back of the artists
“Raft” Medusa “” Theodore Gericault
The artist Theodore Gericault, the founder of romanticism in France, became famous for a number of works, and especially the painting “The Jellyfish Raft”. She became no less famous than Rembrandt’s Night Watch, The Oath of the Horatii of David, and Boyary Morozov of Surikov. The artist masterfully expressed in her deep reflections on the fate of people, by force of circumstances set to the brink of destruction, could say weighty words about modernity. That is why the historian of the middle of the last century, Jules Michelet, recalling the picture, said the right words: “I said and repeat again: at that moment Gericault was France.” Continue reading
“Denial of confession” by Ilya Repin
Repin wrote people turned into cattle, barge haulers pulling barges along the river. Dared to write the Russian tsar, who killed his own son. Reflecting on the history of his country, he portrayed the Cossacks, who “throughout life” remained free. He lovingly and carefully created portraits of the raging Vladimir Stasov, the great Leo Tolstoy and the leader of the Itinerants, Ivan Kramskoy.
More than once Repin returned to two themes that troubled the soul: the church and its disastrous role in Russian society, the image of a man who defiantly challenged it and the autocracy. Continue reading
The Unknown by Ivan Kramskoy
At the end of the 1860s, at the time of the founding of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions, a curious incident occurred in the workshop of Artel artists. He was described by I. E. Repin in the book “Far near”: “One morning, on Sunday, I came to Kramskoy … From a troi-sledge that arrived, a group of artel artists-artists with cold frost on fur coats fell into the house beautiful woman I was just dumbfounded by this wondrous face, the growth and all proportions of the black-eyed brunette’s body … In the general turmoil, the chairs quickly boomed, easels moved, and the general hall quickly turned into a study class. They set the beauty on an elevation … Continue reading
