Table of contents:
- Private bussiness
- Love for life
- Creative way
- Yaroshenkovskie Saturdays
- A series of portraits by Nikolai Yaroshenko
- Genre works of the artist
- last years of life
Video: As an artist, Nikolai Yaroshenko combined the incompatible - he rose to the rank of general and became a world famous painter
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Famous painter Nikolai Yaroshenko contemporaries called the itinerant artists a general. He was known not only for his unique work, but also for the fact that he was a close friend to many representatives of the Russian creative intelligentsia, was the uncle of Boris Savenkov, a revolutionary terrorist and father-in-law of Maximilian Voloshin, a famous artist and poet. And all his life he managed to combine completely opposite occupations - military service, which brought him the rank of general, and painting, which made him a world famous artist.
Private bussiness
The future painter was born in the Poltava region in 1846 in the family of a highly educated nobleman, a retired major general. Nicholas had two brothers and a sister, who in the future will become the mother of the famous revolutionary Boris Savenkov.
And of course, the fate of the eldest son Nikolai was predetermined by his father since childhood, who dreamed that he, like him, would rise to the rank of general. As a nine-year-old boy, Kolya was enrolled in the Poltava Cadet Corps, where, along with military studies, cadets were given drawing lessons, for which the future artist had a special gift.
Then in the life of Nikolai Yaroshenko there was the St. Petersburg Military Artillery School and evening drawing classes at the Academy of Arts, where Ivan Kramskoy taught. Great strength of character made Nikolai work with great dedication. On the one hand, he devoted all his free time to painting, dear to his heart, and on the other, he served diligently, not allowing himself to deprive his father of his dreams, who saw him as a career soldier.
By the age of twenty-five, Yaroshenko was already an established artist, with his own vision of the world and a developed handwriting. From under his brush came the first masterfully executed portraits "An old man with a snuff-box", "Peasant", "Old Jew", "Ukrainian woman".
Love for life
After graduating from evening classes at the Imperial Academy of Arts, 28-year-old Nikolai Yaroshenko married Maria Pavlovna Nevrotina, a student who became his faithful companion and friend until the end of his life. It was a pair of extraordinary beauty - physical and spiritual. And since, unfortunately, the spouses did not have their own children, they raised an adopted daughter - Nadezhda.
Creative way
A year later, in 1875, Yaroshenko made his debut at the Fourth Traveling Exhibition, where he presented the canvas "Nevsky Prospect at Night", in which he depicted a rainy night and two women huddled on the threshold of a rich house, their villainous fate drove them to the panel. (Unfortunately, this painting was destroyed during the Second World War).
And very soon he became a member of the Association of Itinerants, and almost immediately he was elected by his colleagues to the board, where together with Ivan Kramskoy they were the leading representatives of the movement. Kramskoy's comrades-in-arms called it the "mind" of itinerant movement, and Yaroshenko - his "conscience."
Yaroshenkovskie Saturdays
In the St. Petersburg apartment of Nikolai Alexandrovich, the famous "Yaroshenkovskie Saturdays" were held, which were a kind of club of the progressive Petersburg intelligentsia. Famous writers - Garshin, Uspensky, Korolenko, artists - Repin, Kuindzhi, Polenov, Maksimov, legendary scientists, Nobel laureates - Mendeleev and Pavlov were regular visitors here. Visited Nikolai Alexandrovich and Leo Tolstoy, who considered the artist his close friend. And when the Yaroshenko family already lived in Kislovodsk, it was to them that the Russian writer wanted to "escape" from his Yasnaya Polyana.
Before his resignation, Yaroshenko, often visiting the North Caucasus, brought "fantastic" landscapes causing a sensation in the capital's public. At that time, the North Caucasus for most of the inhabitants of Russia was a far and unknown land. Therefore, at the exposition of the painting "Shat-mountain (Elbrus)", the public considered the panorama of the Caucasian ridge depicted there as a fantasy and an invention of the master.
Nikolai Yaroshenko worked in various genres from landscape and still life to portrait and genre scenes. But most of his work was manifested in the creation of historical images of outstanding people of the second half of the 19th century, the master's contemporaries. By the nature of his talent, Yaroshenko was a born artist-psychologist who knew how to show the full depth of the human soul. According to the wife of the painter M. P. Yaroshenko: "He could not paint persons who were of no spiritual interest."
A series of portraits by Nikolai Yaroshenko
Genre works of the artist
Amazing in its essence, the canvas "Life is everywhere", painted in 1888, became the crown of the heyday of Yaroshenko's creative maturity and received nationwide recognition at the 16th Traveling Exhibition. The original composition of this work is, as it were, a separate frame snatched from life: a carriage window, people behind bars, platform boards, birds. This creates the appearance of an accidentally flashed scene and makes the picture believable and vital.
last years of life
For more than twenty years Nikolai Yaroshenko served at the St. Petersburg ammunition plant as a military engineer, and shortly before his retirement he was awarded the rank of major general, something the artist's father once dreamed of. Having retired for health reasons, he and his wife left for Kislovodsk to a previously acquired dacha.
Nikolai Aleksandrovich and his wife resumed the atmosphere of friendly Petersburg evenings in Kislovodsk. In the summer, close friends came to them, and also famous artists, artists and scientists who vacationed in Kislovodsk in the summer were regular guests in their house. Huge picnics, hikes in the mountains and various mass trips with visits to the sights of the Caucasus were organized. And from everywhere the artist brought many sketches and sketches.
And at the end of his life, in spite of tracheal tuberculosis, Yaroshenko sets off on a journey across Russia and the world. He will visit the Volga region, Italy, Syria, Palestine, Egypt. From these wanderings, the master will bring many paintings, sketches, studies, portraits and graphic works.
Yaroshenko died at 52. The artist died of a heart attack the day after he ran to his house in the rain for more than ten kilometers from the Big Saddle mountain, where he painted another sketch from life. In the same place, in Kislovodsk, the artist-general was buried, and the art museum of Nikolai Alexandrovich was opened there.
The artist's widow, who survived her husband for seventeen years, bequeathed after her death to transfer most of her husband's works as a gift to his hometown of Poltava. They then formed the basis of the Poltava Picture Gallery, which will later be named after the artist.
And a little more about the famous painting by Nikolai Yaroshenko "Life is everywhere", for which the artist was first praised and then accused.
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