Russian painter Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov. Pictures of peasant life. Russian painting of the 19th century

Peasant:

1. A villager whose main occupation is cultivating the land.

Besseldeevka consisted of only twenty-two peasant souls. ( Turgenev. Tchertophanov and Nedopyuskin.)

2. Representative of the lower tax-paying class in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Dictionary of the Russian language. Moscow. " Russian word" 1982.

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The peasant of the 16th century was a free tiller who lived on someone else’s land under an agreement with the landowner; his freedom was expressed in a peasant exit or refusal, that is, in the right to leave one plot and move to another, from one landowner to another. Initially this right was not constrained by law; but the very nature of land relations imposed a mutual limitation both on this right of the peasant and on the arbitrariness of the landowner in relation to the peasant: the landowner, for example, could not drive the peasant off the land before the harvest, just as the peasant could not leave his plot without paying the owner at the end of the harvest. From these natural relationships Agriculture This resulted in the need for a uniform, legally established period for the peasants to leave, when both sides could pay each other. The Code of Law of Ivan III established one mandatory period for this - a week before Saint George's Day in the fall (November 26) and the week following this day. However, in the Pskov land in the 16th century there was another legal deadline for peasants to leave, namely Filippovo (November 14).

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Their own and foreign observers, marveling at the greatness of the deeds of the transformer [Peter I], were amazed at the huge expanses of uncultivated fertile land, a lot of wastelands, cultivated somehow, on site, not introduced into normal economic circulation. People who thought about the reasons for this neglect explained it, firstly, by the decline of the people from a long war, and then by the oppression of officials and nobles, who discouraged the common people from any desire to put their hands to anything: oppression of the spirit resulting from slavery, according to him Weber, has darkened the peasant’s every meaning to such an extent that he has ceased to understand his own benefit and thinks only about his daily meager food.

V. Klyuchevsky. Russian history. Moscow. "Exmo". 2000.

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Immediately after Peter’s death, the impatient Prosecutor General Yaguzhinsky, before anyone else, spoke about the plight of the peasants; then in Supreme privy council there was lively talk about the need to alleviate this situation. “The poor peasantry” became a common government expression.

Actually, it was not the peasants themselves who were concerned, but their escapes, which deprived the government of recruits and tax payers. They fled not only in individual households, but also in entire villages; From some estates everyone fled without a trace; from 1719 to 1727 g

There were almost 200 thousand fugitives - an official figure that usually lagged behind reality.
The very area of ​​flight expanded widely: previously the serfs ran from one landowner to another, but now they flocked to the Don, to the Urals and to distant Siberian cities, to the Bashkirs, to the schism, even abroad, to Poland and Moldova. In the Supreme Privy Council under Catherine I, they reasoned that if things went like this, then it would come to the point that there would be no taxes or recruits to take from anyone, and in the note of Menshikov and other dignitaries the indisputable truth was expressed that if without an army it is impossible for the state to stand , then it is necessary to take care of the peasants, because the soldier is connected with the peasant, like the soul with the body, and if there is no peasant, then there will be no soldier.
To prevent escapes, the capitation tax was reduced and arrears were added up; the fugitives were returned to their old places, first simply, and then with corporal punishment. But here’s the problem: the returned fugitives fled again with new comrades, who were persuaded by stories about a free life on the run, in the steppe or in Poland.
The escapes were accompanied by small peasant riots caused by the arbitrariness of the owners and their managers. Elizabeth's reign was full of local, silent disturbances among the peasants, especially those in the monasteries. Pacifying teams were sent to beat the rebels or to be beaten by them, depending on who took them. These were small test outbreaks, which 20-30 years later merged into the Pugachev fire.

V. Klyuchevsky. Russian history. Moscow. "Exmo". 2000.

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A. Smirnov.Vasilisa Kozhina - partisan, peasant woman of the Sychevsky district of the Smolensk province.1813.

A. Smirnov.Gerasim Kurin - leader of the peasant partisan detachment in 1812year.1813.

Adrian van Ostade.Peasant family.1647.

Peasant woman with cornflowers.

Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov.Peasant girl with a sickle in rye.

Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi.The head of a Ukrainian peasant in a straw hat.1890-1895.

Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov.Peasant yard in Finland.1902.

Vasily Grigorievich Perov.Peasant in the field.1876.

Vasily Grigorievich Perov.Return of peasants from funerals in winter.Early 1880s.

Vasily Maksimovich Maksimov.Peasant girl.1865.

Vasily Maksimovich Maksimov.The arrival of a sorcerer at a peasant wedding.1875.

Wenceslas Hollar.Peasant wedding.1650.

Vladimir Makovsky.Peasant children.1890.

Evgraf Romanovich Reitern.A peasant woman from Willenshausen with a fallen child in her arms.1843.

I. Laminitis.Russian peasants.Engraving based on a drawing by E. Korneev.1812.

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin.Peasant woman with cows.1873.

Ivan Petrovich Argunov.Portrait of an unknown peasant woman in Russian costume.1784.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Two female figures (Embracing peasant women).1878.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Bearded peasant.1879.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Peasant yard.1879.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Two Ukrainian peasants.1880.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Peasant girl.1880.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Ukrainian peasant.1880.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Old peasant.1885.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Portrait of a peasant.1889.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.Peasant's head.

Konstantin Makovsky.Peasant lunch in the field.

Mikhail Shibanov.Peasant lunch.1774.

Olga Kablukova.A hundred-year-old Tsarskoye Selo peasant woman with her family.1815.

Militiaman of 1812 in a peasant hut.Lubok painting.

Art of the Netherlands 16th century
Painting "Peasant Dance". In 1567–1569, Pieter Bruegel painted a number of paintings on themes of folk life (“Peasant Dance”, “Peasant Wedding” - both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Apparently, Bruegel managed to create one of his best genre works - “Peasant Dance”. Its plot does not contain allegory, and its general character is distinguished by self-contained pathos and strict rationality. The artist is interested not so much in the atmosphere of a peasant festival or the picturesqueness of individual groups, but in the peasants themselves - their appearance, facial features, habits, the nature of their gestures and manner of movement. Heavy and strong figures The peasants are depicted on a large scale, unusual for Bruegel, creating the elements and natural power of nature. Each figure is placed in an iron system of compositional axes that permeates the entire picture. And each figure seems to be stopped - in a dance, an argument or a kiss. The figures seem to grow, exaggerated in their scale and significance. Gaining almost super-real persuasiveness, they are filled with rough, even ruthless, but inexorably impressive monumentality, and the scene as a whole is transformed into a kind of clot characteristic features the peasantry, its spontaneous, powerful force.

In this picture, the everyday peasant genre, specific in its method, is born. But, unlike later works Of this kind, Bruegel imparts exceptional power and social pathos to his images. When this picture was painted, a powerful uprising of the popular masses—iconoclasm—had just been suppressed. Bruegel's attitude towards him is unknown. But this movement was from beginning to end popular, it shocked contemporaries with the obviousness of its class character, and, presumably, Bruegel’s desire to concentrate in his painting the main, distinctive features people stands in direct connection with this fact (it is significant that before his death he destroyed some drawings that apparently had a political nature).

Another work by Bruegel, “The Peasant Wedding” (Vienna), is also associated with iconoclasm. Here is the sharpness of vision folk character increased even more, the main figures acquired even greater, but already somewhat exaggerated power, and the allegorical principle was revived in the artistic fabric of the picture. Three peasants look in horror or bewilderment at the wall supposed to be in front, outside the picture. Perhaps this is an allusion to the biblical story about the feast of Belshazzar, when words appeared on the wall predicting death for those who stole treasures from the temple and wanted to get out of their insignificant state.

Let us recall that the rebel peasants who fought against Catholicism destroyed Catholic churches. The tinge of some idealization and softness unusual for Bruegel even has a taste of bitter regret and kind humanity - qualities that were not present in the clear and consistent “Peasant Dance”. A certain departure from the principles and ideas of “Peasant Dance” can also be found in the drawing “Summer” (Hamburg), which at first glance is close to the named painting. However, a complete departure from his previous hopes occurred a little later, when the master created a number of gloomy and cruel paintings (“The Misanthrope”, 1568, Naples; “The Cripples”, 1568, Louvre; “The Nest Destroyer”, 1568, Vienna, Museum), and in including the famous “Blind” (1568; Naples, Capodimonte Museum). They are indirectly connected with the first crisis in the development of the Dutch revolution.

Each of us carries within us the world of childhood. Everything that surrounded us in childhood acquires with age deep meaning. Half-forgotten memories of that time in adulthood seem significant and deep to us. They often determine a person’s fate, and if we're talking about O creative person, then they set the horizons of creative interests.

Simple Russian truth

Most of the Russians artists of the XIX centuries, depicting the Russian village, were superficially familiar with its life. And only Vasily Maksimovich Maksimov (1844–1911) knew the world of the Russian village from birth and was part of this world. Throughout his life he carried his love for patriarchal world Russian peasantry.

The artist Vasily Maksimov spent his childhood in the village of Lopino, Novoladozhsky district, St. Petersburg province. His parents were state peasants, and until the age of ten Maksimov grew up in the village. Poetic sensitivity awakened in the boy early. He was surrounded by a way of life that had been established for centuries peasant life, colorful rituals of weddings and agricultural holidays, huts with beautiful carvings, costumes, home textiles, embroidery on them. And most importantly - simple working people, from whom he learned hard work, honesty, sincerity and mercy.

The father and mother of the future artist were the only literate people in the village. Vasily’s great-grandfather was also famous in the village as a literate person. The father began to teach his son to read early. The boy began to draw just as early. His mother encouraged this tendency. But already at the age of six, Vasily experienced the death of his father, and at ten - his mother.

With what reverence he wrote much later in his memoirs about people dear to him! The description of the mother is especially striking: “The late uncle Father Trifilius, remembering his sister, said: “Everyone was ready to confess to your mother,” she instilled such a feeling with her whole being.” She could not stand lying in people and did not lie herself, she always told the truth, but she knew how to say it in such a way that very rarely anyone was offended by her. She demanded complete sincerity from us and, when she noticed the slightest evasion, she reproachfully fixed her brown eyes and thereby returned us to the truth.”

Vasily Maksimovich did not remember his mother sitting idle, getting angry or judging anyone. She also bore her early widowhood with dignity, not falling into despair when she was left alone with three sons, but trusting in the will of God.

Not an easy path

During her lifetime, the mother managed to enroll her son in a monastery school, and then as a novice at the Nikolaev Monastery. In the house of Hieromonk Anthony (Bochkov) his entire “monastic spiritual life” took place. Here the boy read books by N.V. Gogol, I.A. Krylov, Plutarch, recognized the poems of A.S. Pushkin. But Vasily soon left the monastery to study drawing. Brother Alexey brought Vasily to St. Petersburg on a hay cart. Here future artist entered an icon-painting workshop, where he was often offended and punished. Having escaped from this owner, he ended up with another. Life here was no easier, but here at least he was allowed to go to the drawing school at the Technological Institute, where he was accepted straight into the third grade.

To survive in such conditions, Vasily needed to have enormous perseverance and inner determination. To survive, the young man painted icons and portraits of local merchants. Finally, at eighteen, he passed the entrance exams to the Academy of Arts.

January 7, 1863 V.M. Maksimov began his studies with reverence and delight. A time of rapid success began for him. Soon he became first in his drawing class. Throughout the entire course, the peasant son Vasily Maksimov was one of best students. He was talented in everything: he sang beautifully, wrote poetry, acted in plays, was fond of wood carving, etching, and selflessly did carpentry - making chairs, dishes and bowls. He did not tolerate idleness and satiety.

He passionately and genuinely loved his homeland. “I never considered a trip abroad to be the height of well-being; I even found it harmful for young man who does not know his homeland. My mother instilled love for my homeland in me with her stories about Moscow, Kyiv and other places. What a connoisseur of foreign cities I am when I haven’t seen my own, and upon returning, perhaps, you won’t be able to understand and appreciate your own,” he wrote.

In the fall of 1866, Vasily Maksimov received a certificate with the title of artist of the 3rd degree, after which he settled in his native village. He lived in a hut, wore a Russian shirt and trousers; his brother-tailor sewed him a tanned sheepskin coat with embroidery. The peasants accepted Maksimov, he became one of their own for them. The artist’s authority was so great that the peasants came to him for advice, he was invited to family divisions, and he corresponded with many peasants later long years. Living in the village and painting peasant paintings became a real asceticism of a deeply convinced and strong in spirit artist.

Peasant's son and general's daughter

While visiting the neighboring estate of General Izmailova, Vasily met her daughter. “I fell in love with this wonderful girl, I loved her sacredly, I was ready to lay down my life for her if circumstances demanded it, but I hid this feeling from everyone so that no one would roughly touch this shrine. Meanwhile, the disturbing feeling of the unknown haunts me neither day nor night,” wrote the artist

Maksimov was afraid that she and her parents, being nobles, would not accept him, peasant son living with his brothers in a simple hut. He was not ashamed of his roots and wrote with pride that “he does not intend to abandon his relatives in the future.”

The fears were in vain: Lydia warmly and simply accepted the artist’s timid and inept confession. And soon, on January 29, 1868, the general’s daughter became the wife of a peasant. Lydia Alexandrovna became the artist’s muse and adviser.

“You are ours, if you write, it will not be for fun”

Vasily Maksimov works enthusiastically, one after another paintings appear in which, without idealization, but also without crude naturalism, the artist, faithful to the truth, shows the Russian peasant world. Ilya Repin said it best about Maximov: “His paintings can be called pearls.” folk art. They are modest, not showy, do not shout with their colors, do not scream with their plots... this is the simplest Russian eternal truth. It shines from Maksimov’s unpretentious paintings, from every face and gesture...”

Viewers paid attention to the work of Vasily Maksimov very early. I bought his painting “Granny's Tales”, painted by the artist at the age of 23, for my famous gallery philanthropist P.M. Tretyakov, who later acquired all the major works of Vasily Maksimovich.

The peasants themselves, who posed for Maksimov, told him: “You are ours, even if you write, it’s not for fun.” These pictures are amazing. Log huts with their modest and poor life at first glance seem miserable to the viewer. But if you look closely, you will understand how complex and deep the world of their inhabitants is. The artist’s obligatory emphasis is on the image of the red corner of the Russian hut. Here there are rows of icons, a lamp is burning, illuminating the walls of the poor dwelling with golden light. And in moments of despair, danger, disaster, it is these icons that the heroes of his paintings turn their gaze to.

At a traveling exhibition in 1882, several paintings by Maximov were presented. One of them is “Sick Husband”. The artist continued a theme that was close to him, depicting a sick village man on a couch in a hut, with his wife bending next to him at the icons. This was part of his childhood memories of his father's illness and his mother's fervent prayer.

V. M. Maksimov traveled to the Volga several times. In the village of Varvarikha, near Yuryevets, he will write the touching “Blind Master”. The blind owner of the house sits on a bench by the window, holding a small child on his lap. The father feeds the baby, next to a cradle filled with straw. Pets in the field. Rods and tools are scattered everywhere. The owner weaves baskets; he is not a burden to the family, but its support. The expression on his face is amazingly calm. And here, in this poor house, they live with faith and trust in the mercy and help of God.

During these years, Maksimov created a whole series of paintings dedicated to the life of the poor, the difficult lot of peasants: “Poor Dinner” (1879), “Auction for Arrears” (1880), “Bread Loan” (1882), “At Your Own Lane” (1891) , “The Dashing Mother-in-Law” (1893). The artist could not stand falsehood and “composition”. About his works, I. N. Kramskoy said: “Yes, yes, the people themselves painted their picture.”

"Unfashionable" artist

In 1885, the artist’s wife Lidia Alexandrovna became the heiress of the Lyubsha estate. Maksimov enthusiastically began to rebuild the dilapidated estate and located a workshop on the ground floor. But hopes for a prosperous future were not justified. Need haunted the artist all his life. The family grew, there were already four children: two daughters and two sons. And his paintings were of less and less interest to viewers and critics; they were bought less and less often. The artist did not stop working, tried himself in new genres, and participated in exhibitions of the Itinerants.

A new time had come, requiring complex images and controversial themes. Maksimov did not want to follow fleeting fashion. In addition, during a trip to his homeland, the artist fell into a ravine on the Volkhov, and was in cold water. Since then, the disease has undermined his body. Constant poverty made life difficult for the family. Hopes for income from Lyubsha were not justified, and Maximov went completely broke. Moved to St. Petersburg. The last surge of energy allowed the sick artist to take up the painting “Forgiveness Sunday.” He made several sketches. But the picture remained unfinished. On December 1, 1911, the artist died.

Peasant son, truly folk artist Vasily Maksimov throughout his life, beyond time and fashion, remained faithful to his main calling: “selfless service to his great people.” “I feel right only in the correctness of my view of folk life, which I love,” said V. M. Maksimov. And today we need this truth in order to feel with gratitude and love that we are part of our people, their past and present.

Prepared by Oksana BALANDINA

Nikolay Nevrev. "Bargaining. A scene from serf life." 1866

One landowner sells a serf girl to another. Imposingly shows the buyer five fingers - five hundred rubles. 500 rubles - average price Russian serf in the first half of the 19th century. The girl's seller is a European-educated nobleman. Pictures on the walls, books. The girl humbly awaits her fate, other slaves crowd at the door and watch how the bargaining will end. Yearning.

Vasily Perov. "Rural religious procession at Easter." 1861

Russian village of the 19th century. Orthodox Easter. Everyone is drunk as hell, including the priest. The guy in the center is carrying the icon upside down and is about to fall. Some have already fallen. Funny! The essence of the picture is that the Russian people’s commitment to Orthodoxy is exaggerated. Addiction to alcohol is clearly stronger. Perov was a recognized master genre painting and a portrait. But this picture of him Tsarist Russia was prohibited from display or reproduction. Censorship!

Grigory Myasoedov. "The zemstvo is having lunch." 1872

Times of Alexander II. Serfdom cancelled. Local self-government - zemstvos - was introduced. Peasants were also chosen there. But between them and the higher classes there is an abyss. Therefore - dining apartheid. Gentlemen are in the house, with waiters, peasants are at the door.

Fedor Vasiliev. "Village". 1869

1869 The landscape is beautiful, but the village, if you look closely, is poor. Poor houses, leaky roofs, the road is buried in mud.

Jan Hendrik Verheyen. "Dutch village with figures of people." 1st half 19th century.
Well, that's it, for comparison :)

Alexey Korzukhin. "Return from the city." 1870

The situation in the house is poor, a child is crawling on the shabby floor, and for an older daughter, her father brought a modest gift from the city - a bunch of bagels. True, there are many children in the family - only in the picture there are three of them, plus perhaps another one in a homemade cradle.

Sergey Korovin. "On the World". 1893

This is already a village of the late 19th century. There are no more serfs, but a division has appeared - fists. At a village gathering there is some kind of dispute between a poor man and a kulak. For the poor man, the topic is apparently vitally important; he almost sobs. The rich fist laughs at him. The other fists in the background are also giggling at the loser beggar. But the comrade to the poor man’s right was imbued with his words. There are already two ready-made members of the committee; we just have to wait until 1917.

Vasily Maksimov. "Auction for arrears". 1881-82.

The tax office is furious. Tsarist officials auction samovars, cast iron pots and other peasant belongings. The heaviest taxes on peasants were redemption payments. Alexander II “the Liberator” actually freed the peasants for money - they were then obliged to pay their native state for many years for the plots of land that were given to them along with their will. In fact, the peasants had this land before; they used it for many generations while they were serfs. But when they became free, they were forced to pay for this land. Payment had to be made in installments, right up to 1932. In 1907, against the backdrop of the revolution, the authorities abolished these taxes.

Vladimir Makovsky. "On the boulevard." 1886-1887

At the end of the 19th century. Industrialization came to Russia. Young people go to the city. She's going crazy there. Previous life they are no longer interested. And this young hard worker is not even interested in his peasant wife, who came to him from the village. She's not advanced. The girl is terrified. The proletarian with an accordion doesn’t care.

Vladimir Makovsky. "Date". 1883

There is poverty in the village. The boy was given away to the public. Those. sent to the city to work for an owner who exploits child labor. The mother came to visit her son. Tom obviously has a hard life, his mother sees everything. The boy greedily eats the bread he brought.

Vladimir Makovsky. "Bank collapse." 1881

A crowd of defrauded depositors in a bank office. Everyone is in shock. The rogue banker (on the right) is quietly getting away with the dough. The policeman looks in the other direction, as if he doesn’t see him.

Pavel Fedotov. " Fresh gentleman". 1846

The young official received his first order. They washed it all night. The next morning, putting the cross directly on his robe, he shows it to the cook. A crazy look full of arrogance. The cook, personifying the people, looks at him with irony. Fedotov would be a master of such psychological paintings. The meaning of this: flashing lights are not on cars, but in heads.

Pavel Fedotov. "Aristocrat's Breakfast". 1849-1850.

Morning, the impoverished nobleman was taken by surprise by unexpected guests. He hastily covers up his breakfast (a piece of black bread) with a French novel. Nobles (3% of the population) were a privileged class in old Russia. They owned a huge amount of land, but they rarely made good farmers. Not a lord's business. The result is poverty, debt, everything is mortgaged and re-mortgaged in banks. In Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, the estate of the landowner Ranevskaya is sold for debts. Buyers (rich merchants) are destroying the estate, and one of them really needs a lordly The Cherry Orchard(to resell as dachas). The reason for the problems of the Ranevsky family is idleness over several generations. No one was taking care of the estate, and the owner herself had been living abroad for the last 5 years and wasting money.

Boris Kustodiev. "Merchant". 1918

Provincial merchants are Kustodiev’s favorite topic. While the nobles in Paris squandered their estates, these people rose from the bottom, making money in a huge country, where there was plenty of room to invest their hands and capital. It is noteworthy that the picture was painted in 1918, when the Kustodiev merchants and merchant women throughout the country were already being pushed to the wall by fighters against the bourgeoisie.

Ilya Repin. "Procession in Kursk province". 1880-1883.

Different layers of society come to the religious procession, and Repin depicted them all. They carry a lantern with candles in front, an icon behind it, then they walk the best people- officials in uniforms, priests in gold, merchants, nobles. On the sides there are guards (on horseback), then there are ordinary people. People on the side of the road periodically rake in order not to cut off the bosses and get into his lane. Tretyakov did not like the police officer in the picture (on the right, in white, beating someone from the crowd with all his might). He asked the artist to remove this cop chaos from the plot. But Repin refused. But Tretyakov bought the painting anyway. For 10,000 rubles, which was simply a colossal amount at that time.

Ilya Repin. "Gathering". 1883

But these young guys in another painting by Repin no longer go with the crowd to all sorts of events religious processions. They have their own way - terror. This " People's Will", an underground organization of revolutionaries who killed Tsar Alexander II.

Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky. "Oral counting. In public school S.A.Rachinsky". 1895

Rural school. Peasant children in bast shoes. But there is a desire to learn. The teacher is in a European suit with a bow tie. This a real man- Sergei Rachinsky. Mathematician, professor at Moscow University. On a voluntary basis he taught at a rural school in the village. Tatevo (now Tver region), where he had an estate. Great deal. According to the 1897 census, the literacy rate in Russia was only 21%.

Jan Matejko. "Chained Poland". 1863

According to the 1897 census, literate people in the country were 21%, and Great Russians - 44%. Empire! Interethnic relations in the country have never been smooth. The painting by Polish artist Jan Matejko was written in memory of the anti-Russian uprising of 1863. Russian officers with angry faces shackle a girl (Poland), defeated, but not broken. Behind her sits another girl (blonde), who symbolizes Lithuania. She is groped dirty by another Russian. The Pole on the right, sitting facing the viewer, is the spitting image of Dzerzhinsky.

Nikolay Pimomenko. "Victim of fanaticism." 1899

The painting shows real case, which was in the city of Kremenets (Western Ukraine). A Jewish girl fell in love with a Ukrainian blacksmith. The newlyweds decided to get married with the bride converting to Christianity. This worried the local Jewish community. They behaved extremely intolerantly. The parents (on the right in the picture) disowned their daughter, and the girl was obstructed. The victim has a cross on his neck, in front of her is a rabbi with fists, behind him is a concerned public with clubs.

Franz Roubo. "Assault on the village of Gimry." 1891

Caucasian War of the 19th century. Hellish mixture of Dags and Chechens by the tsarist army. The village of Gimry (Shamil’s ancestral village) fell on October 17, 1832. By the way, since 2007, a counter-terrorist operation regime has been in effect in the village of Gimry again. The last (at the time of writing this post) clearing by riot police was on April 11, 2013. The first is in the picture below:

Vasily Vereshchagin. "Opium eaters." 1868

The painting was painted by Vereshchagin in Tashkent during one of the Turkestan campaigns of the Russian army. middle Asia was then annexed to Russia. How the participants in the campaigns saw the ancestors of today's guest workers - Vereshchagin left paintings and memoirs about this. Dirt, poverty, drugs...

Peter Belousov. "We will go the other way!".1951
And finally, the main event in the history of Russia in the 19th century. On April 22, 1870, Volodya Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk. His elder brother, a Narodnaya Volya member, tried himself, perhaps, in the sphere of individual terror - he was preparing an attempt on the life of the Tsar. But the attempt failed and the brother was hanged. That’s when young Volodya, according to legend, told his mother: “We will go a different way!” And let's go.

There is no work more honorable and important than cultivating the land. Unfortunately, this simple truth does not always work in this world. However, the poetics of peasant labor, harmony with the surrounding world, and the feeling of satisfaction from a job well done have always interested artists. One of the first to turn to the theme of rural life was the Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, nicknamed Muzhitsky for his passion. In the cycle of paintings “The Seasons,” three of the five surviving works show rural everyday life: “Return of the Herds,” “Haymaking” and “Harvest.” Two latest paintings differ in their peaceful and joyful atmosphere from most of Bruegel’s works.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the pastoral genre - an idealistic depiction of rural life - became especially popular in European, and especially French, painting. The most famous paintings describing rural life are by Francois Boucher: “Farm”, “Morning in the Village”, “Rest of Peasants”. However, everything depicted in pastorals is far from real life, and only by the beginning of the Enlightenment, realism began to prevail in pastoral painting, for example, the works of the English artist Thomas Gainsborough “The Return of the Peasants from the Market”, “Return from the Harvest”.

The pastoral painting of Alexey Venetsianov is filled with Russian flavor. His paintings, idealizing the life of the Russian peasant, have always been quite popular: “On the arable land. Spring", "Reapers", "Sleeping Shepherd". Despite the romanticization of rural life, Venetsianov strove for maximum realism in his work; for example, to work on the painting “The Barn”, the wall of this agricultural building on the artist’s estate was dismantled. Once again, interest in peasant labor in Russian painting arises with the advent of the Partnership traveling exhibitions. For example, the painting by Grigory Myasoedov “Mowers” ​​( Time of suffering) celebrates the joy of work and its unity with the hot landscape. Often turned to peasant theme Ivan Kramskoy. Known series peasant portraits“Miller”, “Woodman”, “Contemplator”, “Beekeeper” and others, in which representatives of some rural professions are typified.

Vincent Van Gogh addressed this topic many times, for example, one of the few paintings sold during the artist’s lifetime was “Red Vineyards in Arles” depicting the grape harvest. Another famous "rural" painting by Van Gogh is The Potato Eaters. Several times he turned to the theme raised in the painting “The Sower”, because he believed that the sower personifies the rebirth and infinity of life. Although Dutch artist classified as a post-impressionist, in his understanding of the complexity, monotony and exhaustion of peasant labor, he becomes a true realist. Perhaps Van Gogh adopted this attitude towards rural life from Jean Millet, whose work greatly influenced young artist. Millet himself, the founder of the Barbizon school, said to himself that he was just a peasant. However, in his works, sometimes a certain poetry of rural life slips through: “The Ear Pickers”, “Angelus”, “The Winnower”, “The Sower”, “Threshing” and many others.

The artist Arkady Plastov was called the singer of the Soviet peasantry. His numerous paintings glorify hard labour collective farmer All his heroes have very expressive hands - strong, knobby, not afraid of any work. Today it is customary to accuse his paintings (“Harvest”, “Haymaking”, “Summer”, “Tractor Driver’s Dinner”, “Potato Harvesting”) of “ socialist realism" - embellishment of reality, but they are unique in their pronounced national character and the nationality of images. This is how the artists saw it different countries and eras, complex and thankless peasant labor, not without its own special charm and beauty.