Художник-самоучка и его шедевры. Печальная судьба Павла Федотова

In October 1849, the people of St. Petersburg went in crowds to the exhibition of paintings at the Academy of Arts. The talented artist-self-taught Pavel Fedotov presented three of his paintings, written earlier by Svezhii Kovaler and Razborchivaya Nevesta, and the new one by Svatovstvo Major, which made a sensation. Alexandre Benoit, an artist, a critic, the founder of the Union of the Arts, wrote that Fedotov's paintings had colossal success, unprecedented since the times of Pompey. For the painting Svatovstvo Major, the Academy of Arts awarded the artist the title of Academician. In the middle of the 19th century, many poor noblemen got married to representatives of the rich merchants. It was a mutually beneficial deal. The nobleman corrected his material position, and the merchant received a title. And the original title of the painting sounded exactly like this – Correction of Circumstances or Svatovstvo. The audience discussed the painting noisily and laughed. Many details reflected in it are now not noticeable to us, and then they made us laugh. For example, the fact that the bride, for the first acquaintance with the groom, in the household, in the afternoon, dressed in an evening ball dress with open shoulders, did not correspond to the general etiquette. The scarf on the head of the merchant, and also in combination with an elegant lush dress, also caused laughter. For women of her age, it was customary to wear a chepets. And how unruly the festive champagne with glasses on the chair, pushed against the wall, looks. The painting is very similar to the mise-en-scene of a play in a theater, where a whole performance is played, which you want to watch to the end. In addition to the gift of a painter, Fedotov had a poetic gift, and he wrote poems to many of his paintings. To Svatovstvo Major, he composed a long, humorous poetic representation of the painting, which he called Ratseya. When the audience entered the hall, Pavel Andreevich, almost like a mess, called, invited guests to the painting. Honorable gentlemen, come here, we ask for mercy, we will not ask for money, look for nothing, just wipe your glasses well. It begins, it begins, how people live in the world, how others chew at someone else's expense, they are too lazy to work themselves, so they marry the rich. Here, please, look, here is a merchant house, there is a lot of everything in it, but there is no sense in anything. One smells like a village, and the other is more delicious. Here, however, there is one reason that everything is not taken into account, as you sometimes have, honest gentlemen. And then the artist introduces the visitors of the exhibition to the heroes of his painting, ironically passing through each of its characters. And here, please, look, here is the owner-buyer himself. Money is full, there is something to drink, there is something to eat, what else? Yes, I just wanted honor, I just don't want a boy with a beard, and my own beard is a terrible trouble for me. On the street, all sorts of people push, and a little under the swing, yes, go on foot in the evening, look, and you will find yourself in a booth, then you will sweep the street for a day. And in the thick, be a son-in-law, they will not dare to take us. At least give me a major, without that I will not give my daughter to anyone. And the groom is here, as here, and they will fix it exactly. And here, please, look, how they are waiting for the groom. They carry the cradle, and the first varieties of overseas wines are served to the table. And here is the most gentlemanly, the champagne is on the tray, on the chair. And here, please, look, how the whole house is in the parade, everything is with a needle in it. Only the owner of the merchant did not find the head of the shepherd, in the old way, in a gray handkerchief. The rest of the dress was taken from the Frenchwoman only in the evening, for herself and for her daughter. Daughter, for the first time in her life, like a boyar in our country. Not afraid of a cold, not afraid of men, she put her shoulders out for show. The carriage is clean, without a cross. Here, please, look, how in the left corner the old woman is tight on the ear. The hostess on the swath, without a toothy mouth, sticks to the seat. For what, so to speak, does she carry so many bottles? In the house, she has everything. Tell her, why, for what, who is coming? Curious people. And here, please, look, how on the right, a retired village woman, a pancrativna swathe, a shameless whore, in a shugai in Porchev, a fat warehouse, came with a report. The groom, so to speak, agreed to come. And here, please, look, how our bride will not find a place with a fool. A stranger man. Oh, what a shame! I have never been with them. If they come, it happened, mother-in-law, to the ear. The girl did not come to you here. For a century I lived in my high sweetheart, I slept alone. I only spitted lace to the towels. And everyone in the house honors me as a young man. The guest will order a cup of tea. Oh, what a shame! And here there is nothing to hide the shoulders. The scarf is so through. All through, in sight. No, I will go to the candlelight. And here, please, look, how our bird is going to fly away, and the smart mother will grab her dress. And here, please, look, how in another mountain house a hawk of a mountain woman threatens, how the major is fat, brave, the pocket is hollow, he twists his mustache. I, I say, I will get to the money. And here, please, look, below the picture, near the middle, the Siberian cat is sitting. It would be good for her to learn a little from the village girls, to wash more often. The cat is gnawing, washing, calling the guest to the house. And what, gentlemen? The eyes are tired of tea. And here, to the left, the holy images. Please, cross yourself. Yes, go home. Pavel Andreevich Fedotov was born in 1815 in Moscow. His father, Andrei Illarionovich Fedotov, for his heroism in the Russian-Turkish war under Catherine II, received the nobility rank. And he returned from the war with a captive Turk, with whom they fell in love, got married. But soon the disease took the life of his young wife. After a while, the hero of the war marries Natalia Kalashnikova for the second time, who was affected by the same trouble. She also became a widow early. This time the family life was successful for both of them. But poor. Children were born in the family. And everyone needs to be fed, dressed, clothed, taken to the people. Therefore, Pavel Fedotov had to take responsibility for himself from an early age, and for his younger sisters, including while his father was out of work, and his mother was busy with the household. As soon as the boy turned 11, he was transferred to the Moscow cadet corps. Pavel had a very good memory. He was responsible and persistent in any matter. Soon he became one of the best students, despite the fact that when he enlisted he had the weakest training. In 1830 he was promoted to an officer, and two years later to a field officer. Pavel had good abilities in many areas. He learned to play the piano and guitar, sang in the choir, he was easily given languages, he even makes his own translations of the German Odes, reads a lot and composes poems. But his favorite activity is drawing. He does not part with a pencil and paper, he makes many different sketches, draws caricatures of his classmates, of himself, of the teachers. In the cadet corps there was a tradition to put the names of the best students on an honorable marble plaque hanging in the auditorium. The name of Pavel Fedotov, unlike the one who graduated from the corps in 1833, was also included in the memorial plaque. By the highest order, he was made a warrant officer and sent to the Leib-Guard of the Finnish regiment in St. Petersburg. The young man for the first time plunged into secular life. He attended various parties, balls, played cards with friends, walked the streets of the capital and did not part with a pencil and paper, drawing new types of people for himself, episodes of the capital life. One day he decided to draw a portrait, asking a friend to sit quietly. The portrait turned out to be very similar. And now it was not he, but his friends themselves who offered to sit quietly in front of him to get their portrait. Drawing is more and more exciting for Pavel. He loves to go to the outskirts of the capital and draw plots from the life of ordinary people. Having learned about the evening courses at the Academy of Arts, he began to visit them, where he was identified immediately in the second grade. Pavel Fedotov studies anatomy, makes many sketches of various parts of the body, studies the beloved work of Dutch masters, draws scenes from the regiment life, caricatures, portraits of his colleagues. In 1837, Grand Duke Mikhail Palych, younger brother of Emperor Nicholas I, after a trip abroad, met with the military, for whom it was an event. This is how Fedotov describes the meeting. Grand Duke Mikhail Palych, relieved of the severe illness, returned from abroad and visited the entire camp of his beloved guardsmen, literally without ceremonies, in a patriotic way. Guardsmen crowded around him in unstructured but picturesque groups, climbed on the pyramids, on the shoulders of comrades, to see the face of their commander's father. Kind hurrah, hats in the air, dawka, bigotry. The plot is glorious, touched the artist alive, and he patiently performed it in person. The sketch of the future picture Pavel presented to the commander of the regiment, and he to Mikhail Palych himself. And unexpectedly for himself, Fedotov, for the first time in three years of service, received an unprecedentedly long vacation, for four months. He wanted to go to Moscow right away, to see all his relatives, to plunge into the familiar atmosphere. But he understood that such a vacation was given to write a picture. Before leaving, the artist makes the necessary sketches. After all, the picture is conceived as a large group portrait, and the similarity must be accurate. Pavel Andreevich did not want to depict dawka, soldiers pushing each other. All the heroes are located almost in a static pose, but beautifully, compositionally located. And the hats thrown up give dynamics to the picture, and the atmosphere of joy and solemnity of the meeting is present. The similarity of the depicted in the picture was impeccable. And how often Fedotov did this in his paintings, among the heroes he depicted himself. In the right corner, he stands halfway to the viewer with an inseparable pencil in his hands and draws what is happening. The picture, made with watercolor, was placed in a frame under the glass and handed over to Mikhail Palych, who, after carefully considering it, was very pleased. And as a reward, through the commander of the regiment, he gave the artist a diamond ring. At home, in Moscow, during the long-awaited vacation, Pavel Fedotov, in addition to the picture of the meeting in the camp of the Leib-Guard of the Finnish regiment of the Grand Duke Mikhail Palych, painted a portrait of his father and a watercolor of a walk, depicting himself, his father and one of his sisters. Nikolai I, having appreciated the painting given to his brother, gave the drawing officer the voluntary right to leave the service and devote himself to painting with a content of 100 rubles per month. Pavel Andreevich thought for a long time, but this time he did not dare to resign. He was very unsure of his artistic abilities, and his family lived in cramped material conditions. Most of the payments he sent to his father and sisters. In 1843, Pavel Fedotov was appointed the commander of the company. Now there was almost no time for his favorite business. A year later, after some reflections, having already had a lot of experience in painting, Fedotov would still ask for a resignation and would be fired with the production of the Captain's Seal. But his confidence in himself accompanied him for a long time. In his memoirs, he wrote, It was terribly terrible for me at that time. I still doubted my abilities. I still did not believe in myself. I still wondered that I was a simple painter, not an artist. Pavel Fedotov rented an inexpensive small apartment on one of the distant lines of Vasilyevsky Island. Pension of 28 rubles 60 kopecks per month, which was assigned to him, was too small. The artist limited himself in everything. The payment for the apartment plus the support of relatives in Moscow was miserable, from which Fedotov first cut out money for paint and canvas. At first he decided to engage in batal painting, having experience of the military and experience of painting pictures reflecting the life of the regiment. And this direction in painting was considered more profitable. But his ability to accurately reflect the character of a person, his momentary mood, relationships between people, the ability to note and reflect various small details with a critical look, knowledge of life, all this prompted Fedotov to genre painting. He was particularly approved of in this choice and a response to his work by the artist Ivan Krylov, who was delighted with his work, with genre scenes and caricatures. He blessed the artist to write morally critical scenes from ordinary everyday life. Gradually, the artist mastered the technique of working with oil. On the topic of his already existing caricature, he decided to write a picture that for its entire history had several names the morning of an official who received the first cross the consequences of the feather and the main name that has been enshrined to this day the Fresh Cavalier. Before us is the poor room of an officer who the day before received the Order of St. Stanislav, the youngest in the order of the majority of Russian Orders. He was received by many military and staff officers who served established terms. But we see that the day before our Cavalier celebrated this award as the highest. He stands barefoot in a proud pose in front of the servant, showing the Order that he put on a dirty ragged robe. On his head, lapels resemble a laurel wreath, strengthening his proud mood. The Cavalier does not notice that the servant is frankly humiliated above him and shows him the only ragged boots, trying to turn him from the pose of a Roman patrician into a real deplorable reality. Pavel Andreevich always paid great attention to the various details in the paintings that well revealed the image of life and the character of the heroes. Empty bottles are lying on the floor, a broken plate, the tails of a herring, a book. The uniform hangs carelessly. There is a guitar with torn strings. A cell with a canary hangs on the wall. And a carefree cat, stretching sweetly, tears off a ragged chair. On the table, as on the floor, there is a terrible mess. A piece of sausage lies on the newspaper. There are undrinkable glasses and immediately razor accessories and hair clips. And we do not immediately notice a fellow who fell asleep under the table, if it can be called so, or celebrated the receipt of the Order that he could not get home. As the author himself commented, where there was a bad connection, there in the great holiday there is dirt. Torn boots in the hands of a servant. Her skeptical look and already quite noticeable stomach as if emphasizes that nothing this Order will change in the life of the Cavalier, will not make him richer, smarter, kinder, more moral. And we, together with the artist, laugh and at the same time regret the heroes of the picture. This is my first chick, he wrote on the fresh Cavalier in his diary, which I nannied with different corrections for about nine months. A year later, the artist wrote the second picture of significance, which brought him glory. A decisive bride. This was Krylov's fable, which was so benevolent and inspiring to Fedotov. As we remember from the fable, the bride-girl was thinking about the groom. She was good, and there were a lot of grooms. But in her choice and tastes and thoughts are subtle. Such grooms are a treasure to other brides, and they are not grooms, but bridesmaids. No one suits her, no one is worthy of her. Time goes by, all the friends are already married, and her beauty and youth are slowly melting. The eyes are dim, gray hair appear, and the grooms have disappeared. A year passes, no one comes. Another year has passed, another year has passed, no one comes to her. But our girl And then the bridesmaid changes the tone. Her mind tells her to hurry to get married. She stops being proud. So as not to end the century alone, the beauty has not bloomed at all yet. She went to the first one who came to her. And she was glad, she was glad that she married a cripple. In the center of the picture we see the bride of the last years, who tried very hard to look younger. She has blush on her cheeks, velvet on her neck, and her hairstyle is made according to the fashion when she was 19 years old. The bridesmaid looks at the groom with a coquettish smile. He stands before her on his knees, with joyful hope looking into her eyes, kissed her hand and gave her a cute bouquet. All these signs of attention soothe the bride. And the rich fashion on the groom speaks of his good fortune. In the doorway, behind the heavy curtain, the parents listen carefully to what is happening in the room. The father crosses himself with a prayer, and the mother closes her ears to the curtain and, as if stopping the sounds around to hear better, puts his finger up. And, as always, Fedotov continues the story about his heroes with various details. On the floor there is a cane, cylinders, gloves, complementing the fashionable image of the groom, apparently thrown by them in a rush of passion. Next to the bride there are cards on the table, and we can easily imagine that Pavel Fedotov surprisingly conveyed the texture and shine of the gilded frames of paintings hanging on the wall and the graceful field candelabra. And in one of the frames we see a picture of the popular at that time artist Aleksandra Varnyka The Girl with the Tambourine. In another, a picture of Fyodor Moller The Girl with the Ring. Looking at the heroes written by Fedotov with irony, without condemnation, one wants to believe that everything will go well for this couple. Pavel Andreyevich showed these two paintings and a sketch of the new work of Major Karl Bryullov. He highly appreciated them and offered to participate in the exhibition of the Academy. Fedotov's financial situation was simply disastrous, and Bryullov obtained a scholarship to become a candidate for the Academy. If the new painting is successful, he will receive this title. And Pavel Fedotov worked with inspiration. He wrote his heroes from real people, looking for naturalists everywhere, among passers-by, on the market. In every convenient case, he sought to get into a rich merchant's house, remembering the situation, furniture, items of everyday life. By the end of 1849, all three paintings were exhibited at the Academy. The success was unprecedented. One of the contemporaries, Fedotov's acquaintance, recalled, «The name of Pavel Andreyevich was heard all over the city. I rushed to the Academy and saw great crowds of people in one of the side halls. Success, the title of an academician, universal recognition, a long-awaited open door to a bright future. The artist is ready to work without giving up. But fate prepared new trials for him. At home, misfortune after misfortune. The father is seriously ill. The husband of Lyuba's sister, expecting the second child, suddenly dies. The artist talks about a new exhibition, which took place six months later at the Moscow School of Painting and Painting. And again enthusiastic reviews, success and glory, and together with them close attention to censorship. It was forbidden to lithograph and any other distribution of the painting «The Fresh Cavalier», which brought him at least some money for a disrespectful image of the Order. Debt-ridden and in need to help his relatives, Pavel Andreyevich tries to sell his paintings. A collector, a public figure, Fyodor Ivanovich Pryanishnikov offered Fedotov 2000 rubles for the painting «The Fresh Cavalier» and «The Order of the Major». But in the end he announced that he could pay only half. Having almost no income, Pavel Andreyevich was forced to agree. He begins to cooperate with magazines. For the illustrated almanac of Nekrasov he makes sketches and for the satirical magazine «Vecherom вместо преферанса» he illustrates his own fables. But censorship did not allow to print these materials, considering in them the criticism of the monarchical system. It must be said that the talented poems and fables of Fedotov were never printed during the artist's life. And today we do not know them, and they deserve to be published Although Fedotov did not write for printing, under control of censorship, openly expressing his opinion about serfdom, bribery, religion. But satirical, in my opinion, everyone is happy to ask as much pepper as possible to the one who is not at heart. The increased attention of censorship turned away from Fedotov many patrons and rich people who were interested in his work. The artist lives in great mental and material tension. Under the impression of the tragedy of his sister, he writes several small pictures called «Vdovushka». With love and tenderness he conveys the image of a young unhappy woman, tired, leaning against a chest of drawers and lowering her head. Behind her, in a gilded frame, is a portrait of a deceased husband. It seems that he did not leave her anything but debts. The light from a lit candle picks up things collected in a basket and knots from the half-darkness, and the reflections of candelabrums and vases, also collected in a pile, are softly reflected. On a neatly filled bed lies the cap of her husband. The woman is forced to leave this home, as there is nothing to pay. The soft light from the window gently illuminates the lilac wallpaper, the pale face of the girl and a sheet of paper in her hand. Perhaps this is a letter that her husband once wrote to her. The whole picture is imbued with love, tenderness and compassion. In another version of «Vdovushka», with green wallpaper, the grief of a young woman sounds even more piercing. She tilts her head even lower, and the candle burns colder, and the cap of her husband no longer lies on the bed, but at the bottom, on the chest, from which it feels sharper that he will not come again. And the green wallpaper does not give comfort to the room and a lonely soul. And in the portrait of her husband we see the portrait of the artist himself. With his material discomfort, he never decided to marry, although there was love. Out of two passions, he himself, he said, chose painting. Fedotov did not want to throw his beloved woman into poverty. Reflecting himself in the picture as a dead husband, he as if presented his unfulfilled wife and what could wait for her while being with him. The artist continues to work a lot. In addition to genre paintings, he left many portraits of contemporaries as a legacy. Constant tension, failure, lack of money affected the health of Pavel Fedotov. He was tormented by headaches, insomnia, countless longing. Strangeness in behavior began to be noticed behind him. From a cheerful, sociable person he turned into a silent and gloomy person. It all ended with a psychiatric hospital. The artist died in November 1852 at the age of 37 and was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox Cemetery. In 1936, the artist's ashes were re-buried in the Necropolis of the Artists of the Alexander Nevsky Laureate. His contemporary Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov, an artistic and musical critic, wrote Fedotov died producing only a small part of the wealth that was given to him by nature. But this little piece was pure gold and then brought great fruits.