Video: How was the fate of the "girl with peaches": 7 surprising facts about the most famous painting by Serov
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Even people far from art know this picture. This is the famous "Girl with Peaches" by Valentin Serov … Those who are interested in the work of this artist also know that 11-year-old Vera Mamontova, the daughter of a famous philanthropist and wealthy industrialist, posed for him. But few people know what happened to the heroine when she grew up, and what a tragic fate awaited her family.
Valentin Serov created his most famous work at a young age - at that time he was only 22 years old. In the spring of 1887 he returned from Italy and stopped to stay at the Abramtsevo estate of Savva Mamontov near Moscow. The artist worked with inspiration and as if in one breath, but at the same time the girl had to pose for a long time. Serov later wrote about that period: “All I was striving for was freshness, that special freshness that you always feel in nature and do not see in pictures. I wrote for over a month and tortured her, poor, to death."
The estate in Abramtsevo was a real house of creativity: Turgenev, Antokolsky, Surikov, Korovin stayed here. Vera Mamontova was painted by many artists who visited Abramtsevo: Repin, Vasnetsov, Vrubel also created her portraits. Vrubel endowed her with the features of "Snow Maiden", "Egyptian", Tamara in the illustrations for "The Demon". V. Vasnetsov explained the desire of artists to paint it: "It was the type of a real Russian girl in character, beauty of her face, charm." But the most famous was Serov's painting "Girl with Peaches".
The artist painted a portrait of Vera in the dining room, outside the window of which one could see the Abramtsevo Park with an alley named Gogolevskaya in honor of the writer who once loved to walk here. In the next room - the Red Living Room - writers and artists often gathered.
Serov presented the painting to Elizaveta Mamontova, Vera's mother, and the portrait hung for a long time in the room in which it was painted. Later, the painting ended up in the Tretyakov Gallery, and a copy remained in Abramtsevo. After "Girl with Peaches" they started talking about Serov, and soon he became one of the most fashionable portrait painters. But what about the further fate of Vera Mamontova herself?
Vera married Alexander Samarin, the leader of the Moscow nobility, minister of church affairs. The wedding took place in the church of Boris and Gleb, later destroyed by the Bolsheviks. Now in its place, next to the exit from the Arbatskaya metro station, there is a chapel.
The marriage was very happy, Vera gave birth to three children, but at 32 her life suddenly ended. Within a few days, she burned out from severe pneumonia.
After her death, Alexander Samarin never married, and in memory of his wife he built the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Averkievo, near their estate. In Soviet times, the temple was destroyed and used as a warehouse. Now it has been restored again. Vera Mamontova's husband was exiled to a camp in the 1920s, and their daughter Liza went with him. And he died in 1932 in the Gulag.
Many secrets still remain behind the scenes of famous paintings: famous paintings by Mikhail Vrubel, created one step away from madness Is a vivid example of this.
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