfriends, because he is afraid of getting caught by mermaids!
After all, they can lead away, intoxicate to such an extent that you won’t come back, or even
tickle until you die. And for men, grief at all: mermaids also want to know “what is
love with a person ”and therefore they are capable of anything! They are most dangerous on Thursday-
the mermaids have a great day. On such days, in no case was it possible to swim, and even more
leave the village, but if you just need to leave the village, then you definitely had to
take sagebrush with you, saying mermaids hate it. It was also forbidden to work! The one who
break, mermaids could severely punish by trampling crops and damaging livestock.
On Trinity Thursday, the girls had to weave a lot of wreaths, then they had to
take them to the forest. In order to make the little mermaids a little kinder, they hung a lot of yarn on trees.
The ancient Slavic people believed that Mermaids
symbolize fertility. And in the 19th century, people performed mermaid songs, that is, round dances.
People called on the spirit of a mermaid so that she would help them in the fields And when in people's lives
Christianity got worse, then mermaids began to be mistaken for evil spirits. People started comparing
mermaids with vampires! And even found similarities ...
Makovsky's "Mermaids" was shown at the 7th Traveling Exhibition in 1879. And then she received frankly worthless criticism of fierce scarecrows from the art of Stasov and Garshin (for "spectacular plasticity of naked female bodies using salon-academic techniques") and censure of colleagues in the shop. The rest of the Wanderers were infuriated by the iridescent enthusiasm for fairy-tale women and Makovsky's isolation from the popular agenda, which was so itchy among all the faithful Wanderers.
Worse, Alexander II, who, as already mentioned, did not understand art, was so impressed by the very spectacular plasticity and salon techniques that he made Makovsky almost a court painter and immediately ordered him a series of family portraits. The joy of colleagues, of course, knew no bounds.
All the entertainment of the mermaids according to the version LiveJournal Media, 2016
Why will it be easy for you to understand Makovsky?
Paradox: Makovsky managed to suffer for art that was not recognized by his colleagues, but approved by the art. For this plot, only he got it, despite the fact that other members of the circle wrote their mermaids - Repin and Kramskoy, for example.
But for Repin, mermaids are just an escort of the sea king, to whom Sadko got an appointment. Their poses express humility and, in general, do not irritate. Again, the picture depicts an oppressed class, and this was very suitable for the Wanderers.
Kramskoy's mermaids, created based on Gogol's motives, are generally solid undead, there is no question of any eroticism or social injustice (well, except if we consider that the dead are discriminated against by the living). The only claim to the painting was made by the collector Tretyakov, whose family allegedly lost consciousness in the room where the mermaids were located, and one of the guests, having seen enough of the canvas, even jumped to her death in the Yauza;
This is a picture about zombies. Her heroines are not only those that sit on the branches in Russian fairy tales and personify everything magical and beautiful. According to Slavic tradition, unmarried girls and betrothed brides who died during the special Mermaid Week, which runs from July 19 to 24, become mermaids. It was at this time that clusters of pretty living dead can be observed near reservoirs and in water meadows. In the forest, too, you can, because they really love to swing on the branches. This whole event with bathing, round dances and swings is called mermaids - such a coven for decent, but dead girls;
"Mermaids" by Makovsky, hanging in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, 1879
How to read a canvas with frolicking nudes?
Dressed Nude
It is still worth agreeing that mermaids, by definition, are not naked, but permanently half-naked creatures, because they have tails and hair. The artists of Disney's The Little Mermaid made this point in a peculiar way, providing the upper part of Ariel's tail with an additional fold of scales, creating the effect of a bikini or a bath towel on the hips.
Not childishly seductive Ariel from the cartoon
But the mermaids of Makovsky are dead Slavs, and not, for example, Germans. That's why they don't have tails. The nudity of Eastern European mermaids is traditionally hidden by long hair. Light brown hair, of course, is one of the signs of the species and one of the variants of the origin of the name of a particular undead.
Its own atmosphere
Makovsky painted the picture in the most suitable place for the plot, on the Zagony estate, not far from Dikanka, on the border of the Chernihiv and Poltava provinces. And he painted the quiet Ukrainian night from nature, as, probably, the central figure stretching languidly in the moonlight. Makovsky was also criticized for the overly realistic depiction of girlish bodies, but he was only faithful to the legend - folklore insists that mermaids do not wear any underwear, although in their plaintive and cunning songs that can be heard on a July night, they can ask the living for clothes . But it's just a way to lure some stupid kid into your circle and dance him to death.
The Church will always warm them
Rusalia is a pagan and ungodly event, and, apparently, in order to show that everything is under the control of the Lord, Makovsky depicts an occult structure in the corner. It turned out strange: evil spirits with special cynicism frolic in front of the temple of God. Representatives of the church, in general, also did not understand the picture.
Evil transmission channels
Water, trees and the traditional witches' round dance (as in European medieval engravings) are the traditional paths of transition between the worlds of the living and the dead. Makovsky dumps everything into an elegant pile, and under a snag he places greetings to the Pre-Raphaelites - a lady lying in water lilies.
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1879 Oil on canvas.
Description of the painting by Makovsky K.E. "Mermaids"
Contemporaries called Makovsky none other than "brilliant Kostya", and Emperor Alexander II considered "his" artist and trusted him to paint portraits of the royal couple. Paintings by Konstantin Makovsky never went unnoticed. This happened with his work "Mermaids", which at one time made a lot of noise. Critics V. Stasov and V. Garshin gave a sharply negative assessment of the canvas for too "spectacular plasticity of naked female bodies using salon-academic techniques." The picture was discussed so vigorously that even Alexander II himself, who was rather calm about fine art, personally visited the Traveling Exhibition for the first time. He was pleased with the work of the artist.
What so shocked the critics and the emperor?
The plot for the picture of Makovsky was the pagan holiday of Rusalia, celebrated in the "Rusal Week" from June 19 to 24. Mermaids were considered a dark, unclean force. But at the same time, fearing a meeting with them at the usual time, during the holiday week, people themselves called them to prevent drought - after all, water was the element and the place of residence of the mermaids. One of these days, when beautiful mermaids are having fun and walking, is depicted on canvas.
The artist depicted water maidens in full accordance with the ideas of East Slavic mythology. According to tradition, mermaids were considered both mystical, mysterious characters, and quite real people who, by the will of fate, turned into mermaids. These could be girls who died before marriage, unbaptized babies, those who died or were stolen from their mother, people who died in the Russian week. Outwardly, the characters of Slavic mythology differ from the usual image of a mermaid. Slavic water maidens are indistinguishable from an ordinary person - they do not have a fish tail. Mermaids have luxurious long hair, which they never braid, but wear it loose over their shoulders. Nudity, for a realistic, detailed image of which the artist was so criticized, also corresponds to traditional ideas about mermaids. Most often they were depicted precisely naked, covered only with green foliage. In their songs, mermaids often asked for shirts, and according to legend, they could steal yarn, canvases and scarves. The favorite pastime of mermaids is to frolic in the water and swing on the branches of trees. Busy with their favorite pastime, Makovsky wrote his mythical heroines.
The picture is filled with an aura of mysticism and mystery. The mythology of the characters is supported by the background of the picture – a palette of colors skillfully selected by the artist draws a bewitching dark night, in which young mermaids, shrouded in a foggy haze, go into the sky, enticing with their dance and enticing a random witness of their fun.
The best paintings of Makovsky K.E.
In the history of classical Russian painting, there are many mysterious and amazing episodes that allow us to talk about the existence of paintings with a “bad reputation”. This list includes several works by the famous itinerant artist Ivan Kramskoy. The largest number of legends is associated with his painting "Mermaids".
I. Repin. Portrait of the artist I. N. Kramskoy, 1882. Fragment
The idea of "Mermaids" arose from the artist under the impression of N. Gogol's story "May Night, or the Drowned Woman". According to folk beliefs, drowned girls became mermaids after death. It was them that Ivan Kramskoy decided to write. This topic was very unexpected and new for the realist artist. The artist loved Gogol very much and re-read all his works many times. He wanted to convey the very atmosphere of the May Night, to immerse the viewer in the mysterious world of Ukrainian folklore.
I. Kramskoy. Self portrait, 1867
While working on the painting, the artist was haunted by several themes. First, he was obsessed with the idea of conveying the bewitching beauty of the moonlight, which he could not succeed in any way: “I'm trying to catch the moon at the moment. They say, however, that a particle of the moonlit night did get into my picture, but not all of it. The moon is a difficult thing ... ”, the artist complained. The task was complicated by the fact that the moon itself was not in the picture - only its glare on the ghostly figures of mermaids.
M. Derigus. Illustration for the story by N. Gogol *May Night, or the Drowned Woman*: Ganna, 1951
Secondly, the very theme of ghosts and the underworld was said to be dangerous. Many of Kramskoy's contemporaries seriously believed that Gogol's stories could drive painters crazy. “I am glad that with such a plot I didn’t finally break my neck, and if I didn’t catch the moon, then something fantastic came out,” said Kramskoy.
A. Kanevsky. Illustration for the story by N. Gogol *May Night, or the Drowned Woman*: The Liberation of the Sister-in-Law
Critics agreed that the plan was successfully implemented, and called the picture "the extreme likelihood of a fantastic dream": make the most pleasant, refreshing impression on the public. However, the favorable responses ended there. And then the magic began.
V. Vlasov. Illustration for the story by N. Gogol *May Night, or the Drowned Woman*: Sleeping Levko, 1946
At the first exhibition of the Association of Wanderers "Mermaids" I. Kramskoy was hung next to the painting "The Rooks Have Arrived" by A. Savrasov. At night, the landscape suddenly fell off the wall - then they joked that the mermaids did not like such a neighborhood. However, soon there was no time for jokes.
P. Tretyakov bought both paintings for his gallery after the exhibition. For the "Rooks" a place was immediately found - in the office, and for a long time the "Mermaids" could not find a suitable place, they were hung from room to room. The fact is that from the hall where the picture of Kramskoy was hung, barely audible singing could be heard at night and it was cool, like water. The cleaners refused to enter the room.
O. Ionaitis. Illustration for N. Gogol's story *May Night, or Drowned Woman* | Photo: subscribe.ru
Not inclined to mysticism, Tretyakov did not believe the rumors, but once he himself drew attention to the fact that he felt tired when he was near this canvas for a long time. Gallery visitors also complained that it was simply impossible to look at this picture for a long time. And soon there were rumors that the young ladies, who looked at the "Mermaids" for a long time, went crazy, and one of them drowned herself in the Yauza. Of course, there was no hard evidence of the relationship between the incident and the art gallery.
O. Ionaitis. Illustration for N. Gogol's story *May Night, or Drowned Woman* | Photo: subscribe.ru
The old nanny, who lived with the Tretyakov family, advised to hang the picture in the far corner so that the light would not fall on it during the day: “It is difficult for mermaids in the sunlight, because they cannot calm down even at night. And as soon as they get into the shade, they will stop roaming at once! Tretyakov, far from superstition, nevertheless listened to the advice. Since then, gallery visitors have not complained about this picture.
I. Kramskoy. Mermaids, 1871
