Portrait of Mina Moiseev. Peasant with a bridle. Mina Moiseev. Description of the painting by Kramskoy. Weaving from beads

In 1882, the Russian artist Ivan Kramskoy paints the painting "Mina Moiseev", which was to become part of another extensive canvas called "Peasant with a Bridle". But after the creation, the picture took on a life of its own, and soon began to be considered one of the best works of the artist.

According to the author's intention, the canvas was supposed to depict an elderly man, a native of the lower classes, a hard worker. To find such a person, the artist went to the outback, to a village forgotten by God, where he met a simple field worker, Mina Moiseev. Subsequently, Kramskoy worked on his image not a single week in a row.
In the foreground, the face of a simple Russian peasant is depicted large-scale: wrinkles, thick eyebrows almost brought together, a long gray beard. Rough, used to hard work hands are clearly visible.

It seems that the old man from the picture is very tired, he is broken by constant work and the hardships of life. But it is worth taking a closer look and you can see that the depicted man looks pretty good, his eyes are stern and stubborn, his hair has not yet been covered with gray hair. Surely the hero will live for many more years in this world. The position in which he sits is rather loose, although the grandfather crossed his arms and pressed them to himself. He looks somewhere to the side of the artist, as if embarrassed that a picture is being painted from him. It's unusual for him. There is still a spark of mischief in the old man's eyes. His whole face is in deep wrinkles, which speaks of his emotionality. He smiled and laughed a lot in his youth, and this joy of the former life, which had not yet died out to the end, left imprints on his face.

Grandfather is dressed in a blue shade old canvas shirt. But even in such battered clothes, he looks very impressive.

The background is just a black background. But even such a dark shade does not darken the picture. On the contrary, it favorably sets off even this old shirt. All her untidiness suggests that the old man is unpretentious, not rich. But he is constant in his decisions and even desires. Surely, he is fair, loves the truth, is not afraid of any work and demands from himself its full implementation, since he decided to get down to business.

Looking at the picture, you can fantasize about who surrounds the old man, think about what kind of wife he has, what kind of children he raised. You can imagine a picture of a family dinner after a hard day's work or a picture of a grandfather playing with many little grandchildren. The eyes of the grandfather, his look literally make the one looking at them remember his childhood, his relatives. They make you think about a small house in which grandfather and grandmother peacefully live out their lives. They make us think about the place from which we do not want to return - about our father's house.

The painting “Mina Moiseev”, written in 1882, is a small study by I. N. Kramskoy for the canvas “Peasant with a Bridle” (1883).

The portrait of Mina Moiseev is one of the best portraits of peasants that the artist painted in a picturesque place near St. Petersburg - in the village of Siverskaya. In this folk portrait, Kramskoy managed to bring to the fore the generalized features of the Russian peasant, while retaining the individuality inherent in a particular person.

In front of us is an old man with large, overworked hands and a wrinkled face. Only at first glance, he seems decrepit and frail - looking closer, you notice how strong his body is and how much strength is still in his hands.

The artist depicted Mina in a free, relaxed pose. On the mighty stooped shoulders of the old man is a blue faded canvas shirt. There is not a shadow of anger, resentment or disappointment in his face, although it is clear that he saw everything in life. It seems that he even chuckles in a gray beard. The old man's lively eyes look at us from under shaggy gray eyebrows mockingly, slyly. They contain both the mind of a sage and the innocence of a child. And goodness, greatness of soul flow from the portrait.

The whole image of Mina Moiseev leaves a feeling of calm strength and common sense, independence and wisdom. For Kramskoy, he is like the embodiment of the physical and spiritual strength of the people. His kindness, liveliness of character and inner peace - this is what the human race has been based on since ancient times. The portrait of Mina Moiseev is characterized by the monumentality that characterizes the best of the artist's portraits.

In addition to the description of the painting by I. N. Kramskoy “Mina Moiseev”, our website has collected many other descriptions of paintings by various artists, which can be used both in preparation for writing an essay on a painting, and simply for a more complete acquaintance with the work of famous masters of the past.

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Peasant with a bridle.
Mina Moiseev.
1883. Oil on canvas. 125 x 93. Museum of Russian Art, Kyiv, Ukraine.

The "folk portrait", which began in the national painting of the 18th century, became so widespread in the 19th century that it formed a special genre in the portrait genre of painting. Already in the works of A.G. Venetsianov and V.A. Tropinin, the personality of a person from the lower strata of society becomes a measure of ethical and aesthetic value, the bearer of a newly understood ideal of a worker, a “breadwinner”, the embodiment of the eternal meaning of being. "Fomushka the Owl" by V.G. Perov can be placed next to the immortal images of the sage Khory and the poet Kalinych I.S. Turgenev. Paintings of a timid peasant and a peasant with an evil eye by I.E. Repin will come to light as one of the first guesses about the formidable power of the people, brought to the extreme and ready to rise to a bloody struggle.

The folk portrait genre has its own poetics, its own system of artistic visual and expressive means. Artists try to keep the appearance of their models as authentic as possible, reveal ethnic features of appearance and carefully trace socially determined and socially significant qualities of characters. While preserving the individual structure of the personality, Russian realistic painting brings to the fore its most typical features in the folk portrait. And although since the time of the Russian Enlightenment, the originality of which was determined by the anti-serfdom orientation, the folk image has always carried the features of a high ideal, a significantly new quality appears in the painting of the 1870-1880s, it is associated with an attempt to perceive a person from the people “on an equal footing”, directly and unbiased. The concreteness of the image, the serious respectfulness of the attentive approach to the model, are also distinguished by Kramskoy's peasant portraits. Each one has a unique personality with its own destiny and at the same time an accurate social characteristic. The artist is one of the first to notice the beginning stratification of the peasant world, which Russian painting will reflect fearlessly, although not without bitterness.

More and more often Kramskoy thought that it was necessary to “move” not only exhibitions around Russia, but also the artists themselves, that they should travel, get to know their country, their people, that, sitting in the center, the artist begins to “lose the nerve of a wide free life; the outskirts are too far, and what can the people give! My God, what a huge spring! Have only ears to hear and eyes to see..."

He himself could not leave for many years, live in the countryside, as some young artists did then: too strong threads connected him with Petersburg. But I wanted to paint pictures from the life of the people, to paint people from the people. Once he painted a small painting "Village Forge". Now I thought of giving portraits of peasants.

The first in a series of these portraits was a portrait of Polesovshchik. Here he stands, this "forest man", tanned, strong; behind his back he has a club, his eyes are alert. Internal intense passion makes the look of the woodsman and the look of Saltykov-Shchedrin in the portrait of 1879 related. But in the frantic eyes of the woodsman there is neither the smashing power of the intellect, nor the torment reflected in the gaze of the writer. The strength of the gaze of the peasant in the shot-through cap is barely restrained, but cold, round, light gray-bluish eyes seem to be discolored with malice, in the center of a dark small pupil, like a trace of a shot on a cap, a sharp flare, on the side of the iris there is another, double, third, of three light dots - on the protein. This fractionally flashing, iridescent “glare” in the shape of the eye leaves the impression of an unpleasant intentness and, at the same time, the elusiveness of an elusive gaze.

Sometimes this work is called in a different way - "A man with a club" or "A man in a hat shot through." Describing the study of the painting, Kramskoy suggested in a letter to P. Tretyakov the following interpretation of it: “My study was supposed to depict one of those types who understand much of the social and political structure of people's life with their minds and who have deep-seated displeasure bordering on hatred. Of such people, in difficult moments, Stenka Razins and Pugachevs recruit their gangs, and in ordinary times they act alone; but they never reconcile.

Only in 1883 did Kramskoy come to an image that truly had the power of generalization, absorbing the results of many years of work on a folk portrait. The picture Peasant with a bridle from the Kyiv Museum of Russian Art is characterized by the monumentality that marks the best of Kramskoy's portraits.

Mina Moiseev, whose portrait is in the State Russian Museum (1882), served as a model for Kramskoy: chuckling slyly in a gray beard, arms folded on his chest, at first he seems frail and decrepit, and only after looking closely, you notice what powerful shoulders are covered with a shabby bluish faded shirt. Lively sly eyes look out from under gray shaggy eyebrows. In The Peasant with a Bridle, the large folds of a tattered coat fall off in majestic folds, emphasizing the width and strength of the shoulders, stooped from centuries of hard work. Overworked, large, strong hands still lean on a stick. He is somewhat reminiscent of the image of Tolstoy: large facial features with a wide nose, shaggy eyebrows, a spacious wrinkled forehead, a look full of calm strength and wisdom, clarity and common sense. “A man with a bridle” by Kramskoy is the embodiment of the heroic strength of the people, and this makes him related to the image of Savely, the hero of the Holy Russian from Nekrasov’s poem “Who should live well in Russia”:

With a huge gray mane,
Tea, twenty years uncut,
With a big beard
Grandpa looked like a bear
Especially from the forest
Hunched over, went out...

The note of historical optimism that Kramskoy ended his search for in the folk theme sounded in his works at the same time, in accordance with that tragic and heroic poem of the folk past, which V.I. Surikov presented to the audience in the early 1880s in his canvas Morning of the Streltsy executions. Subsequently, in the 1890s and early 1900s, this note taken by Kramskoy will echo as a hymn to the heroic strength of the people in Repin's Zaporozhets and Vasnetsov's Bogatyrs.

But even the most optimistic among the folk images of Kramskoy has a shade of hidden tragedy. In general, serenity is alien to the artist's muse. His characters do not smile - chuckling Mina Moiseev is a rare exception. Only sometimes a bitter or thoughtful smile hides in the corners of the lips.

Kramskoy in his portrait "Mina Moiseev" depicted a peasant. An elderly grandfather looks at us from the canvas. A gray beard indicates that he is not young and has lived a long life. There is no smirk in his eyes, I see tiredness in his eyes. Wrinkles cover his entire face.

Despite the fact that the old man does not look attractive, it seems to me that he offers to tell some interesting story from life. Looking at the picture, I want to sit back and listen to the stories of the peasant until midnight. One gets the impression that the elder's wife is also missing in the portrait, as if she is standing behind him and holding a tray of milk and a loaf of bread.

This old man reminded me of my grandfather, who liked to sit in this position and tell stories, but jokes. With him it was not scary to stay overnight in the hayloft in order to look at the stars.

The peasant depicted in the picture, I think, is not afraid of death, in his eyes one can read the fatigue from the life he has lived. He is not afraid of work. He can plow the garden or clean up after the cattle. He is wise and can give practical advice, teach mind-reason. For some reason I still feel like he's right. People who are not afraid of work demand from themselves the full performance of it. They are very responsible, because the quality of his work depends on whether he will have dinner.

The portrait is made in soothing colors, and even the black background does not darken it a bit. A shabby and worn shirt, faded, and turned from bright blue into dull blue, once again proves that this man is not rich, but constant in his decisions and actions. Looking at the portrait, one can fantasize endlessly, imagining the family and grandchildren of a peasant. How interesting their evenings with a large family could be. This picture made me plunge into my childhood and feel all the delights of rural life. Where you don't want to go back.

I. N. Kramskoy is a wonderful portrait painter who paid great attention to the inner world of a person, depicting the characters and experiences of people.

The peasants, the heroes of many works by I. N. Kramskoy, are both a beekeeper who lives one life with nature (“Beekeeper”), and a philosopher (“Contemplator”), and a downtrodden old man who has lived a long, joyless age (“A peasant with a stick”) , and a village headman full of inner dignity (“Village Headman”).

In 1882, Kramskoy created a “study of a Russian peasant” - a portrait of Mina Moiseev.

This is a village sage, a good-natured and at the same time crafty old man “on his mind”. His face is furrowed with wrinkles, his hands are large, sinewy. Before us appears a worker of the earth, who has known the hardships of a peasant serf's lot.

The peasant Mina Moiseev is given in a half turn, he is wearing a faded shirt. The lively expressiveness of the face, the gaze of the sparkling eyes suggest that the old man is extremely interested in something happening before his eyes. But a calm posture, a shade of complacency and some kind of sophistication of life indicate that he remains only an observer and keeps his thoughts to himself.

The hero of Kramskoy is a charming and wise man. This portrait expresses the mind, experience, inner dignity of the representatives of the Russian peasantry. (163 words)

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