Why is Repin's drawing Pushkin kneeling in front of Karl Bryullov

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

The two great Russian geniuses had known each other for less than a year, but they sincerely admired each other's talents. Unfortunately, due to the death of Pushkin, Bryullov did not paint his portrait, and after all, the first session for this had already been appointed. The funny episode depicted in Repin's drawing took place just a couple of days before the fatal duel, during their last meeting.

For many years, the poet and artist met in absentia - studying each other's work. It is known, for example, that as early as 1827, at the exhibition, Pushkin admired Bryullov's painting "Italian Morning", and when, seven years later, Petersburgers saw one of the artist's greatest canvases - "The Last Day of Pompeii", Alexander Sergeevich was truly amazed. He expressed his feelings in poetry, but, according to the researchers, for some reason he could not create a full-fledged work. The surviving draft shows that the poet constantly crossed out the lines, the poem for some reason did not come out so easily. Below, Pushkin even sketched out from memory the silhouettes of the central group of the picture - an old man and men who carry their father in their arms, saving them from the raging elements.

Here are the six lines that the poet wrote as a result:

(August-September 1834)

And finally, in May 1836, when Bryullov, at the insistence of the emperor, reluctantly returned from Italy to Russia, the two great geniuses met each other. This meeting took place in Moscow. In a letter to his wife dated May 4, Pushkin says:

The most amazing thing is that, seeing Natalia Nikolaevna a little later, the famous painter, it is believed, really did not want to paint her (supposedly, the type of the northern beauty was very different from Bryullovsky) although, of course, today one can only guess why this portrait was not written. It is interesting that almost the only image of the young Natalia Goncharova, made during the years of marriage with Pushkin, is a watercolor by Alexander Bryullov - the elder brother of the famous artist was an architect and portrait painter, he was friends with the family of the great poet for many years.

The portrait of Pushkin himself did not appear, and the two geniuses, who became friends, had already agreed on the first session. The artist's last meeting with the poet took place just a few days before his death, on January 25, 1837, when Pushkin and Zhukovsky visited Bryullov's workshop at the Academy of Arts. We know in detail about the funny episode that happened that evening from the memoirs of Apollo Mokritsky, a student of Karl Bryullov (later this artist would become the mentor of Vasily Perov and Ivan Shishkin):

In the January 31 entry, Mokritsky would then note:. Later Karl Bryullov created a sketch of the monument to Pushkin.

Mokritsky published these memoirs in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski in 1856. Until now, many researchers believe that he may have somewhat embellished the described scene, but, nevertheless, this episode is considered a reliable historical fact. Almost a hundred years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, another great Russian painter Ilya Efimovich Repin, having learned about this story, was so fired up that he decided to draw a drawing based on its motives. In a letter dated February 18, 1912, he wrote to his friend, the Pushkin scholar Nikolai Lerner:. Indeed, on the cartoon drawing, made in ink and watercolors, there is just such a date and the author's hand is signed: “Pushkin begs for a drawing from Bryullov. Dedicated to Nikolai Osipovich Lerner."

Repin's drawing was resold several times, until in 1937 it got into the All-Union Museum of A. S. Pushkin. Interestingly, there is another similar sketch, it is dated 1918, and for many years was in the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1958, he was also transferred to the Pushkin Museum, and since then both drawings have been kept together.

Karl Bryullov's workshop, in which this funny story took place, was a real "forge of personnel" for Russian painting. There was even a case that one of the best European portrait painters was raised in it from an apprentice painter.