Show all related files REALISM AND DIRECTION
Venetsianov - Varnek. Peter Sokolov -
Fedotov - Perov - Failure of 13 competitors -
Vereshchagin - Repin - V. Makovsky.
Pryanishnikov
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Realism and Direction
Realism is usually considered the main moment in the history of Russian painting and its distinguishing feature over all other schools. Since then, however, realism has ceased to be a "modern" phenomenon and
moved back into
historical perspective,
its outlines entered into real proportions with the rest of the phases of Russian painting, and it lost its predominant significance. From now on, realism can only be regarded as
one of significant movements in our school.
In the 18th century, with the exception of portrait and landscape painters, realism appeared on the basis of partly amateur and imitative, partly on the basis of ethnography. A class of everyday painting was founded at the Academy of Arts, called the "class of home exercises" and had the goal of educating Russian Teniers and Wauwermans for lovers of Russian painting. But the writings of various foreign ethnographers and separate series of engravings by foreign artists, which for the first time drew attention to the peculiarities of Russian life, were of much greater importance for our everyday painting.
Of course
these draftsmen
–
leprince,
Geisler, Damam, Atkinson and others were not realists in
real sense of the word.
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Realism and Direction
The principle of their creation was not the desire to portray charm Everyday life; they just carried curiosities special way of Russian life. But it was important that they drew the attention of Russian society to the picturesqueness and picturesqueness of folk life. A few Russians followed on their heels: under Catherine II -
curious but still unexplored
Ermenev, as well as Tankov, Mikh. Ivanov, sculptor
Kozlovsky; Later
Martynov, Alexandrov,
partly Orlovsky (which is discussed above),
Karneev; illustrators: Galaktionov, I. Ivanov,
Sapozhnikov and others. Of all these artists, Tankov (1740 (41?)–1799) is the most curious.
He took on complex subjects, like "Fair"
or "Fire in the Village", and dealt with them quite successfully with the help of reminiscences of Dutch and Flemish paintings.
Alexey Venetsianov (1780-1847), one of the most amazing figures of the Russian school, undoubtedly remains the real first realist. IN
the beginning of its activities,
not being a professional painter, he escaped the leveling influence of the Academy. Venetsianov was not touched by the successes of his peers Yegorov and
Shebueva in classic taste. He modestly chose a special path for himself and methodically, calmly
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Realism and Direction passed him,
moreover, he laid the foundation of a small school of artists, just like him,
engaged in a simple depiction of the surrounding reality.
From the subsequent phase of realism art
Venetsianov is distinguished by one very characteristic and
in a purely artistic sense, a valuable feature:
it
meaningless. Not plots, not anecdotes touched,
In most cases,
Venetsianova
6
, but purely picturesque motifs,
purely colorful tasks,
directly offered to him by nature. And Venetsianov was at his best, which allowed him to solve these problems very simply and artistically. Technically, Venetsianov received more than many of his peers. He was lucky to be at one time a student of Borovikovsky, and from this virtuoso he learned more than one secret of painting,
subsequently completely forgotten.
The best paintings
Venetsianov: his portraits, his "Barn floor", in which he wondered, in imitation of Granet,
depict the interior of a dimly lit building, its charming "Landowner busy with household",
reminiscent of the light effect of the paintings of Pieter de Hooch, his group
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Realism and Direction of the Peasants "Cleansing the Beets" belong to the undeniably classic works of the Russian school.
Venetsianov was aware of his isolated significance and sought to strengthen the art planted by him on his native soil. At the same time, he even dared to enter into some struggle with
Academy and created his own academy,
in which his only guide was the careful study of nature.
There were also patrons of this undertaking, and at one time the Venetsianov school flourished. Came out of it
Plakhov,
Zaryanko,
Krylov,
Mikhailov,
Mokritsky, Krendovsky, Zelentsov, Tyranov,
Shchedrovsky, all people are modest, invisible, but who passed on to their offspring a very true appearance of their time. Among them, Krylov (1802–1831) and Tyranov were especially subtle.
(1808–1859);
did the most
Shchedrovsky, who left a long line of types of Gogol's Petersburg. Unfortunately, the Venetsianov school did not have time to put down strong roots, and the master himself, in his old age, should have seen
like his best students, blinded by success
Bryullov, cheated on him and moved one after another to the workshop of the author of "Pompeii", where they quickly lost their freshness and turned into
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Realism and Direction of cold and pompous academics. Only one remained a faithful disciple of Venetsianov
Zaryanko (1818–1870), a good technician, but, unfortunately,
very limited person
who turned the living instructions of his teacher into a motionless and dead formula. portraits
The robins are impeccably drawn and painted with a wonderful method, but in their dryness and lifelessness they resemble painted photographs.
Separately from Venetsianov, in the first half
XIX century, several more realists worked,
engaged, however, almost exclusively in portraiture. These include Varnek (a very vital artist and an excellent draftsman,
Unfortunately,
having an unpleasant coloration) and subtle watercolors: P. F. Sokolov,
M.
Terebenev and
A.
Bryullov.
Several first-class interieurs were written, quite in the spirit of Venetsianov, by Count F. P. Tolstoy. IN
where the harsh environment of empire is softened by a sweet and intimate coziness in performance. This is one of the most touching paintings in Russian painting.
In the 1920s, the so-called "genre" began to play a prominent role in the West,
those.
sentimental,
ridiculous or
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Realism and Direction moralizing stories from life, conveyed in paintings. This type of painting was brought to us in
30s.
He gained several followers among Russian artists: Sternberg, who died early, partly Neff,
A little later Iv. Sokolov, Trutovsky,
Chernyshev and others. Their art differed from the Venetian one in that their main task was no longer the painting itself, but this or that plot,
told through painting
7
They laid the first foundations for "substantial art", and soon, again following the West, realism flourished in our country on a tendentious lining.
The trend has swept almost the entire next generation of artists. Only the faithful sons of the Academy remained aside, and such artists,
who, by the very essence of their industry, had to remain within the limits of a simple rendering of nature: landscape painters and portrait painters
(among the latter Zaryanko and talented, dexterous
Makarov). A special place is also occupied, however, by the magnificent, although extremely uneven Peter
Sokolov
(1821–1899).
Of all the artists of the 1940s and 1970s, he was the only one who remained faithful to painting and its direct tasks. Unfortunately,
Peter
Sokolov was a man too
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Realism and Direction are disordered, and this feature was reflected in his work in an eloquent way. The vast majority of his stuff is improvised bad taste. Just a few of his portraits
some dull typically Russian landscapes,
some of his hunting scenes show him to us as a great master and
true artist. Next to it you can also name
Sverchkov (1818-1891), an artist not particularly gifted and skillful, but nevertheless created a special industry for himself and expressed his ingenuous love for the "Russian horse" in it.
The ancestor of the tendentious, "ideological"
painting in
Russia was
P.
A. Fedotov
(1815–1852), a poor officer, an ardent art enthusiast who turned to the "small" kind of everyday painting partly because he had more "serious" and higher tasks -
self-taught amateur -
not available. However,
significant role in
talent formations
Fedotov played and the conditions of his life. The son of a modest retired officer, Fedotov grew up in a semi-provincial freedom,
among the characteristic peculiar situation of Moscow philistinism. Here Fedotov could learn to the very roots all the peculiarities of the mores of the provincial townsfolk. In the corps and, later, in
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Realism and Direction in the society of his comrades, he became acquainted with the world of the military, so significant in Nikolaev times. Finally, he came into contact with the artistic world as a fully formed person, when it was already too late for him to study again, when all his concepts had taken shape and he had developed his own manner of grasping and capturing phenomena.
"Direction" in the mid-1840s was already in the air. After the mourning of the world and the abstract aestheticism of the romantics, the first calls for
rearrangement of reality.
At
us Westerners and
the Slavophils formed into camps and from recent friends turned into bitter enemies;
a powerful galaxy of our great writers has matured,
contributed Russians thoughts into a common culture, and despite the bronze government of Nicholas -
there was a suffocating mood of conspiracy in the air.
I felt the need to change my skin
update, fix. Society has outgrown the forms in which it was bandaged.
In painting, this mood had to find its echo; but it is quite natural that this echo could not resound from the walls
Imperial Academy of Arts, from this bureaucratic, semi-court world, and quite
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Realism and Direction are also natural,
which is not methodical
Venetsianov with his unpretentious students could give the first examples of "thinking"
painting. One Fedotov was almost quite suitable for this, but he, a former officer retired by the sovereign, is a modest man,
unsophisticated and
despite your mind
childishly naive, could not be on a par with literature.
He limited himself to
what did Gogol limit himself to fifteen years before, i.e.
rather sharp, but not particularly caustic mockery of the weaknesses and stupidities of his compatriots.
This is how he first appeared before the public in
1849 with his oil paintings:
"Fresh Cavalier" (a rather bold satire for the time on bureaucratic ambition) and with his "Courtship of a Major", a more cheerful than evil illustration of the merchant environment. After that, he created a series of pictures in which the first attempts at female emancipation were ridiculed,
the funny sides of the petty nobility, the bureaucratic world - all themes that were sufficiently used by the humorous magazines of that time.
A separate place is occupied by his last works, in which he seems to have turned to
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Realism and Direction more poetic,
calm and
artistic direction: "The Widow" and the charming, exceptional in its aching melancholy picture "Anchor, more Anchor!".
Fedotov torn away from art,
still relatively in
young years
severe mental illness, which was soon followed by death. If we take into account that he took up painting seriously for only thirty years, it becomes quite clear why his work seems more like a talented "introduction" than a complete whole.
The best that this sensitive artist could give,
unusually quickly developed from an inept self-taught into a subtle and sometimes even beautiful painter (recall the pieces of dead nature in his paintings, worthy of the "old Dutch"), -
it was the best he took to his grave. His direct heir was another Muscovite, according to the changed spirit of the times, much more daring, but less attractive, almost inept - Perov.
Perov was born in 1834. His childhood and youth were spent in the countryside and in the provinces (he was a student of the Stupino art school in
Arzamas), and youth in Moscow, where he graduated
School of painting and
sculptures.
WITH
him
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Realism and Direction the Mother See resolutely enters into
the history of Russian art, and this is quite natural, not so much because typical Russian life was in full swing in Moscow,
attracted
in the coverage of realist literature, on itself everyone's attention, how much because
what in
Moscow there was an art school in which reigned complete
Liberty
and even rather stupid and
unscrupulousness. Zeitgeist of the 50s and 60s,
idealized the emancipation of the human person,
should have a negative attitude towards all kinds of fetters,
to all the traditions that bind creativity, and consequently, to the St. Petersburg Academy with its Areopagus. In this, however, lay a great danger to young Russian art: it became freer and
more interesting
But,
overwhelmed by the magnificence of literature,
it was losing its independence and at the same time resolutely turning away from its special laws.
A new period of Russian painting began,
the so-called "original Russian school" was born, and at the same time it
school
went out,
technology was lost
painting was forgotten.
Perov was a real son of his time.
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Realism and Direction
A man with a great gift of observation,
inquisitive, courageous, passionately devoted to his work - he certainly belongs to the very large phenomena of Russian culture, but his paintings are bleak as such; he wrote stories with colors that would be much brighter and more understandable in verbal presentation. He was occupied not with picturesque themes, but with stories that can be depicted through painting. Even in
paris,
where did he go retired
Academy, he completely overlooked the entire storm of artistic currents that was then bubbling, and in Parisian life, almost from the first day of his arrival, he began to look for motives for the same "meaningful" paintings that he had already become famous in his homeland. Of course, nothing came of this, and, entangled in the study of a world alien to him, he abandoned his undertaking with rare frankness and conscientiousness and asked permission to return to his homeland. IN
This fact is a whole page of history.
TO
unfortunately
not for our art alone,
but for our whole culture the feverish rise of social life,
followed after the Crimean campaign and the accession to the throne of Alexander II, too soon calmed down on half measures, on cruel
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Realism and Direction of the mutual misunderstanding of government and
intelligentsia, on the inert savagery of the vast majority of the people.
After several "liberal" years, during which we seemed to have begun to catch up with the general civilization of mankind, a gloomy reaction set in, and this reaction had the most deplorable effect on our art: even those modest sprouts of some kind of peculiar understanding of the tasks of art,
who have
we were shown in
works of Fedotov and Perov, froze and withered. Perov, who went abroad in 1864 after creating his crude but pleasant in his sharpness of accusatory pictures, he returned to his homeland at a moment when there was nothing to think about the continuation of such painting.
As a result of this, his art, and after him the art of a mass of other artists, remained some kind of unspoken word.
Perhaps the least artistic thing that Perov did was his first paintings,
written by him during the period of "great reforms". But at the same time, these of his works - "Arrival of the police officer for the investigation", "Sermon in the village", "Tea drinking in
Mytishchi" and in particular "Rural religious procession at Easter"
8
belong to the most valuable of what he has done. They have shortcomings
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Realism and the Direction of painting are redeemed (just as in contemporary painting
Jacobi "Halt")
historical character and
courageous directness. Like a painting
- they are bad, like historical documents - they are priceless.
IN
further works
Perov, it is true, there are more than one subtle feature of observation and a touching attention to life, but in general they are inferior to his first attempts. From the style of Courbet, Perov in them moved on to a sentimental caricature in the spirit of Knaus, and since his painting did not have time to acquire anything, the result was something boring and tasteless. In the same spirit, they performed only "Meal"
and "The Arrival of the Governess at the Merchant's House", an unusually typical picture, worthy of the best scenes
Ostrovsky. The last pictures in which
Perov suddenly turned to Bryullov and began to depict historical anecdotes in enormous proportions, which are hitherto a mystery and indicate
anyway,
on the artistic lack of culture of the master, on the complete stupidity in his views. Wanting to get away from the "direction", he did not find any other way out than into banal academicism.
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Realism and Direction
Despite all his shortcomings, Perov is the largest figure of all the artists of the time.
Alexander II. But next to him, and for several years after his death, worked quite a few curious craftsmen, almost without exception collected
P. M. Tretyakov in his gallery. One circumstance rallied some of these artists and created from them the core, which subsequently grew into
Association of Traveling Exhibitions. This circumstance is known in history under the name "refusal of 13 competitors".
At that time, among the academic youth, I. Kramskoy, cheerful, intelligent and incomparably more mature than all his comrades, was the central figure. He managed to group around him a galaxy of the freshest young men, and little by little the enthusiasm of this group for new ideas (a passion that at first found some encouragement from the academic authorities) took on a more conscious, more programmatic character. The dull struggle gradually turned into an open one and ended with the fact that on the act of November 9, 1863, thirteen competitors for gold medals refused the given
Academy theme with a mythological plot and,
not having achieved the conditions set by them for a freer competition,
left
Academy.
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Realism and Direction
Finding themselves suddenly in the whirlpool of life, yesterday's disciples were forced to rally closer and found a kind of community, which they called
Artel.
The very fact of rejection from the Academy of a group of young and courageous people was of great importance. The seed of protest against the imposed school formula was sown. Everything that was fresh and
independent in
Russian artistic youth, now pestered
Artel, and if not part of it, then, in any case, fed on those theories, and most importantly,
that fortitude,
which have been developed and
were supported by the first private art community in Russia.
Later, with the founding of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions (in 1870), the role of such a "main apartment"
advanced Russian art passed to the Association, for which she remained for more than 20 years, until the emergence of the World of Art exhibitions.
And yet the greatest of our artists-preachers and accusers was not a member of the Artel and not a member of the Association.
The completely isolated figure of V. V. Vereshchagin has the honor of being, after Perov, the most prominent representative of new artistic
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Realism and Orientation.
Vereshchagin (1842–1904) is a very characteristic personality for Russia in the 1860s and 1870s. IN
the opposite of most of their comrades, who came out of the people and then remained semi-cultured all their lives and, as a result, somewhat closed, cut off from the "good"
society of people,
Vereshchagin,
on the contrary,
its origin,
upbringing and
partly even by position belonged to this "good" society. IN
this basis of an incomparably more common meaning and
a more conscious program of his work, greater courage and consistency in his preaching.
Vereshchagin is not without reason the most famous Russian artist abroad. Touching on Russian topics, he approached them from the point of view of a completely cultured person - a world citizen. IN
there is no trace of naive Russophilia in his painting,
stubborn and stupid separatism from a common culture,
characterizing many of his peers. Vereshchagin was a typical Russian "master",
man with
very broad-minded, with a very sympathetic mind, with great nobility in intentions and absolutely ignorant of petty and narrow nationalism.
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Realism and Direction
Unfortunately, this feature of "nobility" loses almost all meaning,
as soon as we turn to the study of the works themselves
Vereshchagin. And this is very typical for a Russian artist. Vereshchagin was a "European" in his entire program, in his entire undertaking, but in the execution of his undertaking he remained a kind of barbarian. His belonging to the "better society" did not save him, and Vereshchagin could not get the right views on art from communicating with people of his circle, in most cases with
contempt and
perplexed about his vocation. Even less for his art could he learn from contact with our advanced art camp,
wholly occupied with social tasks and completely indifferent to
purely aesthetic purposes. True, Vereshchagin came to Europe as a young man, but his low aesthetic preparedness in his homeland did not indicate to him such phenomena from which he could draw beneficial instructions for himself.
Menzel, Degas, Manet, Monet and many others,
alive and vigorous, remained for him - alive and vigorous - absolutely incomprehensible.
This is the reason for the gloomy impression,
obtained from the work of Vereshchagin. Not that
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Realism and Direction are bad, that he was more an ethnographer than an artist, not that he was a preacher of perfect sincerity, telling in his paintings what he saw and experienced, but that
that in all his creation there is too little
picturesque
merits.
This cultured man was cultured only mentally. He was interested in ideas, but forms were indifferent to him.
Nevertheless, a place of honor will remain in the history of Russian art for Vereshchagin.
To begin with, his paintings have not yet lost their interest. This means that there is a great power hidden in them,
great creativity. True, they are badly written and helplessly drawn, but on the other hand, they are started with great wit and
linked with
outstanding "directing" talent. And this is not the last thing in art. But even in a purely pictorial sense, Vereshchagin, despite his shortcomings, is not without significance. In his time he was a pioneer, and many of his light and colorful discoveries can still serve as valuable indications. Some of his Indian sketches are indeed saturated with light and heat, while in other costume sketches, the brightness and brilliance of his colors is striking.
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Realism and Direction
The largest, next to Vereshchagin,
among the generation of Russian artists of the 1870s,
no doubt
is
AND.
E.
Repin,
who found the Academy of Arts back in the days of Bruni's rectorship, but who is in fact the most prominent student and follower
Kramskoy. It is curious that Kramskoy himself in his work remained aloof from the movement he encouraged. He was too smart and sensitive to give himself entirely to the rather naive art program of his time. But
Kramskoy felt relative the temporal importance of this program and
dialed in
representatives of all who could be useful to her. He dealt with their upbringing or re-education with special zeal, regardless of the damage that he caused them by such imposition of a musical formula.
One of victims Kramskoy was also Repin,
undeniably great talent
peppy and
wide, all his life, however, he spent in some kind of wandering in areas that have little in common with the true tasks of art.
Repin by its very nature - painter.
During the period of complete decline of our picturesque
schools when the Academy was dominated by excellent in itself, but completely unsuitable for
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Realism and the direction of time were the precepts of Bruni, when in the rest of the artistic society, after Perov, everyone abandoned all concern for painting, when in our high society the last word was left to the mannered and sugary Zichy, Repin managed to create for himself a peculiar and strong style of painting and develop a very fresh and true palette for that time. It is remarkable that in this area he remained completely independent and
Kramskoy, from his teacher's pedantry and timid copying of nature. Repin stepped completely to the side with one step and in his painting resembled energetic old masters who did not know any other school than the stubborn study of nature.
Unfortunately, Repin was prevented by his
undereducation. Repin worked very hard on himself and went far from that muzhik apprentice, which he appeared from Chuguev in
Petersburg in 1863. However, Repin remained at the root of the matter a man unconsciously related to his vocation. And he, like
Vasnetsov, left the naive and sensitive people's understanding of art, but never came to a conscious,
cultural relationship.
IN
in particular, the meaning of painting remained an unsolved mystery for him. All my life Repin
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Realism and Direction used his magnificent, but underdeveloped pictorial gift to serve non-artistic tasks, and, of course, neither Stasov's sermon, sympathetic in its sincerity, nor the influence of the politician Kramskoy could save him from delusions.
Repin was not corrected by foreign lands either, where he was sent by the Academy already after he had created energetic and
beautifully arranged "Barge haulers on the Volga". In Rome, with the candor of a barbarian, he criticized the classics of painting, and in
Paris, following the example of all Russians, was completely at a loss and began to rush from side to side,
not being able to draw at least something from the only sources useful to him. Upon returning to his homeland, Repin never recovered. He rewrote all the outstanding people of his time, created a number of accusatory paintings with
plots from the "nihilistic" and "gendarme" times,
finally, he tried his hand at the "historical kind", but almost never set himself the task of pure painting, everywhere he subordinated the technique and beauty of the colorful effect to some rational considerations.
Repin's misfortune also lies in the fact that, having believed in the formula of "meaningful" painting, he believed
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Realism and Direction and in that he is a strong dramatic talent.
Of course, Repin is a great artist and, as such,
very impressionable
a person who grasps things brightly. But still, his vocation was not in the "meaningful" painting,
but in painting itself, taken an und für sich.
By ingenious calculation
Repin managed to adjust his paintings with great effect, with great clarity ("The procession in
Kursk province"), sometimes with a note of true tragedy ("Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan"),
sometimes with humor ("The Cossacks"), almost always with successful directorial dexterity, but nowhere can one find a genuine mood in them,
living revelation, what is in Ivanovo and in
Surikov.
The best thing about Repin is his portraits. But rudeness imposes an unpleasant shadow on them. Repin is a purely external talent,
meanwhile, he did his best to give a "characteristic" of faces in his portraits. As a result, his portraits are tasteless in color and composition, somehow painted and sculpted,
carelessly and ugly written and at the same time,
in the sense of characterization, are full of rude and unpleasant underlining. In this respect, they are far behind the smart portraits of Ge and
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Realism and Direction even of accurate portraits of Kramskoy.
Perov, Vereshchagin, and Repin are the main foundations of our "meaningful" realism, but many artists worked alongside them, whose works are of great interest for the history of art and, in particular, for the history of our culture.
Especially typical "directors" are: severe Savitsky,
conscientious dry Maksimov and Yaroshenko,
perpetuated the appearance of "nihilist" youth
1870s and 1880s. Less strong, but still characteristic things were given: the same age as Fedotov
Shmelkov (1819–1890), "competitors of 1863":
Korzukhin
(1835–1894),
Lemokh,
Morozov and
Zhuravlev (1836–1901) and also
Zagorsky,
Skadovsky, Popov, Solomatkin, M. P. Klodt and others.
Finally,
epigones of this current,
continuing in our time to repeat the backs of the program
1860s
are:
Bogdanov-Belsky, Baksheev and Kasatkin.
TO
epigones should also be counted
Vladimir Makovsky (born in 1846), although he is only two years younger than Repin. Makovsky has all the characteristic features of an epigone. His art does not contain any attentive rigor
Perov, neither the peppy persuasiveness of Savitsky or Yaroshenko, nor the strong artistic
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Realism and Direction of Repin's Temperament.
Vladimir Makovsky among all his gloomy, even gloomy,
strict and thoughtful comrades - "joker",
having a permanent smile on his face, incessantly winking at the viewer to make him laugh.
But this laughter of Makovsky is not the merry laughter of the ingenuous Fedotov or the evil laughter of Perov.
jokes
Vladimir
Makovsky
–
jokes of a selfish person who considers it his duty to amuse the public and tries to draw attention to himself even at such moments when everyone is consumed by a common and heavy grief. Strange affair,
but this feature of Vladimir's art
Makovsky became clear only little by little, and at one time he was considered the same full-fledged warrior of the "serious direction" as Perov,
Repin or Savitsky. Technically
Vladimir Makovsky in his flourishing time was better than many of his comrades.
Only later did his coloring become heavy and unpleasant, painting timid. The paintings are "Lovers of nightingales" 1872-73, "The collapse of the bank"
1881, "Justified" 1882, "Family Business"
1884 and several of his portraits belong to the most perfect paintings of the Wanderers. They have a certain briskness of the brush and a mastery of paint not to be found in
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Realism and Direction in the works of Savitsky and Yaroshenko.
Another artist
–
"director"
deserves special consideration
–
This
Pryanishnikov (1840-1894) - His first painting "Jokers. Gostiny Dvor in Moscow", written a year after Perov's departure abroad,
is next to the "Procession" and with the "Arrival of the Governess"
one of the most significant paintings of the 1860s. However
Pryanishnikov is even more interesting because, over time, he tried to get out of the narrow rut of direction and one of the first began to look for new ways. Let's put his "Save the day on
North" in 1887 strongly resembles a photograph and is not an exemplary painting, but it was also important that while Repin was busy with his version of the "Religious Procession",
Vladimir Makovsky continued to compose his witty jokes, while everyone else tried to write "necessary" things, Pryanishnikov suddenly abandoned all intentions of teaching, telling,
impose their thoughts and turned to a simple depiction of reality. At that time it was still a bold innovation, but less than ten years later, pure realism became the slogan of all young Russian art.
The history of Russian painting begins with Kievan Rus. True, like many other phenomena, painting did not become a native Russian achievement. The appearance of painting in Rus' is associated with the name of Prince Vladimir and Byzantium. Together with Christianity, the Russian prince brought to Russia the traditions of painting. The first works of fine art were associated with temples. These are the traditional ones that decorated the walls of churches.
The heyday of Russian painting falls on the 15th century. This is exactly the time when it appears. This type of creativity is inextricably linked with the heritage of Russia and the names of many original masters. Many creators have remained unknown, but the name of the great icon painter Andrei Rublev has become a standard in the technique of painting icons for many centuries.
The first realistic canvases appear in Russia in the seventeenth century. Russian artists, as well as European painters, are beginning to turn to certain genres -,. The activity of Peter I played a role in this, who opened a “window to Europe” and made European traditions available in Russia.
Peter the First
The history of the Russian people is full of heroic and bright social events. The Russian soul was distinguished by its special sensitivity, susceptibility, and fantasy. Therefore, in Russian painting, there is a variety of themes, plots, and images. Russian artists were progressive people, and in their works one can find a reflection of all the changes taking place in society.
Russian painters have achieved outstanding results in depicting a person and his inner state. On the canvases very often there are scenes from the life of ordinary people, their suffering, hopes and aspirations. Russian nature in all its splendor was also the subject of inspiration for Russian artists. Moreover, if at first landscapes were simply an image of natural beauties, then later artists learned to convey their feelings through nature.
Marc Chagall
At the beginning of the 20th century, modernism came to Russian painting. Here, Russia also did not concede to other countries in anything, giving the world bright works of avant-garde artists - Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich.
It is difficult to list all the outstanding Russian artists, but the most famous names are I. Shishkin, V. Savrasov, I. Repin, V. Surikov, K. Bryullov and many others. They are the pride of Russian painting, their works have received worldwide recognition.
The brilliant flowering of Russian culture in the second half of the 19th century was also clearly manifested in the fine arts, realistic art, truly folk, deeply national. It was humanistic art, permeated with the ideas of the revolutionary liberation movement, reflecting the struggle of the sixties and populism against serfdom and autocracy, which had a great public resonance in the democratic circles of the Russian intelligentsia. Dedicated to the people, it spoke to them in a truthful, simple and clear language. Never before have Russian artists had such a huge and grateful audience.
Fine art was imbued with the ideas of the liberation struggle of the people, responded to the demands of life and actively invaded life. Realism was finally established in the visual arts - a truthful and comprehensive reflection of the life of the people, the desire to rebuild this life on the basis of equality and justice. The second half of the 19th century was an important stage in the development of Russian fine arts. It has become truly great, actively invading life and reflecting it, or solving the problems posed by time.
In Russian painting, there were two main directions, which are usually called "academic", expressing noble-bourgeois views, and "wandering", i.e. democratic.
The personification of routine was seen in the Academy of Arts, dependent on court circles, which turned out to be aloof from the rise of public consciousness. The Academy stood guard over obsolete traditions, "high" style and "high" themes - from ancient mythology, religious, pseudo-historical. She was afraid of the close contact of art with modern life.
In paintings from Russian reality, which have been appearing in increasing numbers since the late 1950s and early 1960s, accusatory features are intensifying; there is a growing critical realism, a desire to interfere in life and to influence it in the interests of the people.
The second half of the 19th century is the time of the formation of a realistic, national, democratic direction in the visual arts, this is the time of the life and work of outstanding Russian artists who have made a huge contribution to the development of Russian fine arts.
Typical for the painting of the 60s was the figure of V. G. Perov (1833-1882). He is the brightest representative of the accusatory trend in painting. His role in the development of national realistic art was very significant both before and especially after the 1960s. Perov's name has become popular since the last pre-reform years, when one after another his canvases began to appear, dedicated to various aspects of Russian life, depicting various social types, sharply denouncing the bureaucracy, the clergy ("Arrival of the policeman for investigation", 1857; "First rank", 1860 ; in 1861-1862 - "Rural religious procession for Easter", "Sermon in the village", "Tea drinking in Mytishchi"). In 1865-1868. Perov’s paintings “Seeing the Dead”, “Troika”, “Arrival of the Governess to the Merchant’s House”, “The Drowned Woman”, “The Last Tavern at the Outpost” appeared, where the artist’s attention was drawn to the hard lot of the peasantry, to the victims of social injustice. The sympathy of the artist is undoubtedly on the side of the peasant, whose image is clearly idealized. Later, Perov switched to genre themes that were neutral in the public sense (“Bird-catcher”, “Hunters at rest”), he also proved to be an excellent portrait painter (portraits of A. N. Ostrovsky, V. I. Dahl, M. P. Pogodin, I. S. Turgenev, the famous portrait of F. M. Dostoevsky is one of the pinnacles of portraiture). The work of V. G. Perov is distinguished by incorruptible truthfulness, deep feeling, the gift of psychological penetration.
The ideological and social atmosphere of the era affected the memorable events of 1863, which led to a break with the Academy of Arts of a group of gifted young artists.
The group of artists consisted of thirteen painters (I. N. Kramskoy, A. I. Korzukhin, A. I. Morozov, F. S. Zhuravlev, K. E. Makovsky and others) and one sculptor (V. P. Kreytan) . I. N. Kramskoy (1837-1887) was its inspirer and leader.
The "rebellion" of the fourteen, their decision to organize themselves into a free artistic artel, alerted the government. By the "highest command", the "actions of these young people" and "the direction of the society composed by them" were monitored. The artel of St. Petersburg artists was a professional association that carried out all kinds of orders, and at the same time a household commune and, most importantly, an ideological and artistic center; here, as it were, the public opinion of the artistic environment was formed at that stage. Artel arranged exhibitions of paintings, which were very popular with the public.
The work of the artel turned out to be difficult and complex: economic motives for some of its members eventually became predominant, while the principled side receded into the background. Friction began to arise within the artel. In 1870, Kramskoy left the artel; it lasted a few more years, but no longer had its former significance. It is noteworthy that in the mid-60s in St. Petersburg for some time there was a second artistic artel, which arose following the example of the initiative of Kramskoy and his comrades. V. M. Maksimov, A. A. Kiselev (future Wanderers), N. A. Koshelev and others belonged to it.
Members of both artels, the first in particular, largely determined the nature of the painting of the 60s, turned to Russian reality, imbued with heartfelt attention to the life and experiences of ordinary people. But they do not exhaust the circle of artists of the sixties of the new realistic school. The best paintings by N. V. Nevrev (1830-1904), who are kindred in spirit to Perov, such as “Torg” (the sale of a young peasant woman by a landowner) and a series of paintings belong to the 60s. In the same period, the work of the satirist artist, the everyday writer of the urban poor L. I. Solomatkin (1837-1883) unfolded. V. G. Schwartz (1838-1869) blazed new trails in historical painting, introducing into it the features of realism, psychologism, and, to a certain extent, accusation; he owns the outstanding painting "Spring train of the queen on a pilgrimage under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich" (1868), a number of works about the time of Ivan IV. Another historical painter K.D. Flavitsky (1830-1866), who remained within the framework of the academic direction, nevertheless, in the sensational painting “Princess Tarakanova” (1864), was influenced by the democratic school of painting.
The art movement of the 1960s paved the way for the formation of a fellowship of traveling art exhibitions.
The initiative to create this association, which played a huge role in Russian culture, belonged to G. G. Myasoedov (1834 or 1835-1911). In November 1870, the charter of the Association was approved, a year later its first exhibition opened in St. Petersburg. The scope of the Association's activities gradually expanded. The number of cities visited by the exhibition of the Wanderers increased several times by the 80s. The idea, important in itself, of moving exhibitions, bringing art closer to more or less broad sections of the population, and not only Russian, but also Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, etc., far from exhausted the tasks of a new, still unprecedented in nature, association, which , not distinguished by the complete internal unity of all participants, nevertheless was formed and acted in fact on the basis of certain essential general principles and aspirations. The Association consistently defended the principles of critical realism and nationality.
The people were the protagonist of many Wanderers paintings. Some Wanderers paid great attention to the life of the city. Since the mid-1970s, works devoted to the labor of workers and working types have appeared in Wanderer art. Advanced social circles met with exceptional interest and sympathy the formation of the Association of the Wanderers. Reactionary circles, on the contrary, showed an unfriendly attitude towards the Wanderers. The most successful exhibitions turned into major not only artistic, but also social events. During the first quarter of a century of their existence, traveling exhibitions were visited by more than a million people.
In the field of genre, such Wanderers as Myasoedov (mainly at the first stage of their work), Maksimov, Savitsky and others worked, and the most prominent place in genre paintings belonged to the peasant theme.
Unlike Maksimov or Myasoedov, V. E. Makovsky (1846-1920) devoted himself mainly to the urban genre. The name of the artist N. A. Yaroshenko (1846-1898) is also associated with the development of the urban genre. He was one of the ideological leaders of the Association. He belonged to those artists who most closely connected their work with the socio-political movement of the era.
Portraiture, it must be emphasized, occupied a significant, in some cases, the main place in the work of a number of Wanderers. The outstanding master of the portrait was I.N. Kramskoy. The work on the portrait opened before him, like other Wanderers, the possibility of showing a positive figure of our time - prominent representatives of culture in the first place.
At the beginning of the 70s, the great artist I. E. Repin (1844-1930) made his first major works. A brilliant master of drawing and composition, constantly striving for improvement, an artist of great temperament, Repin especially emphasized the role of ideas, content in art.
A number of Repin's genres are imbued with sincere sympathy for the feat of revolutionary fighters ("Under guard", 1876; "The arrest of a propagandist", 1878-1892; "Refusal of confession", 1879-1885; "They did not wait", 1883 and 1884-1888, etc. .). The great psychological gift of Repin was reflected in the huge and diverse gallery of portraits he created. Repin, a portrait painter, with inimitable depth, strength, accuracy, captured the appearance of the most prominent representatives of literature and the public, music, painting and theater. The ruling elite of tsarist Russia at the turn of the two centuries was depicted with merciless truthfulness by Repin in the group portrait “The Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council” and in sketches for it. Repin belongs to the remarkable Russian historical painters.
By the beginning of the 90s, the painting “Cossacks composing a letter to the Turkish Sultan” was completed (in the most famous version) (the second painting on the same topic was completed by the artist in 1896). The idea of the artist when creating the picture was to glorify the love of freedom of the people, the uplift of spirit and energy experienced by them in the struggle for independence and liberty.
The history of Russian painting knows many highly talented artists. But there was not a single one in whose paintings the depth of thoughts and feelings would be combined with such pictorial skill as Repin's. Repin is the most profound, the most exciting among all the masters of Russian painting of the recent past, and in the history of our art he has taken a very special place. Stasov described him as follows: “He has his own, special look and feeling, and only then is he strong and significant when he expresses this feeling. And this feeling consists in comprehending and transmitting the masses of people.
Historical painting was given mainly to the work of another great artist, V. I. Surikov (1848-1916). The highest flowering of his creative forces belongs to the 80-90s. 19th century ladies Surikov was an artist of the masses. The mass, the crowd of Surikov was never faceless, he endowed each of the participants with deeply individual features.
Long before the appearance of battle-historical paintings by Surikov, V. V. Vereshchagin (1842-1904) won worldwide fame in battle painting. Vereshchagin personally participated in the operations of Russian troops in Central Asia in the 60s, in the Balkans in the late 70s. He created cycles of paintings dedicated to military operations in Turkestan and the Russian-Turkish war. The work of Vereshchagin marked a new stage in Russian and world battle painting. Stasov described him as follows: "... a painter of such a warehouse that no one had seen or heard of him before either here or in Europe." He set himself the goal of exposing war as an instrument of violence, a terrible disaster for mankind.
The new thing that Vereshchagin introduced, of course, also consisted in the fact that he was primarily interested not in the army tops, but in the rank and file. Vereshchagin made the people the hero of his paintings. His work denouncing the war had a serious impact on the minds. Of considerable interest is the series of paintings created by Vereshchagin in the 90s about the Patriotic War of 1812. Previously painted by Vereshchagin paintings and sketches of the Indian cycle.
V. M. Vasnetsov (1848-1926) said his special word in Russian painting, in particular historical painting. He entered the history of painting as an artist of the Russian folk epic, epic, fairy tales. Based on The Tale of Igor's Campaign, the painting "After the Battle of Igor Svyatoslavich with the Polovtsy" (1878-1880) was painted, followed by "The Battle of the Russians with the Scythians" (1879-1881), "The Knight at the Crossroads" (1878-1882). The famous “Alyonushka”, one of the most sincere creations of painting, appeared at a traveling exhibition in 1881. For about two decades, Vasnetsov worked on the painting “Bogatyrs” (completed in 1898), which gave a particularly complete personification of the beauty, power, meaning of our native images , our Russian nature and man, the expression of which the artist recognized as the task of art. By 1882-1885. Vasnetsov's outstanding work in the field of monumental and decorative painting belongs to the painting of the Stone Age hall in the Historical Museum in Moscow. For a number of years (1885-1896) Vasnetsov was busy painting the Vladimir Cathedral in Kyiv. And in this discount, the high skill of the artist was manifested.
A rich section of the fine arts of the era was landscape painting. Outstanding values in the field of landscape were created by many artists who were not "specialists" in landscape painting, for whom the landscape usually played the role of the background of the picture. Sometimes the landscape turned out to be the most generally recognized side in the artist's work. At the same time, the landscape was an independent branch of art, to which many figures gave their all or their strength.
A place of honor in the development of landscape painting was taken by the realistic landscape of the Wanderers. They are characterized by an appeal to their native nature. Instead of exotic, “ceremonial” landscapes (Italian, Swiss, etc.), to which academic artists gravitated, the Wanderers established a national theme in the landscape, they revealed beauty in the simple and natural that surrounded them everyday. In the landscapes of the Wanderers, a kind of social subtext was often felt and perceived. The viewer, following the artist, saw and felt those people, that mass of people who lived surrounded by nature painted on canvas.
One of the founders of the itinerant landscape was I. I. Shishkin (1832-1898). The most important representative of the epic line in landscape painting, Shishkin, with exceptional knowledge and skill, painted with rare love mainly the forest of central and northern Russia, revealed the wealth, breadth, power of the nature of the Motherland. "Pine Forest" (1872), "Rye", (1878), "Among the Flat Valley" (1883), "Pine Trees Illuminated by the Sun" (1886), "Morning in a Pine Forest" (1889), "Ship Grove" ( 1898) belong to the most popular paintings by Shishkin, people's artist was seen in cathars.
Another of the founders of landscape painting, the Wanderers, A. K. Savrasov (1830-1897). Savrasov opened the lyrical line of the Russian landscape. His painting “The Rooks Have Arrived!”, shown at the 1st traveling exhibition, was perceived as a revelation due to its unprecedented sincerity, poetry, modest and natural beauty. The paintings "Country Road" (1873), "Rainbow" (1875) supported the fame of the artist-poet, at the same time a talented teacher who played a big role in educating a whole galaxy of painters.
II Levitan (1860-1900) belongs to a younger generation of artists. Levitan enthusiastically loved his native nature, deeply felt the "infinite beauty of the environment." With all-conquering power, he conveyed the feelings and moods aroused by nature in man. The most complex range of experiences is expressed in his canvases. Levitan understood the feelings of the progressive people of his era, their pain for the suffering of their homeland. The civic theme found a particularly vivid, although peculiar in nature of landscape painting, reflection in the famous painting “Vladimirka” (1892), inspired by the fate of thousands of exiles. Levitan's favorite works by the people also include "Evening on the Volga" (1888), "At the pool" (1892), "Above Eternal Peace" (1894), "Golden Autumn" (1895), "Summer Evening" (1899), " Lake. Rus'" (1899-1900).
During the second half of the XIX century. the activity of the famous marine painter I. K. Aivazovsky, which began in the 1930s, continued. Under his influence, the talent of another artist of the sea developed, at the same time the artist-historiographer of the Russian fleet A.P. Bogolyubov (1824-1896).
The achievements of landscape painting delighted art lovers. But, on the other hand, the constant increase towards the end of the century in the proportion of the landscape inspired some anxiety. Anxiety was expressed in the press, especially in connection with the more or less noticeable impoverishment of the social genre. In the impoverishment of the genre, in the fact that sharp, exciting pictures from modern life now appeared less often at traveling exhibitions, a certain lowering of the ideological and social level of the activity of the Association of the Wanderers had its effect. In turn, the latter circumstance depended on the entire socio-political situation. The Association of the Wanderers showed hesitation, a passion for "neutral" topics. If some of the old Wanderers were confused to one degree or another, then among the young Wanderers generation there appeared artists who were sensitive to new social phenomena. They did not limit themselves to what their predecessors had achieved and sought to expand and renew the range of themes and images.
S. A. Korovin (1858-1908), an artist of a peasant and partly a soldier theme, in the famous painting “On the World” and numerous sketches and sketches for it (1883-1893) artistically and convincingly reflected the social stratification in the post-reform village. The peasant theme dominated the work of one of the greatest masters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A. E. Arkhipov (1862-1930), genre and landscape painter. In the young generation of artists associated in a certain period with the Association of the Wanderers, the figure of V.A. Serov (1865-1911) stood out very early. Valentin Serov, already at the age of 22-23, created such masterpieces as “Girl with Peaches” (portrait of Vera Mamontova, 1887), “Girl, Illuminated by the Sun”, authentic poems about bright youth. Serov is a brilliant master who worked in various fields of art.
The era of the "Wanderers" was late compared to the beginning of artistic realism in literature; but it ends at about the same time, in the 80s and 90s, and before the same pressure of the new generation. A new break in traditions and the revolt of the youth of the 1990s. repeats the rebellion of the Wanderers themselves against the generation of academicians that preceded them. But that uprising took as its slogan the creation of a Russian national school. Youth uprising in the 90s becomes under the banner of cosmopolitanism. It must be said that the Wanderers themselves greatly facilitated the protest against themselves, which was brewing in the new generation. In the mid-70s, they were no longer those provocative Protestants and fighters, which were the organizers of the "Artel" of the 60s. Their ardor subsided along with their success.
However, the sympathies of the advanced Russian society were invariably on the side of the Wanderers, because in their work the Russian intelligentsia and the common people saw spokesmen for their interests. The achievements and conquests of Russian painting in the second half of the 19th century, in which Russian artists showed themselves, are of great importance and unique value in Russian fine art. Picturesque works created by Russian artists have enriched Russian culture forever.
The development of painting and the architectural temple style of Russia originates in the mists of time. In 988, Kievan Rus, together with the adoption of Christianity, received a huge cultural heritage of the Byzantine Empire, which combines the features of the sparkling splendor of the East and the ascetic simplicity of the West. In the process of synthesis of this multifaceted artistic style and specific original art, the architecture and painting of Ancient Rus' were formed.
Historical prerequisites for the development of the original style of architecture and painting of Ancient Rus'
The painting of Ancient Rus' as a monument of pre-Christian culture is unknown to modern scientists, and the sculpture of this era is represented by only a few wooden statues of idols. The situation is the same with the architectural monuments of pre-Christian Rus', most likely due to the fact that they were made of wood and have not survived to this day.
Painting in Rus' began to experience its rapid development in the 10th century, when, after the introduction of the Slavic alphabet into the territory of Rus' by Cyril and Methodius, it became possible to exchange experience between Russian and Byzantine masters, who were invited after 988 to Russian cities by Prince Vladimir.
At the beginning of the 11th century, the situation in the political and social spheres of the ancient Russian state developed in such a way that the pagan religious component began to be forcibly removed by the ruling class from all spheres of public life. Thus, the architecture and painting of Ancient Rus' began its development precisely from the Byzantine heritage that poured into this environment.
Prerequisites for the development of stylistic features of architecture
The architecture and painting of Ancient Rus' as an integral style ensemble appeared under the direct influence of the architecture of Byzantium, which synthesized the forms of ancient temple buildings, gradually forming the type of cross-domed church known since the 10th century, which was very different from early Christian basilicas. Transferring the domes to the semicircular rigid edges of the quadrangular base of the temple, using the latest developed "sailing" system for supporting the dome and easing its pressure on the walls, Byzantine architects achieved the maximum expansion of the internal space of the temple and created a qualitatively new type of Christian temple building.
The design features described above refer to temples based on the so-called "Greek cross", which is five squares located at the same distance from each other.
Much later - in the 19th century - the so-called "pseudo-Byzantine" style of temple buildings was formed in Russia, in which squat domes are located on low drums, surrounded by a window arcade, and the interior of the temple is a single square, not divided by pylons and cross vaults.
Prerequisites for the development of stylistic features of painting
The painting of Ancient Rus' as an independent type of artistic decoration of temples took shape after invited Byzantine masters brought their icon-painting experience to this territory. Therefore, numerous wall paintings and frescoes of the first Christian churches of the pre-Mongol period are indistinguishable in Russian and Byzantine origin.
In theoretical terms, the iconography, painting of Ancient Rus' is perfectly illustrated by the Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the works in which belong to the brush of Byzantine masters. The temple itself has not survived, but its interior decoration is known from a description recorded in the 17th century. The invited icon painters stayed in the monastery and laid the foundation for learning their craft. Saints Alipiy and Gregory were the first Russian masters who came out of this icon-painting school.
Thus, the art, icon painting, painting of Ancient Rus' leads its theoretical and methodological continuity from the ancient knowledge of Eastern masters.
The specifics of the architectural and construction type of residential and temple buildings of Ancient Rus'
The culture of Ancient Rus', the painting, iconography and architecture of which are a single ensemble, little affected the architecture of public and residential buildings, which continued to be performed either as standard tower buildings or fortresses. Byzantine architectural norms did not imply any practical protection of the complex of buildings or each of them separately from enemy attacks. painting and architecture of which can be shown on the example of Pskov and Tver monastic buildings, focused on their constructive security, lightness of the domed parts of the building with the maximum thickening of the supporting structures.
Cult ancient Russian painting
The culture of Ancient Rus', whose painting progressed under the comprehensive influence of Byzantine art, finally took shape by the end of the 15th century, incorporating all its brightest specific qualities and assimilating with the original artistic ancient Russian techniques. And although some types of fine arts, such as artistic sewing and wood carving, were known to ancient Russian masters, they received the widest distribution and development in the bosom of cult art precisely after the arrival of Christianity in Rus'.
The Orthodox culture of Ancient Rus', whose painting is represented not only by church frescoes and iconography, but also by facial sewing and carvings, reflecting the symbols of faith and used in everyday life by worldly people, left an imprint on the interior decoration of buildings and decoration of their facade parts.
Variety and composition of colors
The monasteries and icon-painting workshops of Ancient Rus' were a place of concentration of scientific achievements and experiments in the field of chemistry, since paints were made by hand from various ingredients.
In parchment and icon painting, the masters used mostly the same paints. They were cinnabar, lapis lazuli, ocher, and others. Thus, Byzantine painting remained true to its practical skills and could not completely replace the local methods of obtaining paints.
However, each specific painting technique had and still has its own favorite techniques and methods - both the manufacture of the paint itself and the methods of applying it to the surface.
According to the Novogorodsk icon-painting original of the 16th century, cinnabar, azure, whitewash, greenery were most preferred by the masters. In the original, the names of these colors also appeared for the first time - yellow, red, black, green.
White, as the most popular paint, was most often used in color mixtures, served to apply gaps and "whiten" other paints. Whitewash was made in Kashin, Vologda, Yaroslavl. The method of their manufacture consisted in the oxidation of lead strips with acetic acid, followed by washing the resulting white color.
The main component of the "facial writing" in icon painting to this day is ocher.
The painting of Ancient Rus', as well as its Byzantine standard, assumed the use of a variety of color material in the writing of holy images.
One of the main widely used paints was cinnabar - mercury sulfide. Cinnabar was mined at the most famous Russian Nikitinsky deposit in Europe. The paint was made by rubbing cinnabar with water, followed by the dissolution of pyrite and pyrite accompanying the ore. Cinnabar could be replaced by cheaper minium, obtained by firing white lead.
Azure, like white, was intended for writing gaps and obtaining tones of other colors. In the past, the main source of lapis lazuli was the deposits of Afghanistan. However, since the 16th century, a large number of ways to obtain a blue pigment from lapis lazuli have appeared.
Along with these basic colors, Russian icon painting used cormorant, scarlet, green, green, verdigris, krutik ("blue"), cabbage rolls, sankir (brownish tones), hook, reft, game. The terminology of the ancient painter denoted all colors with different words.
The artistic style of ancient Russian icon painting
In each territorial-holistic state association, there is a certain consolidation of artistic and aesthetic norms, which later lose some connection with the reference model. Such a separate and self-developing sphere of national-cultural manifestation is the painting of Ancient Rus'. Ancient painting, more than other areas of art, is subject to technical and visual change, so it is worth mentioning separately about its features, which are closely related to architecture and writing methods.
The Mongol invasion destroyed most of the iconographic and fresco monuments of Ancient Rus', undermining and suspending the process of writing new works. However, a certain picture of the past can be restored from the surviving documents and scarce archaeological sites.
It is known from them that in the era of the pre-Mongol invasion, Ancient Rus' had a significant impact on icon painting with its technical techniques - conciseness of compositional construction and gloomy restrained coloring - however, by the 13th century, this coloring begins to be replaced by bright warm colors. Thus, by the 13th century, the Byzantine icon painting technique was undergoing a process of refraction and assimilation with such ancient Russian national artistic techniques as the freshness and brightness of the color scheme, the rhythmic compositional structure and the immediacy of color expression.
In this era, the most famous masters work, who brought the painting of Ancient Rus' to the present - briefly this list can be presented by Metropolitan Peter of Moscow, Archbishop Feodor of Rostov, St. Andrei Rublev and Daniil Cherny.
Features of Old Russian fresco painting
Fresco painting in Rus' did not exist before the advent of Christianity and was completely borrowed from Byzantine culture, in the process of assimilation and development, somewhat modifying the existing Byzantine techniques and techniques.
To begin with, it is worth saying that the culture of Ancient Rus', whose painting had previously existed in the form of a mosaic, modified the use of plaster preparatory materials, using a limestone base under the mosaic for a fresco, and by the end of the 14th century there was a transition from the ancient Byzantine techniques of writing and making materials to new ones. original Russian methods of fresco painting.
Among the fundamentally changed processes for the manufacture of bases and paints, one can single out the appearance of plaster, created exclusively on the basis of pure limestone, previously diluted for strength with quartz sand and marble chips. In the case of Russian painting, the stucco fresco base - gesso - was made by long-term exposure of lime mixed with vegetable oils and glue.
Old Russian facial sewing
After 988, with the advent of Byzantine traditions in the painting of Ancient Rus', ancient painting became widespread in the field of cult ritual area, especially in facial sewing.
The tsarina's workshops, which functioned under the auspices of the Grand Duchesses Sophia Paleolog, Solomonia Saburova, Tsarina Anastasia Romanova and Irina Godunova, contributed a lot to this.
Facial sewing as a religious painting of Ancient Rus' has a lot of common compositional and graphic features with the icon. However, facial sewing is a collective work, with a clear distribution of the roles of the creators. The icon painter depicted on the canvas the face, inscriptions and fragments of clothing, the herbalist - plants. embroidered in a neutral color; face and hands - with silk threads of flesh tones, including screeds were placed along the lines along the contours of the face; clothes and surrounding objects were embroidered either with gold and silver threads, or with multi-colored silk.
For greater strength, canvas or cloth was placed under the embroidered fabric, under which a second lining made of soft fabric was attached.
Especially difficult was the double-sided embroidery on banners and banners. In this case, silk and gold threads were pierced through.
Facial embroidery has a wide application - large veils and airs decorated the temple, were placed under the icons, covered the altar, were used on banners. In many cases, canvases with the faces of saints were attached to the gates of a temple or palace, as well as inside the reception halls.
Territorial variability of ancient Russian art
The culture of Ancient Rus' - painting, icon painting, architecture - has some territorial variability, affecting both the decoration of temples and the architectural and construction features of buildings.
For example, the art of Ancient Rus', the painting of which involves the use of either mosaics or frescoes as decorations for the interior decoration of churches, is perfectly revealed by the example of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. Here there is a free combination of both mosaic and fresco painting; during the examination of the temple, two layers of soil were revealed. In the Church of the Transfiguration in the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy, all plaster bases are made of pure lime without fillers. And in the Spassky Cathedral of the Spaso-Andronievsky Monastery, blood albumin was found as a link in plaster gesso.
Thus, we can conclude that the peculiarity and originality of ancient Russian art lies in its territorial orientation and individual personal preferences and skills of Russian artists to convey the color and character of the idea in accordance with its national norms.
HISTORY OF RUSSIAN ART
PAINTING
The history of Russian painting is sharply divided into two major periods. In the first period, which lasted until the 18th century, Russian painting always retained a strictly religious character and concentrated almost exclusively on icon painting, which is distinguished by its extreme artistic undevelopment. In the second period, Russian painting loses its exclusively religious character, becomes secular, moves gradually forward in its development and assimilates almost the degree of perfection that Western European painting reached by the end of the 19th century.
The history of ancient Russian painting begins with the era of the adoption of Christianity by Russia, from the end of the 10th century, when the first samples of pictorial art were transferred to us from Byzantium. The Byzantine character was predominantly carried by art in Rus' from the 11th century to the 15th century. Icon painters, masters of musiy affairs, were at first immigrants from Greece, Greeks and Slavs kindred to us, and a few students from Russians. In the XI century, we meet the name of the first Russian icon painter - the Monk Alympius of the Caves, who studied with Greek masters. But the samples brought by the masters from Byzantium were neither numerous nor of high artistic value, since Byzantine art itself began to noticeably decline from the 11th century. When reproduced, these samples in Rus' were still subject to damage and distortion. The small population of Rus', scattered over vast expanses separated by forests and swamps, slowly perceiving the beginnings of political and religious enlightenment, was distinguished by extreme poverty and slowness in aesthetic development. The best people were busy with the hard work of creating a state life among the scattered masses, converting them to Christianity, and, naturally, could give little time to mental leisure and art when life required more difficult and important work.
As a result, with the predominance of religious interests, only religious art could appear, and church art brought from Byzantium could only spread geographically, not improving and not always remaining at the degree of perfection of images.
The flowering time of Byzantine art in Rus' was in the 11th and 12th centuries. Kyiv frescoes and mosaics serve as its monuments. Then this art falls when relations with Byzantium become difficult and the era of Tatar pogroms begins.
Church art after the ruin of Kyiv finds shelter in Vladimir, Suzdal, Rostov, Pskov and Novgorod. Less affected by the invasions, Novgorod is now becoming an artistic center in Rus', where not only the rudiments of the Byzantine style are preserved, but also attempts are made to cultivate, to some extent, independent church art. Relations with the Germans, enlivening social life, give here movement in the field of mental, handicraft and art. But the Western influence, undoubtedly reflected in Novgorod art, could not drown out the main Byzantine one, since it was not systematic and constant, and since the products were brought to Novgorod by visiting artists from places that did not have a developed artistic life.
Artistic centers in Kyiv, Rostov, Suzdal, Vladimir, with their short-lived historical role, did not have time to work out something independent. Novgorod and Pskov lost their independence by the middle of the 16th century, precisely when it seemed possible, on the basis of Byzantine traditions, to begin the development of their own independent art. Until the 16th century, Moscow, occupied with political work, had neither time nor means for artistic development: the best murals in the 15th and 16th centuries were produced in it by Pskov and Novgorod icon painters. Therefore, Moscow in the 16th century had to not continue, but almost begin, artistic activity in Rus', and art in the 16th century in Moscow was not at all better than what we find in the mosaics and frescoes of Kiev, Vladimir and Novgorod.
But it was in the 16th century, due to the expansion of needs, that the number of masters increased significantly, and icon painting from the Greeks and their direct students, monks and clergymen, passed into the hands of lay people, villagers and townspeople, and became a craft. In order to protect church art from damage, Stoglav gave icon painting under the direct supervision and supervision of church authorities, and since art did not advance either in Rus', or in Byzantium, or on Athos, he prescribed, instead of independent works, copying the best ancient Greek examples. Thus, in the 16th century, when art came into its own independent rights in Western Europe, and in the works of Raphael, Albrecht Dürer, Holbein, Michelangelo and other masters, based on a thorough study of antiques and nature, it reached a high degree of development - art in Rus', by prescription, copying was removed from nature. The prohibition of independence, subjection to monastic supervision - art was deprived of freedom and acquired a purely ecclesiastical, without any admixture of secular elements, character.
Russian icon painting gained (with respect to religion) in the inviolable preservation of Christian traditions, but lost a lot in relation to art. The artist turned into a copyist-artisan. The more iconography became part of the needs of the Russian people, the more it became national, the more the size of the icons was reduced, the more they approached the miniature. Colossal frescoes and mosaics of the majestic Byzantine style have now been replaced by intricately painted icons of small size with dozens and hundreds of small figures. Such a reduction in size was a necessary consequence of the spread of Christianity in the remote regions of Rus'. Small wooden churches, small chambers and chapels of wealthy houses, where they liked to assemble a whole church iconostasis on one small wall, needed small icons. And the samples themselves, from which Russian icon painters copied, could not be large in size, since they were transferred first from Greece, and then from the centers of ancient Russian life to the remote outskirts.
All this forced to reduce the size and accustomed the eye to miniature writing, which became dominant in Russian icon painting of the 16th and 17th centuries. This miniature letter, which concealed flaws in drawing, grouping, and expression, was convenient for Russian icon painting, which was limited in artistic means, and very suitable for the visual expression of religious ideas and theological teachings. Such multifaceted icons as “I Believe”, explaining prayer in faces, replaced letters for the illiterate, taught like a book and fully corresponded to the religious direction of the needs of the Russian person, who, in the absence of almost any aesthetic development, sought in the icon not artistic pleasure, but religious edification. , good for the soul.
Until the 15th century, there was only one school in Rus' - Greek, or Korsun. She was supported by visiting Greek masters who painted icons, however, only a little better, technically, than their Russian students. Russian miniatures of the 15th century do not differ much from late Greek ones, but they sometimes show some familiarity with the Romanesque style, which indicates Western influence. This influence found its way through Novgorod and Lithuania and intensified from the 15th century. From the time of the fall of Constantinople and the spread of Western printed books with engravings and polytypes in Rus' in the 16th century, the Korsun school of icon painting began to change. In Novgorod and Pskov, under the influence of the West, a school is being created, somewhat different from the conservative school of St. Sergius of Radonezh, from which came the famous icon painter Andrei Rublev. In the 16th century, the Stroganov school originated from Ustyug, in which miniature painting flourished, distinguished by the greatest artistry.
Moscow was able to form its own icon-painting schools not earlier than the 17th century. As the center of the Russian land, she recruited craftsmen from different cities and monasteries to her royal school. All these schools, with complete restraint of personal arbitrariness, were determined not by the personal character of the masters, but by random circumstances - the more or less large size of the icons, their more or less careful decoration, etc.
The icon was intended for prayer and, like prayer, should not be changed by personal arbitrariness. Therefore, the Russian schools of icon painting differed not in direction, but in handicraft techniques known to icon painters under the name "poshibov". Various styles do not violate the uniformity of the general Byzantine style. Limited by the Prologue and the holy calendar, the imagination of the Russian icon painter, who knew neither stories, nor novels, nor spiritual dramas - which had such a powerful effect on the work of a Western artist - kept for whole centuries in a certain circle of monotonously repeating icon-painting plots of the Bible and the lives of saints. Our icon painters, with reverent fear, did not dare to change the images bequeathed by antiquity and strictly followed what the “originals” indicate, where they were collected, in a carefully considered system, all the information necessary for an icon painter, both technical and theological.
Striving exclusively for the expression of religious ideas, renouncing reality, the Russian icon painter did not consider it necessary to resort to the study of nature. Brought up in an ascetic direction, he avoids nudity, everything too gentle, relaxing. Not studying nature, not being familiar with the ancient world, the Russian icon painter did not use the help of sculpture, which helped Western painting a lot and which did not exist in ancient Rus'. And those plastic elements that entered our iconography according to legend from Byzantine art, such as placing figures on a monochrome background, like bas-reliefs, piling up images of different times on one plane, contributed, with the underdevelopment of Russian art, only to the rooting of bad taste and mistakes. . As a result of all this, Russian icon painting was notable for its incorrect drawing, incorrect perspective, lack of color and chiaroscuro.
This undeveloped, artistically crude art, however, has a price and great significance in the religious realm. In the works of Russian icon painting, we see how weak art, inexperienced in technical means, bravely strives to achieve lofty goals, to express a wealth of ideas.
For all the clumsiness of many figures, with obvious mistakes against nature, the images breathe with genuine nobility of character, which they were told by the icon painter, imbued with a consciousness of the holiness of the persons depicted by him. These saints are the artistic ideals in which the Russian nard expressed his concepts of human dignity and to which he, together with prayer, turned as models and leaders of his life. Male figures are more varied and better developed than female figures, which are less common and monotonous. Of the male figures, the best faces are strict, senile or mature, the characters are fully developed, faces with a beard, with sharp outlines. Less successful figures are youthful and children's.
Thanks to the centuries-old church leadership, Russian icon painting has sacredly preserved ancient Christian traditions, the fidelity of icon-painting types and the desire to ideally reproduce plots, without obscuring them by introducing unnecessary trifles from reality. The strict faces of selfless ascetics, the absence of any tenderness and temptations of female beauty fully correspond and contribute to the reverent mood of the worshiper. This is the originality and originality of Russian painting.
But the fidelity of types, the clarity of traditional subjects, and pious expression can only be fully achieved when the artist has the main means for expressing this - knowledge of nature. Russian icon painters did not know her, and this was the weak side of Russian icon painting.
In the middle of the 17th century, Russian icon painting itself recognized its weak side and showed a determined desire for improvement. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was not satisfied with Russian icon painters, but called in masters from the West to decorate his palace chambers, brought up on completely different artistic principles, who knew how to paint landscapes, perspectives and portraits from nature in a completely different from icon painting - a pictorial style. The best representative of Russian icon painting of the 17th century, the tsarist icon painter Simon Ushakov, sought to transfer this technique and color of life, improved in the West, into icon painting, to merge it with Byzantine tradition.
This new style of icon painting is known as Fryazhsky. The Stroganov and Tsarskaya schools passed into it. Russian masters greedily rushed to foreign engravings, began to remake them in their own way, and apparently began to improve in technique and taste: the color became richer, more colorful, the brush - bolder. From the school of Ushakov, who, in addition to icons, also developed mythological plots, skillful engravers came out, who in numerous copies began to spread among the Russians a new, more elegant style. So, along with spiritual painting - icon painting, secular painting became, which began to install a more elegant taste brought from the West, brought up by the study of nature and antiques.
From that time, from the end of the 17th century, the second period in the history of Russian painting begins, the interest of which is concentrated mainly on the education and gradual development of Russian secular life. The first firm beginnings for the inculcation of this secular painting were laid by Peter, who resolutely set the task of assimilating Western art by the Russian people themselves through travels abroad and through his school.
But neither the talented Russians who had studied in Italy and Holland, the Nikitin brothers, Zakharov, Matveev, nor the foreign artists who were discharged, nor the drawing and engraving class opened at the Academy of Sciences under Catherine I, according to the project of Peter, could bear good fruit, since the soil for The growth of a new, secular art was not prepared. A society that did not have an aesthetic development, did not understand artistic needs, was alien to the implanted European art and limited its demand to the more familiar portrait and miniature. More useful were the engravers educated at the meager funds of the Academy of Sciences, who, with numerous copies of famous paintings, introduced society to works of fine taste, contributing to the awakening of interest in secular art.
In the reign of Elizabeth, the desire for luxury and comfort, encouraged by the extraordinary splendor of the Court, developed in the upper classes and gave rise to new aesthetic needs.
Following the fashion brought from the West, the nobles began, along with portraits, to order plafonds and paintings from classical mythology to decorate their chambers. Compositions in the French style have become a favorite and necessary addition to any celebration. Due to the lack of Russians, and sometimes due to a preference for everything foreign, all this was carried out by registered foreigners. Of these, only Giuseppe Valeriani, after his 14 years of activity, left several talented Russian students who advanced in the reign of Catherine II. The rest remained a colony, artificially adjacent to the Court and the aristocracy, and did little to establish Western art in Russia.
A decisive step towards strengthening this art was taken in 1757, when, according to the project of I. Shuvalov, a separate independent "three most noble arts" Academy of Arts was founded, where famous artists, some members of the Parisian Academies that laid the foundation for the proper teaching of art.
Well placed under the leadership of Kokorinov and Losenko, the Academy under Catherine II received a more solid device. According to the project of Betsky, she started a closed educational school with the aim of preparing artistically developed students for the Academy from early childhood. For the same purpose of instilling taste in artists, the Academy adopted the custom of sending the best students abroad for improvement. It is clear that this Academy, which was supposed to carefully instill and protect art in Russia, created according to the French model, brought to life not by the needs of society, but by the desire of government power, lived for a long time by imitation and did not have a national soil. The artists produced by her continued to work for a long time on orders from the Court and nobles. The main types of painting in this era were historical and conditional heroic landscape painting in the style of Poussins and Claude Lorrain. But, among the colorless imitation of French models, already at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, some features can be noticed in the Russian school of painting.
In the historical paintings of Kozlov, Sokolov, Akimov and Ugryumov, the correct drawing inherited from Losenko is firmly preserved. In the landscapes of Semyon Shchedrin, Alekseev, Martynov, Matveev, the first weak attempts to transfer the surrounding Russian reality to the picture appear, but in the coloring of the usual convention. A tangible desire for truthfulness is found in the best portrait painters of the same time - Levitsky, Rokotov, Antropov, Borovikovsky and Kiprensky.
Until the middle of the 19th century, the main trend of Russian painting still came from a Western European source. As before, they tried to imitate either the French, or the Italians and mainly the Bolognese. This is how Russian Poussins, Caracci, Rafaeli, Guido-Reni appeared. The paintings of Egorov, Shebuev, Andrey Ivanov, distinguished by classically strict drawing, antique forms, deep deliberation, stately composition and even masterful execution, showed that these artists received a good formal education and mastered the dominant style. But these same paintings showed coldness, far-fetchedness, lack of freshness of creativity and independence. The reason for the latter shortcomings lay both in the dominant style and in the organization of academic education aimed at formal development and imitation. Added to this was the special position of art among Russian society.
Under Alexander I and at the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I, only the Court and the aristocracy supported and patronized Russian painting. This support and patronage forced the painters to adjust to the tastes of the patrons. Embellished portraits, cold images for churches, historical paintings, allegorical plafonds, panegyric battle paintings - that was what Russian artists were busy creating, industriously creating their cold, formal and unidentified eclectic paintings with a conditional dry pattern. The first attempts to make a breach in this dry art, to enliven the drawing by copying living nature without memorized techniques - these first steps towards independence - were made by Varnek, Basin, Bruni.
But only the talented Karl Bryullov succeeded in making a breach and inhaling life. With his colossal, widely painted, spectacular painting "The Last Day of Pompeii", he immediately broke the monotonous, boring monotony, cold calmness of classicism, introduced a sense of color and made a call for attempts at independent creativity. Bryullov introduced an interest in art into society, vitality and romanticism into art. His watercolors and especially his portraits were the harbingers of realism. Realism was paved the way by the deep, serious A. Ivanov, who devoted most of his life to the creation of "The Appearance of Christ to the People" in order to embody an event with a possible reality, and Sylvester Shchedrin, who abandoned the conventions of Poussin in his landscapes, and an energetic follower of Shchedrin - Lebedev .
In the second quarter of the 19th century, the number of artists increased significantly, interest in painting increased markedly, and from a narrow sphere, court and aristocratic, began to spread more widely in society. Art exhibitions began to attract more and more visitors. Amateurs began to appear in society, who willingly bought paintings by domestic artists and even made galleries out of them. The need for art education developed so much that society itself began to help the Academy. A number of private drawing and painting schools arose in the provinces, an art class was formed in Moscow, and a society for the encouragement of artists in St. Petersburg, which did a lot to support art and spread education and art. The circle of amateurs, which founded the art class in 1833, soon expanded into the Society of Art Lovers, under which in 1843 the art class turned into a school of painting and sculpture (later architecture), which produced a number of gifted artists. Emperor Nicholas I actively supported and patronized Russian painting. In 1825, in the Hermitage, open to the public, among other schools, a department of Russian painting appeared, although not rich in the number of paintings, but Nicholas I acquired many paintings by Russian artists for his palace. All this accelerated the emergence of Russian national art.
For a long time, under the main official current of art, a living stream of realism and nationality made its way, gradually expanding. The rise of the national spirit, the development of self-consciousness, which began with the time of Alexander I, the maturity of art, the liberation from imitation, in which the first period of the existence of each art always passes, manifested itself in the fact that painters began to make attempts to depict their immediate reality, to get closer to the people. The main pioneer of nationality and realism, after Orlovsky, who made the first brisk but shallow attempts in this direction, was not a former member of the Academy of the Venetsians, who at the beginning of the 19th century boldly turned to the low kind of painting at that time - to the genre, the depiction of peasant life. Not aiming to express deep thoughts, Venetsianov looked for beauty in the surrounding reality and was content with a simple transfer of nature. This conscientious transmission of nature was necessary and of great importance, since it brought up the ability to see and understand reality as it is, without embellishment, and thus paved the way for a national-real direction.
Venetsianov had many students, but few followed in his footsteps. These latter, not distinguished by strong talent, could not move genre painting forward, especially at the time when K. Bryullov thundered. The historical painters of the Bryullov period—Basin, Shamshin, Nef, Moller, Flavitsky—were busy with cold, showy, melodramatic, masterfully painted paintings. Sauerweid, Kotzebue, Villewald painted panegyric battle paintings. But, along with embellished portraits, truthful portraits of Bryullov, Tyranov, Zaryanko began to appear at exhibitions from the late 1830s; along with views of Constantinople and pictures from Italian life - pictures from Russian life. The genres of Sternberg, Chernyshev, Sokolov, designed to flaunt victory over technical difficulties, showed an understanding of Russian life. After Fedotov's talented and humorous genre paintings, by the 1960s the genre had won attention for itself: Timm, Andr. Popov, Trutovsky act with pictures from the well-thought-out Russian reality. This new direction in further development went by the Academy, which kept away from this movement. It firmly formed the view that the connection between art and life is blasphemy, that drawing, technique, eternal universal ideals constitute the only task of the artist.
With the accession to the throne of Alexander II, the emerging real-national trend was widely developed. This was facilitated by the rise of public consciousness, the complete freedom of art, which is now not constrained by government leadership, and a change in the organization of art education at the Academy. Instead of the students of the Betsky school, which killed independence, the Academy was filled with young people from different parts of Rus', who stood close to life, imbued with national self-consciousness, more conscious and artistically educated, more independent.
They could not reconcile themselves to the conventionality of the classical programs of the Academy and, among 13, with Kramskoy at the head, left the Academy in 1863. In 1872 they formed the "association of traveling exhibitions", which became the main center of the Russian national school. Almost all the outstanding talents of the 70s and 80s adjoined him. Exhibitions, traveling annually around the most significant cities of Russia, contributed to the development of art education and interest among Russian society.
The growth and expansion of artistic understanding and needs is reflected in the emergence of many art societies, schools, a number of private galleries (the Tretyakov Gallery) and museums not only in the capitals, but also in the provinces, in the introduction to school education in drawing, in the collection of the art congress in Moscow in 1894 year.
All this, in connection with the appearance of a number of brilliant works by Russian artists, shows that art took root on Russian soil and became national. The new Russian national art differed sharply in that it clearly and strongly reflected the main currents of Russian social life. This is most clearly seen in the field of genre. After the first galaxy of genre painters of the 1950s who depicted merry scenes, genre painters with a socially tendentious direction appeared in the 60s.
Painting and, especially, the genre considered themselves called to act in an educational way, to fight, to preach, to denounce. The largest representative of this literary trend in painting was Perov, followed by Pukirev, Korzukhin, Pryanishnikov, Savitsky, Zhuravlev, Myasoedov, Yaroshenko, and partly M. Klodt. This constellation followed accusatory literature, applying a drawing well learned in the old school to express ideas. The literary direction was reflected in the predominance of the idea, content, the weakening of purely pictorial elements - plasticity and color.
When the excitement passed and the feelings subsided, the painting began to lose its instructive tone. The tendentious direction began to recede into the background, and a new generation of genre painters appeared, in which the pictorial plastic instincts of form and color, the desire not to convey an idea, but to convey a mood, began to speak very strongly. Such are Arkhipov, Baksheev, Bogdanov-Belsky, Kasatkin, Pasternak, Tvorozhnikov, and others. The followers of this trend sometimes strive for mood and color even to the detriment of the idea and drawing.
At the crossroads between the one and the other generation are the most prominent genre painters: a subtle, versatile observer and a lively painter, Volkov. The newest generation of battle painters - Samokish, Kivshenko, Kovalevsky - are mainly occupied with the everyday side of military life, its types.
Religious painting also followed the same path of real genre and trend, later adopting a national trend later than other types of painting. The extreme expression of the literary trend in the field of religious painting was Ge's painting "The Last Supper".
