We tend to perceive color photographs as something more real and modern. Thanks to the passion of the artist Olga Shirnina, who works under the nickname Klimbim, we can take a fresh look at historical events and personality and imagine how they might look in color. Olga is engaged in colorization of historical photographs and skillfully revives the past, allowing it to literally play with new colors.
Source: Color by Klimbim, this post uses interview materials from RosPhoto.
Grigory Rasputin, 1916
Turning black and white photos into color is not easy for Olga favorite hobby, but also a way to take a different look at history, which the artist is actively interested in. Olga is a translator by profession. German language, and she learned to color photos with the help of video tutorials on the Internet. Despite her popularity, she often has to listen to negative comments from opponents of colorization, who demand to stop "this disgrace."
ballet dancer Mariinsky Theater Agrippina Vaganova.
“Critically evaluating my coloring pages, I see that portraits and faces look more or less realistic. Usually what is interesting is good. Among the colorists there are also battle painters, marine painters, and portrait painters. I'm interested in the latter. Although, of course, I would like to become a generalist, ”Olga admits.
Actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya.
“The task is, firstly, to color the individual details of the image with different colors as close as possible to real ones, and, secondly, to give the result a holistic, harmonious look. First, I do the technical part of the work - I select image fragments. It's pretty boring, but inevitable. But then the most interesting begins. When painting, I almost always start with the face, then pick colors and shades for the rest. The most difficult thing for me is to paint objects, details, buildings and other inanimate objects. Perseverance is not enough."
Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt.
“In the process of work, there is one magical moment when the photo comes to life. Sometimes it's creepy: you add some stroke - and the person from the photo looked at you as if alive. And he is closely following your movements ... Whoever experienced this will not abandon this matter. ”
Princess Zinaida Nikolaevna Yusupova at a costume ball in 1903.
“I am interested in a variety of topics, primarily the history of Russia. And one can only envy the American colleagues, who have a huge selection of high-quality images published on the website of the Library of Congress and many others. Our archives are not so generous."
Participant of the World Championship in French wrestling Karl Hastened, 1912.
“Klimbim is my nickname on the Internet, translated from German means “trinkets, trinkets” and even “cute kitsch”. I don't ask for more."
Ballerina Anna Pavlova.
“When you paint a photo of a certain time period, it is interesting to make it in the style of that era, so I study the work of Prokudin-Gorsky, Friedland, color photography of post-war Berlin, etc.”
royal family, 1914
“There is evidence of contemporaries about the color of the eyes of Lenin, Chekhov, Mayakovsky, Rasputin, Kerensky. If information cannot be found, I rely on common sense and imagination. Readers often correct me.
IN AND. Lenin with a cat, 1922
N.K. Krupskaya.
Young I.V. Stalin.
Revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai.
Lieutenant L.N. Tolstoy, February 15, 1856, Petersburg. Photographer - S.L. Levitsky.
Maxim Gorky with his wife Ekaterina Peshkova.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.
Composer Sergei Prokofiev.
Marina Tsvetaeva.
Anna Akhmatova.
Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924
Osip Mandelstam.
Michael Bulgakov.
Nikolai Gumilyov.
Of all, the most popular is the portrait, which allows you to capture a person or a group of people on canvas. According to an old legend, this one originated at the time Ancient Greece when the girl said goodbye to her lover who was leaving for the war and, in order to forever perpetuate his image in her memory, circled the shadow falling from him on the wall. Over the centuries, the art of painting improved and it reached the height of its mastery by the 18th century. It was at this time that portraits began to appear. famous artists, which depicted not only the appearance of the hero, but also conveyed his feelings, experiences, temperament.
Features of the paintings of the Peter the Great era
In European fine arts The 18th century is rightly called the time of domination portrait genre. It is this type of painting that becomes predominant, because everyone wanted to get paintings with their own image. In Russia, Peter I brought popularity to the portrait. Progressive reforms emperor contributed to the beginning of close cooperation between the state and European countries, and Russian painting began to gradually enrich itself with elements of Western secular art. However, despite the influence of foreign culture, portraits of famous artists of the 18th century living in Russia have not lost their originality and expressiveness.
Types of paintings
Initially, portraits were divided into ceremonial and chamber ones. The first type included paintings in which a person was depicted in full height during the celebration (if the hero was painted to the waist, then the picture was considered half-dress). He was dressed in magnificent clothes and stood in a proud pose, surrounded by a luxurious background. Such canvases were exhibited in the reception hall for all to see.
Chamber portraits were the opposite of formal ones: here the sitter was depicted in a relaxed pose, immersed in his thoughts and activities. This type of artwork was intended to decorate the walls of small rooms, away from prying eyes.
In the 18th century, ceremonial and chamber paintings still did not lose their popularity, but another type of painting was added to them - intimate. Here the artist tried not only to depict a person, but also to convey his inner world with a brush. The luxurious background was ignored. Many well-known portraits of Russian artists were often painted in an intimate style.
Transformation of paintings in the 18th century
Notable figures in the art of that time were such painters as I. Nikitin, F. Rokotov, I. Argunov, A. Antropov, D. Levitsky, V. Borovikovsky, A. Matveev and others. Portraits of famous artists are imbued with high respect for the personality of a person. If back in the first half of the 18th century, paintings of this genre were parsunas (flat, frozen images noble people, made with icon-painting techniques), then gradually the masters begin to move away from this, introducing into their works the breath of life, light and emotions. creative heritage painters of the 18th century largely determined further fate Russian portrait.
Creativity I. Nikitin
The artist Ivan Nikitin (born in the mid-1680s - died around 1742) was the pride of Peter the Great. The emperor highly appreciated the creative skills of the painter, considering him a portrait painter of European level. Early work The artist's paintings are made in a parsonic manner with its inherent gloom, flatness of the image, fuzzy play of light and shadow. But, despite this, the portraits of Nikitin, painted on initial stage his works, are distinguished by their special realism and psychology, they completely lack flattery to the hero of the picture, which was abused by many ceremonial painters of that time. Gradually, Nikitin moved away from parsing and improved his skills, preserving in it the realism of the image and a subtle understanding inner world person.
The painter's brush belongs to several paintings depicting Peter I, as well as many other noble people (the emperor's wife, his daughters Elizabeth, Anna and others). The most successful work of the artist is considered to be "Portrait of the Floor Hetman" (circa 1725). The picture impresses with the tragic image of the hero - an old man, on whose face there is strength, power, experience and sorrow. To this day, it is not known exactly who Ivan Nikitin painted on his canvas. The painter enhanced the dramatic effect of the painting with a skillful selection of shades of colors. This canvas, like other portraits of famous artists, depicts not just a person, but an entire era.
Rokotov - the creator of the half-dress style
If Ivan Nikitin was especially bright painter the beginning of the 18th century, then the second half of the century became famous (1735 - 1808). He was especially good at portraits of women. There were not so many well-known artists who could convey feminine tenderness and grace on canvas, and Rokotov turned out to be in great demand. He wrote many of his works in a semi-ceremonial style.
The talent of the master conquered Catherine II, and in 1763 she specially invited him to create her coronation portrait. The painter depicted the Empress in profile, successfully emphasizing her stately figure and thoroughbred face. Catherine liked the picture so much that she continued to order artists to paint her portraits, copying the style of Rokotov. The brushes of the painter belong to Struyskaya, Princess Yusupova, Peter III and other notable people of that time. He paid the main attention to the faces of customers, making them soft, gentle, as if glowing from within. Thanks to this approach, his portraits turned out to be realistic, they conveyed the feelings of the people from whom they were painted.
V. Borovikovsky - singer of the female image
Considering the portraits of girls by famous Russian artists, one cannot fail to mention Vladimir Borovikovsky (1757-1825). Fame came to him in last decade 18th century. Borovikovsky created chamber portraits, emphasizing the sentimentality and tenderness of his models. He painted not only rich women, but also simple peasant women, conveying on canvas all the female beauty of that era. The images of Lopukhina, Naryshkina, Arsenyeva, the peasant woman Khristinya, the double portrait of the maids of the Lvov family, Lizonka and Dashenka, are the most masterful. Women with soft hair, a gentle blush and a luminous look look touchingly from the canvases. Despite the fact that all the paintings of the author are written in the same style, they are a real work of art of that time.
D. Levitsky and his paintings
Dmitry Levitsky (1735-1822) is another famous portrait painter of the 18th century. Like other artists, he skillfully depicted in his works the beauty of the inner world of man. Levitsky became famous as a master of ceremonial style. He painted the characters very realistically, without flattery and embellishment of the client's appearance. Levitsky left behind a whole gallery of portraits, depicting Catherine II, E. Vorontsova, A. Kokorinov, P. Demidov, Ursula Mnishek and many other of his famous contemporaries.
Features of the preserved painting
The 18th century left as a memory of itself paintings-portraits of famous artists, which today can be seen in Tretyakov Gallery, Russian and Pushkin museums, private collections. The painted canvases are so realistic that they amaze art lovers with the level of skill of painters of past years. Portraits of women by famous artists look especially colorful, from which life, youth and extraordinary plausibility of the image breathe.
Any modern history textbook is primarily a set of dry information, dates, numbers, descriptions, surnames, names, and so on. And for younger generation, which learns from them (besides historians, it is not at all necessary for adults to know their past - they have already unlearned in their time), you need to somehow present this dryness in a form accessible to youthful imagination. For this, in textbooks there is a favorite subject of study for all "alternatives" - these are pictures. Usually this picturesque paintings oil, illustrating an event, usually painted a century or more from the event itself, as well as picturesque portraits of those letters and numbers that are called people, and not ordinary, but outstanding, who are forever immortalized on the pages of world history . In a way, a history textbook is very reminiscent of a huge epitaph, something like "born - did something outstanding - died." On the one hand, there is very little information about those times, scarce fragments of chronicles and descriptions of contemporaries do not fully describe the character of a person, whether he was kind-hearted or often nervous over trifles, how he developed spiritually and what was his level spiritual development What was his worldview and so on. But on the other hand, there is a period of antiquity, which is thousands of years further away from us on the time scale than the same period of the Middle Ages, but about which, paradoxically, many times more information is known than about the period of the Middle Ages. There is a natural question - why so? Was information recorded more carefully in antiquity? And in the Middle Ages they suddenly stopped - they say it wasn’t before, dark ages, dysentery, plague and so on?
But it is one thing to describe a person's life, another thing is his portrait, which can sometimes tell much more than any evidence. After all, any picture is an image that can firmly sit in the head, and it will be difficult to get it out of there. Today we will talk about the authenticity of portraits prominent people 16-17-18 centuries, that is, a period that is separated from us by the standards of the time of the Earth for a negligible period of time, and about which, it seems, historians should know almost everything. So let's go.
1. Adil-Gerai (Girey), Crimean Khan.
Khan of Crimea in 1666-1671. According to official genealogies, the Gireys are Genghisides, and come from the Tugatimurids from Janak-oglan, younger brother Tui Khoja oglan, father of Tokhtamysh. The eldest son of Janak oglan, Ichkile Hasan oglan, father of Ulu Mohammed, the founder of the dynasty of Kazan khans. But, this version origin of Hadji Giray, encounters numerous inconsistencies. It is more likely that Haji Giray was not a Genghisid, but belonged to the well-known Mongol-Turkic family Kerey (Kirey, Giray), and only later the successful usurper was assigned to the Golden family.
