Unknown talents of the greats: Picturesque landscapes in watercolors of the poet Mikhail Lermontov

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Some talented people do not have enough life for a century to develop their talent and give it to the world. What can not be said about the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov, who at the age of 27 reached a high creative take-off not only in poetry, but also in painting. Yes, not many people know about Lermontov the artist, who left thirteen oil paintings, more than forty watercolors and over three hundred drawings and sketches as a legacy to future generations.

A unique gift for the arts

Born into the family of retired captain Yuri Lermontov, 3-year-old Misha barely remembered his early deceased mother. The boy's childhood years were spent in the Penza estate of his grandmother, Elizaveta Alekseevna Arsenyeva, in Tarkhany, who devoted herself entirely to the upbringing and comprehensive education of her grandson.

According to noble traditions, not only lessons in fencing, music, foreign languages, but also lessons in painting and drawing were included in the process of forming the personality of a young nobleman. And it should be noted that little Misha had an amazing gift for the arts.

Feeling the music subtly, he was sure that it is capable of reflecting innermost feelings much more accurately and deeper than words. Since childhood, he played the violin and piano perfectly. In addition, Mikhail had an analytical mindset, and it was easy for him to solve complex mathematical problems. He was an excellent chess player and an excellent storyteller, and was fluent in several foreign languages. As mentioned above, he had a good command of the drawing technique and painting techniques. And surprisingly, everything was given to Lermontov without much difficulty. However, he carefully polished his poetic gift by hard work, since he dreamed of becoming with his poems on a par with the genius of Pushkin. However, which he achieved in full. I would like to note that the talented young man wrote his first poem at the age of fourteen.

Passion for drawing was one of the earliest passions of Mikhail, from whose biography it is known that the poet began to draw much earlier than writing poems. The first basics in drawing the future poet were taught by the artist Alexander Solonitsky. And starting from the 1830s, being a cadet, and later a cadet, young Lermontov took lessons in fine arts from the painter Pyotr Zabolotsky, who painted several portraits of his talented student.

From the memoirs about Mikhail, a close relative of the poet Akim Shan-Girey:

Lermontov's work was very diverse. He painted both panoramic landscapes and portraits, touched upon genre military plots, created illustrations for many of his own works, the poet was not bad at caricatures. However, his most famous works are associated with the Caucasus, written in the spirit of romanticism. The best works of the poet were created during the first exile.

He was one of the first painters who turned to the enchanting beauty of the Caucasian mountains. Lermontov created almost all panoramic views of the Caucasus as a small fragment of a huge mountainous area, where the ruins of old buildings, and monasteries, and temples, as if hanging over the cliffs, are organically inscribed on the picture plane. And miniature figures of horsemen, camel drivers, women further emphasize the "cosmic immensity" of the panoramic image.

And what is interesting, when examining Mikhail Yuryevich's canvases, specialists proved that the depicted area mostly corresponds to the real topography.

In his portraits, Lermontov also strove for maximum correspondence with nature. So, for example, a self-portrait, which was painted in 1837-38, researchers consider the life and work of the poet to be one of the most reliable portraits.

Lermontov gifted his works to family and friends. However, to date, almost all of his surviving works are collected in galleries and museums in Russia. And who knows how many more magnificent canvases Mikhail Yuryevich would have written if his life had not ended tragically at such a young age.

Read also: The mystery of the death of Mikhail Lermontov: Who had reasons to wish the death of the poet?