First, a story read somewhere. The father says to his son: “Let’s go to the Gogol Museum today, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a very funny writer". And so the father walks between the shop windows, and the boy trails behind him and whines: “Dad, I’m not funny... I’m not funny!” Not-funny!"
In the Russian Museum, in front of Pavel Fedotov’s painting “The Major’s Matchmaking,” everyone becomes funny. I specially observed: the most melancholy spectators’ faces light up with sudden smiles. Either they are rejoicing at the recognition - this work was widely replicated, even on postage stamp was. Maybe the plot itself is amusing. He really can't help but amuse.
During Fedotov's time genre paintings were considered an entertaining, low-quality art. The top of the hierarchy was occupied by historical paintings, biblical and ancient subjects. And everything that is “about life” is a topic not worthy of a real artist.
It’s nice, after all, that everyone writes as they hear. What if from the lovely Pavel Fedotov, who for almost two hundred years has been delighting us with “The Picky Bride”, “An Aristocrat’s Breakfast”, “ A fresh gentleman", only paintings like "Meeting the Grand Duke in the Life Guards Finnish Regiment" or "Wade of the Jaegers on Maneuvers" remained.
But life is an amazingly wise thing: it washed away all these official structures with scenes of shabby life. It is they - clumsy, funny, sometimes almost shameful - that have remained interesting to the public many generations later. And they helped poor Fedotov, a poor officer, hampered by the Nikolaev drill, to enter the history of art forever.
Someone said: literature is divided into funny and bad. When you look at Fedotov’s paintings, you believe: this also applies to other arts. Everything that is devoid of humor is lifeless and short-lived.
Interestingly, the artist himself was never married. And in "Major's Matchmaking", perhaps he realized his secret dream. It is no coincidence that in the first version of the picture, more sarcastic (it is stored in Tretyakov Gallery), Fedotov wrote the major groom from himself. And the brave mustache that the hero curls while waiting for the reception is quite recognizable.
It is generally accepted that Fedotov is making fun of contemporary morals and customs here: they say that marriage is a calculated transaction when impoverished rank and status are combined with low-born capital. I want there to be a story about love, but it turns out, as always, about profit.
But marriage in the 19th century was not only a choice of a life partner, as it is with us. Rather, they chose life itself, its entire structure, way of life and perspective. It’s as if today a young girl had to pass the Unified State Exam in one go, enter the desired university and find a job she liked with a decent salary and career prospects. A successful or unsuccessful marriage determined everything: sphere of communication, standard of living, circle of acquaintances, health and well-being of children. Nowadays, any decision can be reversed. In the century before last, brides and grooms were deprived of this right.
Well, how can you not lose your head from doubts and worries? Our heroine lost, rushing like a wounded bird. And her mother, a very young woman, not yet forty, is trying to stop this flight - in her pursed lips one can clearly read: “Whoa, you fool?!” You will inevitably remember Gogol’s Agafya Tikhonovna with her identikit of an ideal groom.
Everyone becomes funny in front of the painting "Major's Matchmaking"
Pavel Fedotov, who exchanged his guard service for the unfaithful profession of an artist, was funny and observant. And he adored fables: he even corresponded with Ivan Andreevich Krylov himself. He also composed his paintings as fables - just give their full names:
"The old age of an artist who married without a dowry in the hope of his talent"
"The picky bride, or The Hunchbacked Groom"
"A guest at the wrong time, or an aristocrat's breakfast"
"Fresh gentleman, or the consequences of a party"
"The House Thief, or the Scene at the Dresser"
And what performances he accompanied the exhibited works! For example, in “Major’s Matchmaking” he drew in a squeaky parsley accent: “But our bride will not foolishly find a place: Man! Stranger! Oh, what a shame!.. And a smart mother will grab her by the dress!.. But in another room The hawk threatens the turtledove - the major is fat, brave, his pocket is full of holes - he twirls his mustache: I, they say, will get to the money! Moreover, these poems were sung by a man in a captain’s uniform.
Yes, he laughs at his heroes, but he also loves them, and admires them, and sympathizes with them. So he dressed the bride in this canvas in almost a wedding dress, and placed the samovar - a symbol of a comfortable home life and the fusion of two elements, fire and water, masculine and feminine principles - in the very center of the composition. But it is still unknown how the matchmaking will turn out. But the artist is in a hurry to rejoice for his heroes. Let them, funny and absurd, be happy.
In his diaries, Fedotov wrote: “Happy is the one who can find poetry everywhere, who can pearl both a tear of sorrow and a tear of joy.”
He could. And I tried to teach this to others. It is after, in the next generation, that the Itinerants will appear with their love of the genre, Dostoevsky with the “tear of a child,” Leskov and Ostrovsky with the colors of the bourgeois or merchant life. Pavel Fedotov, a poor officer endowed with talents as a draftsman, caricaturist, writer and actor, was the forerunner of them all. And he was the first to introduce us to their heroes.
But he never managed to get married: at the age of thirty-seven he died in a mental hospital from mental illness. Funny.
The painting “The Picky Bride” was painted by P.A. Fedotov in 1847. The painter borrowed its plot from Krylov. By the way, the painting itself was created with the intention of honoring the memory of the great fabulist, who recently died, whose work Fedotov valued extremely highly.
The main character of the film is a fastidious and arrogant old maid. Year after year, she refused all applicants for her hand and heart, and only realized it when the line of suitors melted away. Now she is glad to have any groom, even a cripple.
Before us is an old maid and a smartly dressed hunchback offering her his hand. Fedotov shows the decisive moment of explanation. Obviously, this explanation will be followed by a transactional marriage, so typical in an aristocratic environment. The external ugliness of the groom, who craves wealth, is balanced by the moral ugliness of the bride. Parents peeking from behind the curtains exacerbate the feeling of hypocrisy and falsehood.
The painting “The Picky Bride” clearly demonstrated the artist’s painting skills. Fedotov masterfully conveys the shimmer of the fabric of the bride’s dress, the shine of gilded frames and the texture of wooden surfaces. All room furnishings are necessary and appropriate. For example, a top hat with gloves knocked over by a frisky groom makes the situation even more comical.
In the film “The Picky Bride,” Fedotov demonstrated an excellent knowledge of morals and the ability to create accurate psychological portraits. The painter is by no means inclined to treat his heroes with sympathy - rather, their images are permeated with merciless satire.
In addition to the description of P. A. Fedotov’s painting “The Picky Bride,” our website contains many other descriptions of paintings by various artists, which can be used both in preparation for writing an essay on the painting, and simply for a more complete acquaintance with the work of famous masters of the past.
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Pavel Andreevich Fedotov (June 22, 1815, Moscow - November 14, 1852, St. Petersburg) - Russian painter and graphic artist.
The son of a very poor official, a former warrior of Catherine's times, and later a titular adviser to Andrei Illarionovich Fedotov and his wife, Natalya Alekseevna, he was born in Moscow on June 22, 1815 and baptized on July 3 in the Church of Kharitonia in Ogorodniki, Nikitsky forty. The recipients of the baptism were the collegiate adviser Ivan Andreevich Petrovsky and the daughter of a nobleman, Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Tolstaya.
Self-portrait. 1848
At the age of eleven, without any scientific training, he was assigned to the pupils of the first Moscow cadet corps. Thanks to his abilities, diligence and exemplary behavior, he attracted the attention of his superiors and surpassed his comrades. In 1830 he was made a non-commissioned officer, in 1833 he was promoted to sergeant major and in the same year he graduated from the course as the first student, and his name, according to established custom, was included on an honorary marble plaque in the assembly hall of the building.
Released as an ensign in the Finnish Life Guards Regiment, he moved to St. Petersburg. After three or four years of service in the regiment, the young officer began attending evening drawing classes at the Academy of Arts, where he tried to more accurately draw some parts of the human body from plaster models. Diligently studied the forms human body and tried to make his hand more free and obedient in order to transfer the beauty of nature to a blank canvas. For the same purpose, he practiced at home, drawing portraits of his colleagues and acquaintances with a pencil or watercolor paints during free time from work. These portraits were always very similar, but Fedotov studied especially well the facial features and figure of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, whose images that came out from under his brush were eagerly bought by sellers of paintings and prints.
Summer of 1837 Grand Duke, having returned to St. Petersburg from a trip abroad for treatment, visited the Krasnoselsky camp, where the guards who adored him greeted him with a noisy ovation. Struck by the picturesqueness of the scene that took place, Fedotov sat down to work and completed his major in just three months. watercolor painting“Meeting of the Grand Duke”, which, in addition to the portrait of His Highness, contains portraits of many of the participants in the celebration. The painting was presented to the Grand Duke, who awarded the artist a diamond ring for it. This award, according to Fedotov, “finally sealed artistic pride in his soul.” Following this, he began to work on another painting, “Consecration of Banners in Winter Palace, renewed after the fire,” but, experiencing a great need for means of subsistence, he decided to present this picture in an unfinished form to the Grand Duke in order to solicit them. The latter showed it to his august brother, the result of which was the highest command: “to grant the drawing officer the voluntary right to leave the service and devote himself to painting with a salary of 100 rubles. assign. per month."
Fedotov pondered for a long time whether to take advantage of the royal favor or not, but finally submitted his resignation and in 1844 was dismissed with the rank of captain and the right to wear a military uniform. Having parted with his epaulettes, he found himself in difficult living conditions - even worse than those under which he, the son of poor parents, had to exist while serving in the guard. With the meager pension granted by the sovereign, it was necessary to support himself, help his father’s family, which had fallen into great need, hire models, purchase materials and benefits for artwork; but the love of art kept Fedotov cheerful and helped him fight difficult circumstances and persistently move towards his intended goal - to become a real artist.
At first, after retiring, he chose battle painting as a specialty, as a field of art in which he had already successfully tried his hand, and which in the Nicholas era promised honor and material security. Having settled in a poor apartment “from tenants” in one of the distant lines of Vasilievsky Island, denying himself the slightest comfort, being content with a 15-kopeck lunch from the kitchen, sometimes enduring hunger and cold, he began to practice even more diligently than before in drawing and writing sketches from life as at home and in academic classes and, in order to expand the range of his battle subjects, hitherto limited to infantry, he began to study the skeleton and musculature of the horse, under the guidance of prof. A. Zaurweida. Of the works conceived by Fedotov at this time, but which remained only designed in sketches, the most remarkable, according to the opinion of his friends, were “French marauders in a Russian village, in 1812”, “Warding of the rangers across the river on maneuvers”, “Evening entertainment” in the barracks on the occasion of the regimental holiday" and several compositions on the theme "Barracks life", composed under the influence of Gogarth. However, painting military scenes was not the true calling of our artist: wit, subtle observation, the ability to notice the typical features of people of different classes, knowledge of the circumstances of their lives, the ability to grasp a person’s character - all these qualities of talent, clearly demonstrated in Fedotov’s drawings, indicated that he should to be not a battle painter, but a genre painter. But he was not aware of this, composing everyday scenes, so to speak, casually, for his own amusement and for the amusement of his friends.
This continued until a letter from the fabulist Krylov opened his eyes. Krylov, who had seen some of Fedotov’s works, convinced him to give up soldiers and horses and focus exclusively on the genre. Having listened to this advice, the artist locked himself in his studio almost hopelessly and redoubled his work on studying painting techniques. oil paints and, having mastered them sufficiently, by the spring of 1848 he painted two paintings, one after another, based on the sketches already in his album: “Fresh Cavalier” or “Morning of the Official Who Received the First Cross” and “The Picky Bride.” Having been shown to K. Bryullov, then all-powerful at the Academy of Arts, they delighted him; Thanks to him, and even more to their merits, they obtained from the Academy the title of appointed academician to Fedotov, permission to turn into a program for an academician the painting he had already begun, “The Major’s Matchmaking,” and a monetary allowance for its execution. This painting was ready for the academic exhibition of 1849, at which it appeared along with “The Fresh Cavalier” and “The Picky Bride.” The Academy Council unanimously recognized the artist as an academician, and when the doors of the exhibition opened to the public, Fedotov’s name became known throughout the capital and was heard throughout Russia.
Fedotov’s popularity was facilitated by the fact that almost simultaneously with “The Major’s Matchmaking,” a poetic explanation of this painting, composed by the artist himself and distributed in handwritten copies, became known. From a young age, Fedotov loved to practice poetry. Both drawing and painting were mixed with his conversation with the muse: most artistic ideas, expressed with his pencil or brush, then poured out under his pen into rhymed lines, and vice versa, this or that theme, which first gave Fedotov the content for the poem, subsequently became the plot of his drawing or painting. In addition, he composed fables, elegies, album plays, romances, which he himself set to music, and, during his time as an officer, soldiers' songs. Fedotov's poetry is much lower than the creations of his pencil and brush, however, it also has the same merits that marked them, but ten times more. However, Fedotov did not attach of great importance his poems and did not publish them, allowing them to be copied only by friends and close acquaintances. Both of them rightly considered the explanation for “The Major’s Matchmaking” to be the most successful work of Fedotov’s poetry and willingly communicated it to everyone.
The academic exhibition of 1848 brought Fedotov, in addition to honor and fame, some improvement in material resources: in addition to the pension received from the state treasury, it was ordered that he be given 300 rubles. per annum from the amount appropriated by His Majesty's Cabinet for the encouragement worthy artists. This could not have been more opportune, since the circumstances of Fedotov’s relatives at that time worsened and he had to spend heavily on them. In order to see his family and arrange his father’s affairs, he went to Moscow soon after the end of the exhibition. From his paintings, which were displayed at the St. Petersburg exhibition, and from several sepia drawings, an exhibition was organized, which brought the local public into the same, if not more, delight as the St. Petersburg one. Fedotov returned from Moscow happy with her, healthy, full of bright hopes and immediately sat down again to work. Now he wanted to introduce into his work, which had previously been aimed at exposing vulgar and dark sides Russian life, new element- interpretation of bright and joyful phenomena. For the first time, he decided to present the image of an attractive woman who had suffered a great misfortune, the loss of her beloved husband, and in 1851-1852 he painted the painting “The Widow”, and then began the composition “The Return of the College Girl to parents' house”, which was soon abandoned by him and replaced by another plot: “The arrival of the sovereign at the Patriotic Institute”, which also remained only half developed. Despite the success of his first paintings, Fedotov became more and more convinced that he lacked serious training in order to convey his ideas to the canvas quickly and freely, which at his age required him to conquer himself. artistic technique you have to work persistently, spending a lot of time and taking advantage of at least some income. With the pensions and benefits received it was barely possible to have shelter and food, and yet it was necessary to buy from them art materials, hire a model and send benefits to Moscow to relatives who, despite all the artist’s care for them, have fallen into complete poverty. I had to put aside my newly conceived compositions for an indefinite period and earn money through less serious work - painting cheap portraits and copying my previous works.
Worries and disappointment, together with the constant tension of the mind and imagination and the continuous use of hands and eyes, especially when working in the evening and at night, had a devastating effect on Fedotov’s health: he began to suffer from illness and weakness of vision, rushes of blood to the brain, and frequent headaches , grew old beyond his years, and a more and more noticeable change took place in his very character: cheerfulness and sociability were replaced in him by thoughtfulness and silence. Finally, Fedotov’s painful state turned into complete insanity. Friends and academic authorities placed him in one of the private St. Petersburg hospitals for the mentally ill, and the sovereign granted 500 rubles for his maintenance in this institution, ordering him to make every possible effort to heal the unfortunate man. But the disease moved forward with unstoppable steps. Soon Fedotov fell into the category of restless ones. Due to poor care for him in the hospital, his friends arranged for his transfer in the fall of 1852 to the Hospital of All Who Sorrow, on the Peterhof Highway. Here he suffered for a short time and died on November 14 of the same year, having regained his sanity about two weeks before his death. He was buried at the necropolis of masters of art of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Portrait of a father. 1837
And Fedotov and his comrades in the Life Guards Finnish Regiment. 1840
Gentlemen! Get married - it will come in handy! 1840-41
Anchor, more anchor!
Bivouac of the Life Guards Grenadier Regiment 1843
Portrait of Olga Petrovna Zhdanovich, née Chernysheva. 1845-47
Fresh gentleman. The morning of the official who received the first cross. 1846
Portrait of P P Zhdanovich. 1846
The picky bride. 1847
Portrait of Anna Petrovna Zhdanovich 1848
Major's matchmaking. 1848
It's all cholera's fault. 1848
Fashionista Wife (Lioness Sketch). 1849
Aristocrat's breakfast. 1849-1850
Winter day. Early 1850s
Portrait of M. I. Krylova. 1850
Widow. circa 1850
Portrait of N.P. Zhdanovich at the harpsichord. 1850
Players. 1852
Players. Sketch
Boss and subordinate
Girl Head of a pimp. Late 1840s
The death of Fidelka. 1844
Shop. 1844
Christening 1847
House thief. 1851
Self-portrait. Late 1840s
Fully
Description of Fedotov’s painting “The Picky Bride”
Fedotov’s painting “The Picky Bride” depicts a funny matchmaking scene.
The action takes place in a luxurious room, the walls of which are decorated with paintings in gilded frames.
The room is furnished with expensive carved furniture, and there is also a cage with large parrot.
In the center of the picture is the same picky bride, who sits in front of the groom in a lush iridescent dress.
She is no longer as young as before; in those days such women were classified as old maids.
Her beauty has already faded, but she still lives with her parents and has not been married.
The long-awaited groom stands in front of her on one knee.
He is not at all the handsome man the girl dreamed of in early years.
The groom is hunchbacked, ugly and already balding.
He looks at the bride with his eyes full of anticipation.
A man wants to hear the cherished phrase: “I agree!”
His top hat, gloves and cane are lying on the floor.
The feeling is that he ran to the bride, hastily threw his things on the floor and is waiting for the decision of the picky bride.
To the right of the groom is a small white dog, which, like him, is waiting to see if the no longer young woman will give her consent.
The comedy of the situation is added, apparently, by the bride's parents, hiding behind the curtain and waiting for an answer.
They had already completely despaired of marrying off their daughter, and now a potential groom came, and the parents hoped for a positive answer.
Everyone is waiting for the bride's decision, because the fate of everyone present depends on her word.
She is not young, all the contenders for her hand and heart have been married for a long time, and she was still waiting for that ideal one, which she never received.
Now she has no choice, she will have to marry the one who proposes or remain an old maid for the rest of her life.
No matter how ugly the groom is, the picky bride has no one else to choose from.
Parents understand this and look forward to her answer.
The bride's fate is predetermined, because thanks to her pickiness, she has no choice left at all.
for materials: “Practice-oriented excursions to THEATRICAL THEORY OF ACTION Peter Mikhailovich ERSHOV"
Commentary by V.M. Bukatov on Fedotov’s painting “The Picky Bride”
The picture was painted by P.A. Fedotov as a sign of respect for the memory of I.A. Krylov, who died three years ago. The fabulist played big role is for a guards officer, a self-taught artist, to resign and become a famous but impoverished genre artist. Who at one time was able to create a large watercolor painting “Meeting of the Grand Duke” in three months. For which the prince granted the artist a diamond ring.
Home and even tragic problem The self-taught artist’s work reflected his desire for external beauty. Taking the famous fable “The Picky Bride” as the basis for the plot, the artist carefully selects items. None of them seems superfluous: the top hat with the gloves placed in it, overturned by the Groom when he quickly rushed to the feet of the Bride, and the furnishings.
But if Krylov’s bride has almost faded, then Fedotov’s is just beginning to fade. Therefore, the sharp satire of Krylov’s ending - and I was already glad that I married a cripple - turns out to be transformed into sweet secular humor.
It is believed that the talented self-taught artist is trying to fight his training in presenting a story through the prism of watercolor beauty. He covered his finished works with a dirty, cloudy layer of varnish that quickly began to crack. As a result, Fedotov’s paintings stand out in galleries both for their small (cabinet) size and for their powerful craquelure. As if their storage conditions were too terrible.
Excursions on THEATER THEORY OF ACTION
The groom is located “from below”, in a fairly large (interested) and light weight. This gives the impression not so much of passion or calculation, but of still young agility.
The main thing in the bride’s extension is light weight (she is delighted) and the impact of “ get off
" This makes her more of a coquettish prude than a fastidious mince, as stated by Krylov in his famous fable.
The thoroughness of the work on the painting suggests that the artist more than once reconciled himself and his fate with the plot depicted during his work. Therefore, Fedotov involuntarily slipped into embellishment of the plot and complementarity towards the characters he portrayed. He gave the early bald head to the hunchback, clearly his own.
It was the spiritual gentleness of the author’s criticism that made his paintings very popular among the St. Petersburg and Moscow public. Raising the cultural bar of their idle curiosity to an interest in the social and artistic features of genre and everyday painting in Russian art.
Vyacheslav Bukatov