Makovsky's paintings: description, photo

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The artists who were members of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions - "Wanderers" - left a bright mark on Russian painting in the last third of the 19th century. This is a very Russian phenomenon in the history of art, because its main feature was the inseparable mutual influence of the artistic and social life of the country.

Vladimir Yegorovich Makovsky joined the ranks of the Wanderers in 1972, two years after its formation, and was one of its most active members. Makovsky's paintings enjoyed great attention throughout the heyday of this art movement.

Biography

He was one of the three sons of Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky - an outstanding artist of Moscow, a collector, one of the founders of the famous Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Both brothers - Konstantin and Nikolai - as well as sister Alexandra became artists, and the other sister, Maria, became a singer. As a child, one of Vladimir's teachers was the famous VasilyTropinin.

The very first paintings by Makovsky, starting with the genre scene “A Boy Selling Kvass” (1861), written at the age of 15, revealed his great abilities both in observing the events of his life, and in transferring them to the canvas. In 1861, he entered the MUZhVZ - a school, one of the founders of which was his father. He graduated with a silver medal for his painting Literary Reading (1865).

Many of Makovsky's paintings became milestones in his creative and professional development. For the canvas "Peasant Boys Guarding Horses" (1869), he received the title of "class artist of the first degree", and for "Lovers of nightingales" (1973) he was promoted to academician of painting.

Pedagogical activity occupied a lot of time in the master's life. For 12 years he taught at MUZHVZ - from 1882 to 1894, and for the next 24 years - at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, becoming in 1895 the rector of the Higher Art School at the Academy of Arts.

The famous artist died in February 1920 in Petrograd.

The Money Game (1870)

The artist married early, and in 1869 his first son was born, who later became also an artist - Alexander Makovsky. Vladimir Yegorovich, whose paintings already had a distinct genre affiliation, has since paid much attention to the children's theme. Among these canvases of his, the painting stands out, which became the first one purchased by the famous collector Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov. This became for Makovsky a symbol of his final recognition as a painter.

Peasant children play the most accessible game for them. It uses grandmothers - small bones from the skeleton of domestic animals - cows or pigs. This is a competition in accuracy: those bones that are hit by a special cue ball (headstock weighted with lead) become the player's prey.

…Now the main thing for them is the game, which they give themselves with all their passion. One, sitting, concentratedly counts the prey, others are attentively waiting for the next throw. Makovsky, whose paintings are meticulous in everyday details, is also accurate in psychological nuances. All players have their own temperament, their own character. The common thing is mild humor and optimism, indestructible even by the poverty of clothes and the dilapidation of the surrounding buildings.

Early paintings by Makovsky are distinguished by excessive elaboration of details, sometimes interfering with a holistic perception. In the future, the artist's brush acquires greater freedom, and the palette will become more solid, which will allow avoiding some variegation, inherent, in particular, in the picture we have examined.

The Nightingale Lovers (1873)

This canvas represented Russian painting at the World Exhibition in Vienna, where it received great attention from the audience.

Outside the window there was a nightingale trill, and three peasants listened, interrupting their simple feast. One, standing, froze, looking out the window, trying to look out for a small bird. The second, obviously having drunk more than his friends, counts out the overflows of the nightingale's song with a wave of his palm. The third, the most respectable, listens, thoughtfully pinching his beard. Everything is full hereof life and sound: light from the window, poses and gestures of the characters, a pot-bellied hot samovar, a simple but “tasty” still life painted.

There is a well-known review of this painting by the great Dostoevsky, who highly appreciated the goodness and attention to the common man coming from the picture, which had not only a Russian, but also a universal scale.

"Condemned" (1879)

Gradually, the artist's plots lose the humor inherent in early paintings and the ironic attitude towards the characters. The canvases acquire drama and ambiguity. These are several versions of the picture depicting raznochintsy who have embarked on the path of revolutionary struggle, and the attitude towards such figures of representatives of different strata of the Russian people.

An armed convoy takes a young man out of the courthouse. At the exit, his relatives are waiting for him, including his mother, father, a young girl and an elderly man. Apparently, the main character comes from peasants or the urban poor. His fiancee and her father belong to a more prosperous class. The artist does not show obvious benevolence towards the convict, there is no sympathy for him and those around him. He brought his loved ones one suffering - the mother folded her hands imploringly, admonishing her son, the father weeps inconsolably.

Yes, and the revolutionary himself does not look like an adamant hero-sufferer for the people. In his eyes - loss and lack of conviction in his rightness. Makovsky, whose paintings are an accurate reflection of the moods prevailing in society, shows a change in attitude towards methods of combating the existingsystems used by radical parties and movements like Narodnaya Volya.

"Date" (1883)

Children is a topic that Makovsky often worked on. Vladimir Yegorovich, whose paintings at first are only a reflection of childish spontaneity, admiring the beginning of a new life, later speaks of different, often dramatic aspects of childhood in Russia at that time.

In poor families, it was customary to give children "to the people." The child often became a disenfranchised servant or apprentice, loaded with overwork. Receiving from the owner only miserable food and unsettled shelter, the children ceased to be a burden for the family, losing family comfort and growing up early. This path was especially common and familiar to peasant families who gave the boy into service in the city.

It is about such a children's fate that Makovsky narrates. The description of the painting can take many pages, although there are only two characters on the canvas. The peasant woman went a long way with a small bundle and a stick in her hands. She brought a kalach to her son to please her child. The woman looks pityingly at the barefoot boy, dressed in a dirty apron - obviously, he works in some kind of workshop and got a few minutes of free time to visit his mother.

The artist's painting style has also changed - there are no detailed and carefully written details that distract attention and crush the image. The gloomy coloring serves not to express joy from a short date, but to display the heavy mood of a lost childhood.

On the Boulevard (1886)

Makovsky often said that an artist has only a few minutes at his disposal, during which he needs to have time to tell what a writer can take many pages. In the 1880s, the master achieved the highest skill in creating such short stories. One of these peaks, both in terms of painting skill and content, is the canvas “On the Boulevard”. During this period, the paintings of V. E. Makovsky contain only two characters, but they are enough for a deep analysis of social problems of a huge scale.

Before us is a little story about a dramatic break in the life of a young family. It seems that they come from a village where they were preparing to live, like their parents, in the usual labors and joys of the peasant way of life. But the husband was drawn to the city, to work, to a new, “beautiful” and interesting life. And after some time, the wife came to visit her husband. Now they are strangers. He managed to soak up the urban spirit - he carefully monitors his appearance, in his hands is a small accordion - it is clear what he likes most in city life.

The girl is still very young, but she already understands what may await her in the future, where she sees complete hopelessness. From this picture of Vladimir Makovsky, one can feel anguish, it is a kind of reflection of the private drama of two little people, and demonstrates the scale of the national problem of the destruction of the habitual way of life, which has evolved over the centuries, and is now being destroyed as industrial centers develop.

Legacy

Vladimir Egorovichdistinguished by great diligence and creative fertility. The result of his many years of work has become a genuine encyclopedia of the most typical phenomena of Russian reality at the turn of two centuries. He addressed themes of various scales - from domestic scenes to mass political actions - and embodied them with genuine artistic skill.

Historians of Russian art note that by the end of his life, V. E. Makovsky became a supporter of more conservative views on the development of painting, having a negative attitude towards the search for new themes and means of expression. But the scale of this figure in Russian fine art does not become smaller because of this.