Lesson topic. Essays about people. N. S. Sher “Pictures of a fairy tale. Paintings - fairy tales Characteristics of the work n cher about Vasnetsov's house

I bought this book a long time ago. I have just started first grade. But then I read it, already very well. I really liked the story. And she is still one of my favorites. I saw it on the Internet. But the name - "Dragon" - and I did not like the translation. So I decided to scan it, which turned out to be difficult because of the very beautiful non-standard font, and make an e-book.

Way there Vasily Midyanin

For the first time under one cover - stories with familiar miracles and miracles out of the ordinary, scary and gloomy stories and - bright, calm. Chapters from new books by Maria Semyonova and the famous Tibetan hermit Holm van Zaichik and specially written short stories by famous writers for the collection. New stories and famous stories. It unites their mastery of storytellers and their ultimate curiosity for the mysterious, unprecedented, inexplicable. This is a book of mystical stories, and this is a mystical book that anyone who reads it to the end will understand. Not only…

Tales and fairy tales Boris Shergin

In the works of Boris Shergin and Stepan Pisakhov, created on the basis of an ancient folklore tradition, the reader will find pictures of the life and customs of the inhabitants of the Northern Territory - Pomors. These are both ancient legends and anecdotes - stories about true events, and fairy tales sparkling with sparkling fantasy.

Tales of the Homa and the Gopher Albert Ivanov

For those who have not yet read the fairy tales of the writer Albert Ivanov, the time has come to make new friends - Khoma and Suslik, who have been friends with their readers for 20 years. Homa is a cute hamster, cheeks are visible from the back, a fur coat made of fluffy fur. In his hole he is not afraid of anyone, and in the forest a friend will always come to his aid. Cautious Gopher is also not afraid of anyone if Homa is nearby. Without each other, they are nowhere, because friendship, like peas, does not happen much.

A MIRACLE IS REQUIRED. Tales of the big city Sergey Abramov

The works of Sergei Abramov are genuine "urban fairy tales", in which the world of the fantastic, mythical, surreal is intricately intertwined with the world of our everyday reality. These fairy tales are sometimes cheerful, sometimes sadly lyrical, but it is already impossible to tear yourself away from them, having started reading...

Grigory Oster

His books are equally interesting to both parents and children. Everyone laughs, only sometimes - in different places! .. It was Grigory Oster who created the first novel for young children - a masterpiece in every respect. It's called "Fairy Tale with Details". Today you are lucky - this book is in your hands. Sit next to your child, read aloud to him and enjoy together. Wonderful drawings by artist Eduard Nazarov.

Elimination of witchcraft in fairy tales by Marie-Louise Franz

We read fairy tales about enchanted heroes in childhood with bated breath. Adventures, intensity of passions, dramatic plot twists... In this book, the motif of witchcraft and getting rid of it is in the central place. Its author, the famous Jungian analyst M.-L. von Franz, as always, surprises and captivates with unexpected comparisons and parallels. For example, arguing that the enchanted prince is a person in the grip of a neurosis. He also suffers from internal conflict, like a hero forced to wear animal skin. And sometimes it works to its own detriment, ...

Chinese Folk Tales Trans. Riftina

Once, the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi asked his student: where did the custom of naming the years according to twelve animals come from and what does the book say about that? The student, however, could not answer, although references to the animal chronology system in Chinese sources have been found since the beginning of our era. The student did not know the legend that was told among the people. According to this legend, recorded in the coastal province of Zhejiang, the count of years by animals was established by the supreme lord himself - the Jade Sovereign. He gathered the animals in his palace and chose twelve of them. But hot...

The Tale of Strength by Carlos Castaneda

From the most magical, most incredible of Castaneda's Tales of Power, you will learn that the picture of the world familiar to us is only a tiny island of the tonal in the endless, unknowable and indefinable world of magic - the nagual. This book ends the story of Castaneda's direct training with don Juan. The finale of the training is an incomprehensible jump into the abyss. Carlos and two other disciples of don Juan and don Genaro, having said goodbye to the Masters forever, jump from the top of the mesa. On the same night, Master and Benefactor…

The bizarre: Russian poetic tale Undefined Undefined

A fairy tale, as it is believed, is a lie, but there is a hint in it - a lesson for good fellows. It is difficult to say what kind of lesson lies in fairy tales, they have been told for many centuries, but no one has become either smarter or kinder, except that they had a lot of fun. But what kind of hints, designed for good fellows, is not difficult to guess. Even in the most, it would seem, textbook tales, where we are talking about love and subsequent marriage, there are plenty of such hints: why would the priest's children call Balda's worker tyaty? And about mocking alterations of well-known plots of a very frivolous content, not ...

Dirty Tales Sergei Pozharsky

"Dirty Tales" is 12 short stories: biting, catchy, terribly funny and downright scary. These are 12 unusual stories that happen to ordinary people - they seek and find their way, their way out of external and internal traps, even if their decisions are contrary to moral norms and standards invented by someone. Written in the actual genre of "modern prose", "Dirty Tales" is intended, first of all, for a young reader - active, indifferent, thinking, somewhat cynical, but not yet losing the ability to laugh - ...

Kazakh folk tales Undefined Undefined

Fairy tales are a wonderful example of the oral poetry of the Kazakh people, the pages of its history, reflecting the life, customs, customs and traditions of the steppe nomad, containing precious pearls of folk wisdom, wit, resourcefulness, and sincere generosity. We learn from them about the hard and overwhelming work of the people, about their age-old hatred for their oppressors, about the heroic struggle against foreign invaders. In all fairy tales, the stupidity, greed and boundless greed of the bais are ridiculed, the wisdom, heroism and simplicity of the poor are glorified.…

Who does not know Moidodyr, who does not love Moidodyr? Only unclean chimney sweeps and grubby dirty ones. And whom does Moidodyr love, whom does Moidodyr praise? Of course, you and everyone who respects a washcloth and soap, who loves to splash, swim, dive, somersault! In our book, all your favorite fairy tales by K. Chukovsky, all your favorite pictures by V. Suteev for these fairy tales. Read "Moidodyr", "Aibolit", "Cockroach", "Fedorino Woe" and "Crocodile".

Stories by Alisa Ponikarovskaya

Omsk underground of the 80s - 90s could not be itself without Alisa Ponikarovskaya. Her tales were read (listened to) by several generations of local rock musicians, artists... and non-locals too. There is no point in retelling them, this is not fiction at all, it is better to read it yourself.

Tales and fairy tales Boris Shergin

Tales of the Homa and the Gopher Albert Ivanov

A MIRACLE IS REQUIRED. Tales of the big city Sergey Abramov

Grigory Oster

Elimination of witchcraft in fairy tales by Marie-Louise Franz

Chinese Folk Tales Trans. Riftina

The Tale of Strength by Carlos Castaneda

The bizarre: Russian poetic tale Undefined Undefined

Dirty Tales Sergei Pozharsky

Kazakh folk tales Undefined Undefined

Forest tales. Sky for two Maxim Meister

There are things that are very difficult to talk about directly. Freedom, true friendship and love... Too expensive concepts, and the words that designate them have been erased from excessive use and no longer inspire confidence. "The sky for two" says little about anything directly, and embarrassingly hides the innermost behind the images. But each story of the cycle is somehow devoted to the most important things that we forget about, but which every person involuntarily strives for ... Of course, even a child will understand that in these tales there are no squirrels, hedgehogs, titmouse and other forest animals ,…

On the shore of the Magic Lake, in a small forest gatehouse, lived the forester Ignat and his wife Pelageya.

They lived together, soul to soul, and, as they say, although in cramped conditions, but not offended.

The house has everything you need, there is a zoo of pets in the yard, they even had transport - a personalized bicycle - a gift to Ignat from the chief forester for many years of conscientious work.

They just didn't have a TV. And that's because there was no time to watch it.

Ignat guarded the forest and its inhabitants from poachers day and night, but on Pelageya - the whole household: feed the cattle, cook dinner, arrange laundry. And this and that must be done, and the fifth, and the tenth, and Pelageya took on any business with joy. But more than anything in the world she loved to cook pies. It used to cook and say:

The hut is not red in the corners, but red in the pies!

The pies were so delicious that you lick your fingers.

One day, after another portion of pies, Ignat says to his wife:

You are not Pelageya, but Pirogei should be called!

Yes, at least call it a pot, just don’t put it in the stove! she laughed back.

However, this nickname did not stick to Pelageya.

But Ignat, a tall old man with a gray mustache and a loud voice, had the nickname Little Red Riding Hood. So he was nicknamed because he wore a red ski cap both in winter and in summer, so that he could be seen from afar in the forest. Well, his voice could be heard from a mile away.

The poachers were afraid of Little Red Riding Hood, like red flag wolves, and tried not to meet him on the forest path. Animals, on the contrary, in case of danger, hurried to him for protection.

Ignat brought sick little animals to the house, and Pelageya treated them with decoctions of various medicinal herbs and, of course, regaled them with her pies.

Eat to your health, my dears, she said, get well soon.

Although grandfather Ignat guarded the forest for many years, he never had a gun. But there was a magic staff that he inherited from his great-great-grandfather, who was also a forester. Ignat used the staff on very rare occasions and called it nothing more than a lifesaver with limited magic.

As it should be in a fairy tale, grandfather Ignat and grandmother Pelageya had a beloved granddaughter Masha. She lived with her parents in the village, beyond the forest. Often the whole family visited their grandparents for the famous pies.

But one day, just before the New Year, Masha fell ill. Pelageya and says to his grandfather:

Tomorrow New Year. I'll bake pies, collect New Year's gifts, and you take them to the village of Mashenka and her friends. By your return, I will clean the room, decorate the Christmas tree and prepare a festive dinner.

So they did. Pelageya baked a whole basket of pies with mushrooms and berries. Grandfather took out a large bag, decorated with colored patches, and his staff from the closet. I touched it to an empty bag, and the bag instantly filled with children's toys. It seemed that grandfather Ignat had just returned from the Moscow store "Children's World". Everything was in the bag: from rattles to electronic toys - this is for Masha's friends, and for Mashenka herself, her dream is a Barbie doll in jeans with bells and whistles.

Grandmother Pelageya put the basket of pies in a bag and tied it with a beautiful ribbon. A very appetizing smell was carried from the bag to the whole district.

And at this time, a hungry Wolf wandered around this very district. He did not have a grandmother or grandfather, there was no one to bake pies for him. In short, he was an orphan. And he wandered in the forest through the snowdrifts in search of at least some food.

So. Grandfather Ignat put on a sheepskin coat, felt boots, large red mittens that Pelageya knitted for him, and immediately became like Santa Claus. He went out into the yard, got up on his skis, shouldered a bag of gifts, and just picked up his staff, when Pelageya came out onto the porch and said to him:

Be careful! In the forest, a hungry Wolf, they say, wound up. And you yourself know: when the hungry Wolf “gets turned on”, he can do such things that he can’t say in a fairy tale or describe with a pen.

We are not afraid of the gray wolf! - the newly-baked Santa Claus shouted cheerfully, pushed off with his staff - only Pelageya saw him! The ski track remained on the snow, and snowflakes sparkled merrily in the frosty air, deliciously smelling of holiday pies.

Grandfather Ignat was gliding easily and quickly along the snow along the Magic Lake when he heard the plaintive howl of a wolf. He stopped and saw a very familiar sight. In the middle of the frozen lake sits a lone Wolf, whose tail is firmly frozen into the hole.

"Yeees! - thought the grandfather. - No wonder there is a proverb: a smart person learns from the mistakes of others, and a fool learns from his own. How many generations of people and animals have grown up on fairy tales about a stupid wolf, and history repeats itself again.

Smelling the smell of pies, the hungry Wolf stopped howling and stared with plaintive eyes at Santa Claus with a large, delicious-smelling bag on his shoulder.

Ouch!!! exclaimed the Wolf. - I recognized you! You are not Santa Claus, you are Little Red Riding Hood. And I'm a little animal in trouble. Help me!

Least of all do you look like a small animal in trouble, - Ignat laughed. He came closer to the Wolf and asked: - Have you ever read Russian folk tales, or what ?!

Read, - says Wolf. - Just hoping for a chance.

Avoska is a good guy: either he will help out, or he will learn, - Ignat reasonably remarked. - Looks like he decided to teach you! - And Ignat thought to himself: “This Wolf is not such a fool, since he reads books. Rights Pelageya! You have to keep an eye on him!"

Your happiness, - he says to the Wolf, - that I passed by.

The wolf wagged its tail happily, but no one noticed. And only curious little fish rose from the depths closer to the hole to see: who is rinsing a gray washcloth there? And Ignat, after a significant pause, continued:

But only you will free yourself!

He rubbed the staff with his hand, whispered something, and the staff turned into a whirlpool. Ignat drilled a hole in the ice and with the words "Without gear, only catch fleas" gave the Wolf a winter fishing rod.

Here's my New Year's gift to you, and the rest is up to you.

So saying, he turned the rotator into a staff again, shouldered the sack, and continued on his way. It was necessary to have time before the New Year with gifts to the village and return home to celebrate the New Year with Pelageya.

And already from afar, turning around, grandfather Ignat shouted to the Wolf:

You can't even pull a fish out of the pond without effort!

Left alone, the hungry Wolf could not recover for a long time after meeting with Little Red Riding Hood. He inhaled deeply the frosty air, saturated with the aroma of pies. But hunger is not an aunt, and the Wolf finally remembered the fishing rod.

He lowered the fishing line with the hook into the hole and waited. But for some reason the fish were in no hurry to grab the hook. They splashed around the wolf's tail in a cheerful flock, and each strove to pull it.

Everything happened quickly, like in a fairy tale. Pike's head appeared from the hole and, spitting out a fishing hook, politely asked:

Let me go, Wolf, please.

And after all, she didn’t pray, as in other fairy tales, but she speaks so calmly!

I will fulfill, - he says, - any of your four wishes. Just say: "At the command of the pike, at my will!" And your wish will come true.

She said and disappeared into the hole, as if it had not been.

Why four wishes? - the Wolf shouted after her, but his question remained unanswered.

"Weird! he thought. - Usually in fairy tales, three wishes are made. The fourth wish must be a spare." And, dreamily rolling his eyes, the Wolf began to think: what should he want in the first place? He thought and thought, and then he remembered why he had come to the lake at all.

In the distant Vyatka side, among the forests, fields and rivers, the small village of Ryabovo was lost. At the very edge of the village, behind a long fence, stood a log house with a mezzanine with five windows overlooking the street. The Vasnetsov family lived in this house: mother, father and six children, all boys - strong, noisy, inquisitive people. The Vasnetsovs were native Vyatichi. His father, a village priest, was a little like other priests: he did not drink wine, read a lot, was fond of natural sciences, astronomy, and loved to draw. He himself taught his sons to read and write, and with them sometimes village children. Like most Vyatichi people, he had "golden hands", and in his free time he always made something.

Mother, a simple, kind woman, busied herself with the housework, raising the boys; It was not easy for her to manage such a large family. But the Vasnetsov family was friendly, and their life was going well, calm.

The seasons changed, and a new life seemed to enter the house with new joys, activities, entertainment. A blizzard, harsh winter dragged on for a long, long time, with an icy mountain, sleighs, snowballs, with cheerful friends and comrades. And at dusk, when on the other side of the snow-covered windows there was an ice mountain, and a sleigh, and a prickly wind, it was good to go to the "working hut" - to the kitchen of the old cook. The floor is clean, it smells of smoke, baked bread, the torch flashes, crackles, and in the soul there is an impatient feeling of slightly disturbing joy - now the old cook will speak, and everything around will sparkle, bloom with wonderful colors. Ivan Tsarevich will fly on a flying carpet with a firebird, sad Alyonushka will go through the forests and fields with her goat brother, "an evil Baba Yaga will rush in a mortar with little Ivashka, the Frog Princess will wave her hand, and suddenly a lake will become, and on white swans will swim in the lake... But Ilya Muromets rides on his heroic horse "a little higher than a standing forest, a little lower than a walking cloud..."

The old woman slowly leads her tales and, sometimes, she suddenly stops, listens: someone knocks on the window, at first quietly, then louder and louder. This is some wanderer - must have gotten lost, came to the light. They didn’t ask the Vasnetsovs who he was, where he came from, but simply opened the door to a person, warmed him up, fed him, left him to spend the night. And now this “passerby man” is sitting on a bench and is no longer telling a fairy tale, but a true story about ancient times, about strange, distant cities, about people ...

Little Vitya was very fond of other winter evenings, when the whole family gathered around the table in the hotly heated room. The younger brothers are already sleeping, the father is reading the newspaper, the older brother Nikolai is leafing through old magazines, looking at pictures; in front of Victor there is a white sheet of paper, and on the paper there is a blue sea - a sea of fairy tales and songs. He has never seen it, but he knows: ships are sailing in full sail across the blue sea, waves are rising. And so I want to draw at least one such ship, and it’s a shame to tears that nothing works out for him. But it happened that a grandmother would sit down next to him and open her cherished box of paints. “It’s true,” Vitya thinks, “he’s a hundred years old, this box, he’s old, like a grandmother.” And the box is really old, all peeling, scratched. But when the grandmother opened this box, took a brush and began to draw, and a real ship sailed on the sea, a real captain stood on the deck, and the hot sun shone in the sky, Victor was delighted. My father said that my grandmother, when she was young, drew even better, but it seemed to Victor that it couldn’t be “better”.

Spring creeps up unnoticed. Frames were exposed, old birdhouses were checked and new ones were made. Streams rustled along the ravines, streams ran along the ditches along the houses, in the corner near the fence a large sprawling tree was budding, and under it the remains of snow were blue, and the earth smelled so nice. Not painted, but wooden boats, which the boys together made, sailed along the streams and ditches, and the boys came home wet, cold, and cheerful.

Best of all, live more freely in the summer. Green high hills and river valleys, ravines with slopes covered with forest. Huge firs and firs stood alone in the cemetery - the remnants of dense forests that once covered this area. The highest hill was called Karaulnaya Mountain, and it seemed to the boys that this Karaulnaya Mountain guarded the river Voya, which flowed at its foot. And the boys ran to swim in their small winding and cold river Ryabovka. They swim, get cold, run home to eat - and into the forest for mushrooms, for berries for the whole day. Sometimes their father went with them; he taught them to distinguish the voices of birds, helped to collect a herbarium, collections of stones, talked about flowers, trees, herbs. “Eternal, heartfelt thanks to my father for the fact that he managed to develop in all of us a love for the surrounding nature ...” Vasnetsov said when he became an adult.

Years went by... The Vasnetsovs' sons were growing up, and more and more often there was talk in the family that it was time for them to study. There was no school in Ryabovo, and the father first took his eldest son Nikolai, and two years later the second, ten-year-old Viktor, 85 miles away to the city of Vyatka. It was the spring of 1858; The days were fresh and sunny. They rode on their horses, in a cart; on the way they stopped to rest, lit fires, fed the horses, watched the fog rise over the river, how the dawn breaks.

In Vyatka, Victor settled with his brother in a "free apartment", in a small room, and entered a religious school. In the Vasnetsov family, all were priests, and the father decided that Victor would also go from the theological school to the seminary, graduate from it and become a priest. Victor spent two years at the theological school, and studied at the seminary for seven years. Studying in the seminary was unbearably boring, more boring than in a theological school. Victor revived only at drawing lessons. Drawing was taught by the artist Nikolai Aleksandrovich Chernyshev. In Vyatka, he had his own icon-painting workshop, and he was more engaged in the workshop than in teaching. He taught uninterestingly, but immediately drew attention to Victor, invited him to his place, looked at his drawings, took him to a small Vyatka museum, where a variety of "objects from all branches of knowledge" were collected. In the museum one could see an old Vyatka painted toy, embroidery, and woodcarving. And in the small corner room of the museum there were several photographs from paintings by famous artists, several watercolors, some oil painting. In the museum, for the first time, Victor saw photographs from the paintings by Alexander Ivanov "The Appearance of Christ to the People" and Karl Bryullov's "The Death of Pompeii". And although these were old, faded photographs, they made an unforgettable impression on Victor.

All these years, Victor read a lot, and almost always uninteresting books fell into his hands. Once he found out that in the senior classes there is a teacher who has a lot of books at home, and he willingly gives them to his students to read. Victor was already fifteen years old, he was very awkward, shy, but nevertheless he made up his mind and went to Alexander Alexandrovich Krasovsky - that was the name of the teacher. Since then, he began to visit him often, read many books, learned and forever fell in love with Pushkin, Lermontov, Aksakov, Turgenev, Tolstoy ... In high school, Viktor studied with Krasovsky. “His stories about Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky breathed such deep love and respect for these personalities that he conveyed this love and respect to us,” one of Viktor's comrades later recalled. - We read all the articles of Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky in Sovremennik together with Alexander Alexandrovich and, moreover, we read them in our numbers. This reading enlightened our minds and filled our hearts with high delight.” But Krasovsky did not teach for long in Vyatka. For speeches that were too bold and objectionable to the government, he was arrested and exiled to hard labor.

Two years before Krasovsky's arrest, Chernyshev introduced Viktor to the Polish artist Elviro Andriolli, or Mikhail Frantsevich, as he was called. Andriolli was exiled to Vyatka for participating in the Polish uprising. Victor really liked the lively, cheerful, energetic artist, he liked how easily and beautifully he painted. Victor listened with interest to his stories about St. Petersburg, about the artists he had to meet, about the Academy of Arts, he was attentive to his advice. “You need to draw strongly and boldly, draw blacker and brighter, you need to be able to see and understand life,” he said to Victor. And Victor tried to look closely at people, at the life around him: here he draws a retired soldier, a blind beggar with a boy, a grandfather with his grandson; paints with watercolors of a familiar Tatar, orphans; tries to paint in oils, and everyone likes his paintings "The Reaper" and "The Milkmaid".

Of course, he understands that not everything turns out the way he would like, that he needs to study seriously and a lot, and in Vyatka, in fact, there is no one to learn from. Andriolli told him more than once that he should go to Petersburg, that only there he would go through a real school. Doesn't he dream about it himself? And yet he still can't leave. Most recently, the mother died; It was a great tragedy for the whole family. Father somehow immediately grew old, weakened. The older brothers studied in Vyatka, the kids stayed at home, who were now taken care of by their aunts, and Victor felt that it was impossible to leave - the family needed him, his brother Apollinaris, who studied at the religious school, needed him. Apollinaris was eight years younger than Victor, as passionately as Victor, he loved to draw and was the most enthusiastic admirer of his drawings.

Victor was seventeen years old. After graduating from the last, "philosophical" class of the seminary, he nevertheless decided to go to St. Petersburg to the Academy of Arts. His father agreed to let him go, although he could not give money, even for the journey. Then Andriolli came to the rescue; he offered to arrange a lottery, play two pictures - "The Reaper" and "The Milkmaid" - and go to St. Petersburg with the proceeds. The lottery was successful: Victor received sixty rubles - a fortune. Preparations for departure have begun...

2

In the late summer of 1867, Victor left for St. Petersburg. Preparations, farewell to the father, brothers - all this passed in a blur. On a small steamboat, he first sails along a small river, then transfers to a large Volga steamboat. Here is Nizhny Novgorod. You have to go to the railway station. Victor gets on a train for the first time in his life. Everything around rumbles, rattles, and this is a little scary. The third bell rings, the train moves off. Tomorrow - Moscow. In Moscow, a cab driver took him from station to station. Another day - and he is in St. Petersburg.

The day is gray, drizzling light rain. And in the soul of Victor - jubilant joy. Not far from the station, he finds a cheap hotel, the address of which someone gave him in Vyatka, rents a small, dirty room, leaves his things, and, above all, goes to see the Hermitage - so he decided back in Vyatka. How much time he spent on the day of his arrival in the Hermitage, he could not say, but he always remembered the feeling of joyful excitement that seized him when he walked through the magnificent halls of the Hermitage, saw for the first time genuine works of art.

Day after day, Victor wandered around the city. Summer garden, granite embankment of the Neva. Here is the Academy of Arts ... For a long time I did not dare to enter ... But I still had to enter.

And he came to the exam, brought, as all the examinees were supposed to, his works and made drawings on the proposed topics. Victor thought about artists, about the Academy of Arts as enthusiastically as Kramskoy, who ten years ago entered the same front entrance of the Academy, like Repin, when he left his native city, like Surikov, who came to St. Petersburg a year later than Victor ...

Victor looked at the Academy of Arts as if it were a temple into which he was not yet worthy to enter; I was very nervous during the exam. And when he returned to his poor hotel room, he suddenly decided that he had not passed the exam. A few days later, when the time came to find out about the result, he simply did not go to the academy. Day after day passed. The money brought from home was coming to an end, no work was expected, and there were no acquaintances with whom one could talk, consult. He was alone in a huge, beautiful, but alien city.

Once, when, without any purpose, without any thoughts, Victor wandered the streets of St. Petersburg, someone called out to him. This was the brother of teacher Krasovsky, whom he met in Vyatka. Krasovsky did not ask Victor about anything - everything was clear to him without words. A few days later, he got Viktor a job at a cartographic institution, where geographical maps, books, and magazines were printed. Victor set to work with interest. At first, his work consisted in the fact that he had to translate the drawings of artists onto wooden boards - into "woods", as they were called.

Very soon, having looked closely at the work of the engraver, Victor began to work as a engraver himself. He was pleased that the engraver in his hands was becoming more and more obedient, that he was mastering the skill more and more.

And the thought that it was necessary to study painting did not leave him. Let him not be admitted to the academy, but a year or two will pass, and he will still study there!

New acquaintances advised him to enroll in the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. Usually young people entered the school who either failed the exam or were preparing to enter the Academy of Arts. Victor also began to study at this school. He was nineteen years old.

Tall, light blond, with thoughtful gray-blue eyes, in which sparks of laughter often flashed, with awkward, angular and quick movements, he was still childishly shy, it was difficult to get along with people. And here, at school, I immediately felt light and simple. The students worked out three times a week. On Sundays, the classes were led by the artist Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy. Victor had already heard a lot about Kramskoy, knew that he studied at the academy, was the instigator of the “revolt of fourteen”, and heard about the Artel of Free Artists, which he organized after the Kramskoy riot. They said that on Thursdays artists, writers, musicians gather in artels, they read, argue, and draw together.

Victor was looking forward to Sunday: he was sure that he would see the famous artist with an inspired face, shoulder-length curls, in a velvet jacket, and was somewhat disappointed when a thin man of short stature, with a thin beard, in a black, tightly buttoned frock coat entered the class . But when Kramskoy walked around the class, spoke, and complete silence reigned in the class, it seemed to Viktor that only this should be Kramskoy - an extraordinary, “born teacher,” as he was called. Kramskoy himself never corrected the drawings of the students, but tried to explain what their mistakes were, spoke simply, clearly, with conviction, was very demanding, but always fair, benevolent. He somehow immediately noted Vasnetsov: a talented young man, modest, shy; I liked how concentrated he worked in the classroom, what interesting home drawings he sometimes brought.

Vasnetsov stayed at the Drawing School for about a year. In August 1868, he came to the academy again to take the exam and learned that he passed it a year ago. Then he was enrolled as a student of the Academy of Arts, but since he did not leave his address, there was nowhere to tell him about it. Was he upset? Not at all. The first thing he thought about was whether the past sod was gone for him? Of course not. After all, he acquired his first artistic skills under the guidance of Kramskoy, visited the Artel of Free Artists, met Ilya Repin, who had been studying at the academy for the third year, and on Sundays he came to Kramskoy's classes at school. Repin introduced him to the sculptor Mark Antokolsky, Konstantin Savitsky and other students of the Academy of Arts.

They all rented rooms in the same apartment, not far from the academy. Often, after a working day, they gathered comrades - students of the academy, university students. Most of them were young people who came from the provinces. They were poor, poorly dressed, often starving, but they were all equally passionate about art, read a lot, loved and knew Russian literature. Not an evening passed without one of the guests bringing something interesting: a poem, an issue of the Sovremennik magazine, a topical newspaper article. Usually they read aloud, discussed what they read, argued, drew, looked at and sorted out albums with drawings of their comrades. Once Repin showed a drawing he made of Karakozov on the day of his execution on Smolenskaya Square. Everyone was shocked by both the drawing and the story by Repin, and they left early that evening, without the usual noisy fun.

Young artists often visited university student Savenkov, a great lover of folk songs, epics, a talented storyteller and reader. He could tirelessly read epics all evening:

In a glorious city, in Murom,
In the village there was Karacharovo,
Sidnam sat Ilya Muromets, a peasant son,
Sydnam sat for thirty years...

Once Kramskoy invited Vasnetsov to the artel for "Thursday". Vasnetsov was delighted with the invitation. Not without timidity, accompanied by Repin, he entered the apartment of the artel workers. But right away, as in the Drawing School, I felt surprisingly simple and good here. Repin did not introduce him to anyone, and it was not supposed to. There were about forty people in the huge hall; there was a large table littered with paper, pencils, brushes, paints. Artists were sitting at the table - some he had seen before at exhibitions, in the Hermitage, at the Academy of Arts ... Here is Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin, a forester-bogatyr, saying something loudly, cheerfully, and next to him is his student and friend - the wonderful artist Fyodor Vasiliev. And both are so different and both draw so amazingly! There is a crowd behind them. Vasnetsov squeezed forward, and Repin sat down at the table, seated someone next to him, and sketched a portrait.

The piano was played in the next room, and a song was heard. Vasnetsov went to the door, listened: song, music always especially excited him.

And where is Kramskoy? .. Here he is, aloof, surrounded by guests, says something enthusiastically, they listen to him, an argument ensues, and Vasnetsov cannot help himself, comes up and also listens. And how many more unfamiliar students of the academy are here, who, as Repin said, “everyone knew the way to the artel well”! Indeed, in the artel they not only had fun, but also worked very hard, took orders for paintings, drawings, arranged exhibitions, and, they say, beautiful ones. But Vasnetsov has not yet seen a single exhibition. All this ahead!

Every time after “Thursday” in the artel, where everything seemed so unexpectedly new to him, Vasnetsov returned home and could not calm down for a long time - he seemed to be re-experiencing everything, thinking it over, trying to understand. And then the day came, full of new discoveries. I had to go to the Academy of Arts, listen to lectures. Never before had he thought about questions of the history of art, never studied anatomy, which made him now look at nature in a different way. He diligently wrote down lectures, read the literature that the professors pointed out.

The first two classes, the class of antique plaster heads and the figure class, he passed in one year. Patiently painted and shaded plaster heads, eyes, ears, noses. For his drawings, he often received first numbers. Those who received the first numbers had the right, when drawing from models, to take places in front, more comfortable.

When, a year later, he was transferred to the next, full-scale class, then studying became much more interesting. With trepidation, he entered the auditorium of the full-scale class, where the students were seated in a semicircle in front of the sitter. It was very cramped and stuffy. From time to time a professor in uniform walked along the rows, stopped near someone, looked, straightened out the drawing, and slowly walked on.

Vasnetsov all went to work; sometimes it seemed to him that nothing was working out for him, that he was very weak in drawing, that he did not know how to find a form - to express how he sees and feels nature. And yet, for the drawing and sketch with oil paints, he was awarded two small silver medals, and for the sketch "Pilate washes his hands" - a large silver medal. The theme of the sketch was the gospel legend: Pilate washes his hands in front of the crowd, giving them Christ for execution.

Vasnetsov struggled with the sketch for a long time, wrote it in his own way, but while writing, he thought more than once that he was doing the wrong thing. His new friends were right, they rebelled against "pure" and "sublime" art and paint pictures from real life.

Vasnetsov did not paint pictures yet, but he drew a lot, worked "for himself" - he sketched everything that stopped his attention, made him think about people, about life. He loved to watch life.

Here stands a rag-picker boy with a bag over his shoulders and a hook in his hand; a night watchman in a sheepskin coat; monk-collector - obese, cunning, greedy; a merchant in the hallway at the bailiff - came to congratulate the authorities on the holiday, and, of course, not empty-handed: next to it on the floor was a head of sugar and a basket of wine; another merchant with his family in the theater ... And here is an old cold man; at first glance, he seems a little funny in his shabby overcoat and clumsy hood, but look longer at the drawing and imagine his life not at all funny. He was an official, went to office, did something, but now he is retired, "out of place", useless, lonely old man ... And another wonderful drawing, which Vasnetsov called "Winter": a dark sky, a blizzard, maybe maybe it's some kind of outskirts of the city. You can't see any houses or passers-by. An old woman is coming. One. She has several logs in her hands. The wind tears the shabby coat; her face is tense, exhausted. It's hard to go. Will it come? Will he bring his logs home? ..

The publishers of magazines and newspapers who visited the cartographic establishment gradually recognized the young talented and inexpensive artist and began to order drawings for their publications. Somehow they offered to make drawings for the fairy tale "The Little Humpbacked Horse". Working on the drawings for this fairy tale was joyful and at the same time a little sad - I recalled my childhood in Ryabovo, blizzard winter evenings, the old cook's tales. Another time, I had to illustrate a children's book, The Adventures of Memeka the Goat and His Friends. Vasnetsov introduced so much funny and fresh into this mediocre fairy tale in verse that Stasov wrote in one of his articles: “Vasnetsov’s illustrations are a true masterpiece ... All this is picturesque, picturesquely drawn, with great comedy and skill.”

With the same skill, Vasnetsov made drawings for three alphabets: "Folk alphabet", "Soldier's" and somewhat later for "Russian alphabet for children". In total, these alphabets contained about 150 drawings: peasant life, children, pictures of native nature, the animal world, heroes of Russian epics and fairy tales ... “What an amazing mass,” Stasov said. Vasnetsov himself prepared most of the drawings for printing - he drew on the board, on the "piece of wood", often he cut the drawings himself.

So, along with academic studies, he had his own life, independent work. And he did it not only for earnings, which he constantly needed. In his sketches from nature, in illustrations, he always spoke truthfully, with great sympathy for "humiliated and offended" people, about the life that he knew in Vyatka, observed in St. Petersburg. Numerous drawings of the first years of his life in St. Petersburg were for him a great school of the artist - he learned to see more sharply, draw more confidently, and treat life around him more meaningfully.

At the end of the summer of 1870, Pavel Petrovich Chistyakov arrived from abroad. He was a pensioner of the Academy of Arts, lived in Italy and now returned home and brought his Italian works. The council of the academy of work approved and awarded him the title of academician of painting. Before traveling to Italy, Chistyakov taught at the Drawing School. He was known, considered a talented teacher, they hoped that he would be invited as a professor of the academy, but he received this appointment only two years later, but for now, as it was before his retirement, many young, budding artists and pupils of the academy came to his house, brought drawings, sketches of future paintings, consulted with him. Somehow Vasnetsov also came. Chistyakov looked at his drawings for a long time and spoke to him in such a friendly manner that it seemed to Vasnetsov that he had known him for a very long time. After a while Vasnetsov came again. Acquaintance turned into friendship, strong, long.

For Vasnetsov, Chistyakov was a teacher-friend.

The authorities of the Imperial Academy of Arts did not particularly favor Chistyakov and more than once tried to survive as an independent, courageous, fair teacher. And he fought, he could not leave the students whom he loved, whom he hoped for. - after all, among them were such talented young men as Repin, Vasnetsov, Surikov, Polenov and many others. Just like Kramskoy and Stasov, he could not but recognize the academy as a school of high professional skill, but at the same time he constantly said that it was necessary to study nature, Russian reality, to delve deeper into the meaning of the events depicted. “Without an idea,” he said, “there is no high art, therefore everything - colors, light, etc., must be subordinated to meaning ... The color in the picture should help the content, and not shine stupidly boastfully.”

When Chistyakov spoke, it seemed to Vasnetsov that he was guessing his thoughts, those very thoughts that were chaotically crowded in his head and with which he himself could not cope. He left Chistyakov always enlightened, joyful. “Conversations with Pavel Petrovich Chistyakov brought a lot of warmth and light into my life,” he recalled many years later.

3

Almost three years have passed since Vasnetsov arrived in St. Petersburg, and it seemed to him that an eternity had passed, that in these three years he had learned and understood much more than in all the past years of his life. In Vyatka, he probably read more, but here, in St. Petersburg, every book he read, every article in the Sovremennik magazine, every new poem by Nekrasov was revealed to the end in conversations and disputes. The names of Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky, which the teacher Krasovsky pronounced with such reverence, now became closer, dearer. In everything they wrote, he now more and more clearly felt the breath of modernity, he learned to better understand what was happening around him, to treat art questions more correctly.

And how much communication with such people as Kramskoy, Stasov, Chistyakov gave him! How life blossomed with friendship with Repin, Polenov! Both friends treated him equally. There was in him something of his own, tender, which especially touched them. It seemed that somewhere in the depths of his soul he kept a precious treasure of childhood and youth, the secret of the Vyatka taiga forests, fairy tales and songs of his native Ryabov.

In 1871, Repin and Polenov graduated from the Academy of Arts. Both wrote their competitive works - programs on the usual academic theme: "The Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus." It was compulsory work, and it was impossible not to do it before graduating from the academy. But along with her, Repin was fascinated by his first large painting, Barge Haulers on the Volga. In the summer he went to the Volga, made many sketches, sketches of barge haulers, and in the fall he began to paint a picture. Polenov was going on a pensioner's business trip abroad - a gold medal was waiting for him, and he was sure of the trip.

And Vasnetsov was still far from graduating from the academy. He continued to work on his “pieces of wood”, diligently completed academic assignments, visited Chistyakov and secretly dreamed of painting. Kramskoy said more than once that it was time for him to switch to oil paints, but Vasnetsov hesitated, did not dare, and most likely because he did not feel completely healthy. Of course, the first famine years, and overwork for the sake of earning money, and the Petersburg damp fog also affected. He no longer had that cheerfulness, that passionate desire to work, study, observe life, discovering something new in it every time. Friends persuaded him to leave, to rest, to receive treatment.

Vasnetsov made up his mind and in the spring of 1871 left St. Petersburg for home, in Ryabovo. But that house, which had been so dear to him since childhood, no longer existed. There was no mother around whom all life went; father recently died; younger brothers lived with their aunts. He was especially worried about the fate of his brother Apollinaris, who graduated from a religious school in Vyatka. When Victor came home for a short time in the year of his father's death, he was struck and delighted by his brother's drawings - they had their own, serious, although still very childish. Then he asked Andriolli to follow his brother's studies, and now, having arrived in Vyatka, he was surprised at what progress Apollinaris had made.

And Apollinaris did not leave Victor all summer, he painted a lot, watched, studied. “I became an artist because from childhood I saw his drawings and works. Victor vigilantly followed the correct transmission of nature, followed the form, technique and choice of nature, and all the albums of that (Vyatka) time were drawn under his guidance, ”he recalled when he already became a great artist and a major archaeologist.

Gradually, Victor's health was restored, he began to work, drew and painted sketches from nature, decided to paint an oil painting - he dreamed about this back in St. Petersburg. True, a few years ago he painted two oil paintings - "The Reaper" and "The Milkmaid", which were raffled off in the lottery. Both of these paintings were the first experience of a young man who had not yet studied anywhere, and now he is a graduate of the Academy of Arts, studying in St. Petersburg and will write in a completely different way.

The plot of the picture arose somehow by itself. These were childhood memories of those poor singers who, on holidays, usually crowded around the Ryabov church, sitting on the ground. As a child, these beggars evoked in him some poignant, dreary feeling. On this visit, he perceived everything in his native places in an adult way. The beggar-singers no longer aroused feelings of pity in him - he looked at them for a long time, carefully, trying to delve into the words, into the meaning of their song. And the crowd around! .. I wanted to give it as simply and at the same time as difficult as he saw it, as it happens in life. What different people, how differently they stand, look, listen! And how picturesque it all is! He thought: he found a real theme for the picture, native, Russian.

The first joyful and at the same time painful "approaches" to the picture began. He drew, thought, made sketches. For the first time he painted such a multi-figure picture, painted in the air. It wasn't easy to write it. He had to work hard before he "put in place all the characters in the picture," as he later said. He forgot to think about the teachings of academic professors, about conversations and disputes with comrades about how to build a picture correctly, what a composition is, whether it is necessary to write sketches.

Work on the picture moved slowly, but Vasnetsov's perseverance and ability to work were exceptional, and once he started, he almost always brought it to the end. In Vyatka, where he sometimes went to see old friends, and most importantly, his new acquaintance Sasha Ryazantseva, whom he really liked, everyone praised the picture, but he himself was already beginning to see its shortcomings. She seemed to him somewhat overloaded, and perhaps it was necessary to make her more collected, stricter. He called this picture “Beggars-singers”.

4

While Victor lived in Ryabovo and Vyatka, extraordinary events took place in the artistic life of St. Petersburg: the charter of the new Association of Art Traveling Exhibitions was approved - “mobile exhibitions”, as they were then called. Among the artists, there was only talk about a new partnership, about the first exhibition. which was to open in St. Petersburg at the end of 1871. Vasnetsov already then saw some, not yet quite finished paintings in the workshops of Kramskoy, Maksimov and other artists, but was not at the exhibition. News about the exhibition reached Vyatka, as well as newspaper articles about it. One of my friends sent an article to V.V. Stasov and Vasnetsov; after he read it, it seemed that he had been at the exhibition, and saw the picture of Ge - “Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich in Peterhof”, and “May Night” by Kramskoy, and “Hunters at Rest” by Perov, and the magnificent “Pine forest" Shishkin. I saw how “rooks flew in” in Savrasov’s painting, how transparent the air was, how thin birch trees stretched towards the sun, and behind the birch trees there were houses, an old bell tower, the darkened snow of the fields ...

He read and re-read this article by Stasov, and his heart was filled with joyful triumph: here, in Vyatka, far from St. Petersburg, from friends of artists, he nevertheless felt himself "a representative of the Russian land from art." He is a Russian artist, and he is a fighter - albeit an inconspicuous one - of that army of artists who finally entered the battle with the "living dead" of the Academy of Arts. Each private of this army threw aside "trinkets and idle amusements of art." Everyone believes in the power and vitality of art, that true art that always wins. And how well Stasov writes that “artists are beginning to think not only about buyers, but also about the people; not only about roubles, but also about those who cling their hearts to their creations and begin to live with them.

In September 1872, Vasnetsov, together with his brother Apollinaris, left for St. Petersburg. We rode horses to Kazan, on the way we stopped at the elder brother Nikolai, who taught at the factory. Vasnetsov had not seen him for a long time; we talked all night, recalled childhood, Ryabovo, relatives. In the morning we went further.

We arrived in Petersburg on a damp, foggy day. And again a cheap hotel room, looking for a room with white tickets pasted on the windows, a small room with a samovar in the morning and evening, rented from the hostess. Victor quickly found a job - he again took up his "pieces of wood", carried out various small artistic orders, and Apollinaris tried to help him with this. He fiddled a lot with the painting "Beggars Singers", which he did not manage to finish in Ryabovo, and when he finished it, he put it on the exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. It somehow passed unnoticed, but nevertheless, a review appeared in one of the magazines, in which they noted the artist's "remarkable ability to grasp folk types."

In St. Petersburg, he was in the thick of things. Disputes and talks about the first exhibition, which Perov and Myasoedov transported from St. Petersburg to Moscow, then to Kyiv, Kharkov, faded away ... St. Petersburg and Moscow artists were preparing for the second exhibition: it was supposed to open at the end of December 1872. Everyone was agitated, in a hurry to finish the pictures, everyone's mood was upbeat, tense. “Youth and the strength of fresh Russian thought reigned everywhere, cheerfully, cheerfully went forward and broke without regret everything that it found outdated, unnecessary ... This was precisely the talented galaxy of Russian artists of the sixties ...” They “rushed to independent activity in art and dreamed - oh daring ones! - about the creation of a national Russian school of painting, ”said Repin.

Victor showed his brother Petersburg, took him to the Hermitage, went with him to the workshops of familiar artists, and, of course, first of all to Repin. Apollinaris was shocked by everything he saw in St. Petersburg. “The charge was quite strong in order to stun a youngster like me ...” he later recalled. “In Vyatka, in a religious school, I had no idea that somewhere there was some kind of life of art, embracing a person completely and selflessly.”

Apollinaris was already sixteen years old. From childhood, he was greedy for everything: he was fond of geology, constantly carried out some kind of excavations on the Ryabov cliffs, and compiled collections of fossils; studied astronomy with his father; I read a lot, mainly historical works; sometimes he spent whole nights writing stories and stories, but most of all he loved to draw, and after the arrival of his brother Victor, he finally decided to become an artist.

He could not enter the Academy of Arts, he did not have a graduation certificate high school- He graduated from a religious school. I had to hurry to prepare for the exams. Vyatichi students he knew helped: they taught him mathematics, geography and other subjects needed to obtain a document. Victor taught him to draw. He was a demanding teacher, he was afraid to “dissolve his brother” - he was a little upset that Apollinaris had not yet settled down, was scattered. And Apollinaris spoke about him later: “Until the end of my life I will not forget what he was for me, as an artist, and how much he did for me, as an artist. He was a teacher, a friend, a caring brother…”

And Viktor has been thinking about a new painting lately, but he has not yet been able to put anything on the second traveling exhibition. He prepared for a new picture for a long time, seriously, talked about it with Chistyakov, whom he often visited. It would seem that they had the most ordinary conversation about art, and completely unexpectedly for Vasnetsov, this conversation suddenly turned into a fascinating lesson. Chistyakov spoke sharply, figuratively, interspersing his speech with special, his own, "Chistyakov" catchphrases. He somehow knew how to guess what Vasnetsov needed for the picture, he didn’t dictate anything to him, he didn’t impose anything on him, but he would say that Vasnetsov would leave him enriched, dreaming only of getting to the picture as soon as possible.

Just like in the film "Beggars Singers", he wanted to show in his new work some everyday scene that would make the audience think about the reality around them. A lot has been done over all these years of pencil sketches that could become a plot, a theme for a future picture, but it was difficult to stop at one thing. In the first hungry months of life in Petersburg, when he wandered around the city, looking for a cheap meal and a place to sit warm, he often went into a run-down tavern, into a tea room. For a long time I watched, listened to the conversations of various visitors; perhaps he also made sketches - he always had paper and a pencil with him. And now he decided to write such a tea room.

The door to the tearoom is open. To the right of the door, a group of peasants is sitting at a table, apparently, this is an artel of carpenters who came to St. Petersburg to work. They rest after work. There are two teapots on the table, as it was then customary, one large - with boiling water, the other small, colorful - for tea. Tea is drunk slowly, sedately. The younger guy has already taken a sip of tea, knocked over a cup, listens to what the artel clerk is reading, who has a newspaper in his hands. An old man sits at a table to the left of the door; he was deep in thought, and he has such an exhausted face that one can immediately say that he lived a hard life. A boy, a tavern servant, stopped at the door; he looks at a lonely old man who is probably carrying a teapot and a saucer of sugar. And behind the boy's back is a new visitor, who looks like a tipsy craftsman.

Chistyakov sometimes came to see how Vasnetsov was working on the picture. Once I spoke to him about color and said: “Color in a composition is when you look at one figure and see that it responds to others, that is, when everything sings together.” Vasnetsov knew how to understand his teacher perfectly. Chistyakov spoke precisely about what tormented Vasnetsov himself, was not given to him. Yes, in the picture “everything should sing together”, but he has a variegation, the picture is not collected in color. True, he is almost satisfied with the composition of the picture, almost satisfied with how the plot is expressed in him, how each figure is worked out ... He searches again and again, remakes and achieves perfection.

Chistyakov praised Vasnetsov's work on the painting and wrote about it in his letter to Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov.

And Vasnetsov's relationship with the academy did not go well. He began to visit classes less and less, he devoted less and less time to academic studies.

Along with his main work "Tea drinking in a tavern", he paints a picture "A worker with a wheelbarrow", makes drawings for children's stories, illustrates Gogol's story "Taras Bulba", dreams of new great works.

On January 21, 1874, the third traveling exhibition opened. At this exhibition, Vasnetsov for the first time performed with his painting “Tea drinking in a tavern”. He was glad that from now on he was also a member of a large family of Wanderers, that his painting was hanging in the same halls as the canvases of Kramskoy, Perov, Savrasov, Myasoedov ... He walked through the halls with some timidity, not daring to approach his painting . But she seemed to make a good impression, and after a while, favorable reviews appeared in the newspapers.

Kramskoy liked "Tea drinking in a tavern", and he wrote to Repin in Paris: "My dearest Vasnetsov paints a very good picture, very much." And soon after the exhibition, in a letter to the same Repin, he wrote: “On whom to turn your hopes? Of course, for the young, fresh, beginner. And among the youth, the “clear sun” - Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, especially stands out. “I am ready to vouch for him, if bail is allowed at all. It beats a special string; it is a pity that he is very gentle in character, requires care and watering.

And when Kramskoy painted a portrait of Vasnetsov around the same time, behind the “tenderness of character” he saw his other features: inner composure, concentration, fortitude ... “A man is harder than a stone, more tender than a flower” - an Eastern proverb involuntarily comes to mind, although and we see a portrait of a young Vyatich, "a hare from head to toe", with attentive gray eyes, in which a spark of anxiety burns.

Kramskoy, perhaps the first of the Russian artists - friends of Vasnetsov - understood all the originality of his character, felt that "a special chord beats in him", that a "purebred artist" is growing, as he said. But both he and Chistyakov believed that Vasnetsov had nothing else to do at the academy. Vasnetsov himself thought so, and at the beginning of 1875 he left the academy. He was given a certificate stating that he was among the students of the academy and showed very good progress in painting, was awarded two small and one large silver medals.

The Vasnetsov brothers still lived together. Apollinaris, under the guidance of Victor, drew a lot, studied and in the summer of 1875 left for Vyatka to take exams in order to receive a certificate of graduation from high school and enter the Academy of Arts.

In Vyatka, he immediately fell into the company of his younger brothers and their comrades in the Agricultural Zemstvo Institute. It was a time when people from St. Petersburg, Moscow, from different cities of Russia went to the village, “to the people”, went in groups and alone. Having learned some craft, they became propagandists - "propagators", as they were then called. Among them were many rural teachers, doctors... The tsarist government pursued this "going to the people": arrests were taking place everywhere, many young men and women were in prison. The case “on revolutionary propaganda in the empire” was started, which lasted about three years and ended with the “trial of the 193rd”.

Apollinaris "turned the wheel of life hard," as he later wrote in his autobiography. He decided not to enter the Academy of Arts, passed the exam for a rural teacher and left to teach in the village. In a letter to his brother, he said: “I, you, all of us ... debtors ... of society, but not of everything. I consider myself a debtor to someone who, in the autumn rain, in the wind penetrating to the bones, in the cold, when the blood in the veins freezes, covered with snow in the steppes, carries his bread to others, obtained by sweat and blood; one who lives in a cramped shack with an eye-corrosive air; to one who, in the terrible heat, stupidly works in the field; to someone who, almost without rest, plows, mows, harrows the whole summer ... ”Victor was in despair, tried to dissuade his brother, got angry. He firmly believed that the real path of Apollinaris was the path of an artist and that on this path he would bring much more benefit to the people. Apollinaris recalled many years later that at that time he "defended himself with the fervor of an addicted young man, flying headlong into the abyss."

Victor himself worked very hard, preparing for the upcoming exhibition, which opened in March 1876. At this exhibition, the audience saw two new paintings by Vasnetsov: "From Apartment to Apartment" and "Bookshop". Both paintings had "a decisive success," as Kramskoy said. The painting “From apartment to apartment” especially touched everyone.

Gloomy Petersburg winter day. Grey sky. The Neva has frozen over, and two people are walking through the dirty snow across the Neva - an old man and an old woman. They walk slowly, bent over, their faces are sad, submissive. In the hands of bundles with miserable rags, a coffee pot. With them, the old dog is a faithful comrade in sorrow and in joy. It must not be the first time, like this, in the middle of winter, they move to a new apartment cheaper.

The picture is painted in grayish-brown tones, and this color scheme, which conveys the idea of the picture so well, is perhaps the first time Vasnetsov managed to find it with such subtle sincerity. Vasnetsov said to one of his friends: “With my painting, I sought not only to show people, but also to reveal the terrible order against which my heart constantly rebelled.”

5

A few months after the exhibition, Vasnetsov decided to go abroad. For a long time he dreamed of a trip, and for a long time Repin called him to Paris and wrote to him: “Here is my advice to you, so as not to forget: now save up as much money as you can, by the month of May and in May come here ... Come straight to us ... we take you everywhere in Paris until you get bored, and when you get bored - go home with God. Thus, you will recognize everything overseas at once and go bolder and stronger 10 times and will not indefinitely indulge in longing for the unknown. Needless to say about the benefits that such a journey brings: it opens your eyes to everything. And most importantly, you will be glad that you are a Russian person in many ways ... "

By May 1876, Vasnetsov finally managed to save some money and escape from St. Petersburg. He decided to go to Paris, where the pensioners of the Academy of Arts lived at that time - Repin, Polenov and other familiar artists. All of them joyfully greeted Vasnetsov - as if their own “clear sun” really looked at them, as Viktor Vasnetsov was now often called with the light hand of Kramskoy. There was no end to the conversations and questions.

Vasnetsov spent whole days in museums, art galleries, studied paintings by old masters, and many times was at the annual big exhibition in the Salon. In this magnificent Salon, where several thousand paintings were exhibited, he was most struck, as he wrote to Kramskoy, by the fact that "among the mass of canvases, huge and often funny ... there is almost nothing from ordinary French life." And Vasnetsov, when he went to Paris, wanted first of all to know the ordinary life of ordinary people. He settled in Meudon, a small village near Paris, in a peasant family. The owners were simple kind people, they lived quietly, and no one interfered with his work, watching the life that interested him most. The pages of the albums were gradually filled with drawings, watercolors - there was a Meudon forest, and peasant children, and a shepherd, and a French worker in a straw hat ...

One day on a holiday, a traveling circus came to the village. By evening, people gathered in front of the booth. On the stage, the clown Pierrot in a white robe announced to the audience the beginning of the performance; nearby, drums were beaten, a trumpet blared. And behind the clown was a quiet circus horse, on which a little monkey was sitting. Against the background of a dark sky, illuminated by the flickering light of oil lamps, this traveling circus was so picturesque that Vasnetsov caught fire. He decided to paint a big picture and show the circus as he saw it the evening before the performance. He had never painted such large pictures before - all the more this thought fascinated him. But the picture, which he called either "Acrobats", or "Balagans in the vicinity of Paris", was not entirely successful for him. You look at it, and at first you really like it. I like the grace with which it is written, the fresh and some unexpected colors for Vasnetsov, the great lightness and breadth of the manner of writing. But the more you look at it, the more clearly you see that it lacks the most important thing - that Vasnetsov soulfulness that permeated all his previous drawings, watercolors, paintings. France could not inspire him, although it taught him a lot. He enriched his technique, began to write “bolder and stronger”, and most importantly, “he was glad that he was a Russian person,” Repin was right about this.

Having lived in Paris for about a year, Vasnetsov felt that he could no longer stay away from Russia, and especially after Repin and Polenov, without waiting for the end of the pensionership period, left home. Vasnetsov, in order to leave, needed money, and he always had a shortage of money. Kramskoy helped out and thus, as Vasnetsov said, saved him from "an extra stay in Paris."

Petersburg was alarming. About a month ago, the Russian-Turkish war began. All advanced Russian people sympathized with the sufferings of the fraternal Slavic peoples who were under the yoke of Turkey. They understood that the tsarist government was not prepared for war. Many writers, doctors, public figures, artists went to the front as volunteers. The seriously ill Nekrasov could not but respond to the events taking place. Almost on the eve of his death, he wrote the poem "Autumn". And as if in response to these verses, the artist Vasnetsov created the painting "Military Telegram".

Early morning. A fine autumn rain is drizzling. On the wall of the house is a front-line report, in front of which people have gathered. Here is an old retired military man, and some apprentice in a cap, and several peasants who have come to the city to earn money or in the hope of learning something about their relatives at the front. Everyone's faces are serious, wary: everyone has anxiety in their hearts, war brings grief to everyone.

It would seem that Vasnetsov found his true calling and firmly followed the path of an artist of everyday scenes, the path followed by many Wanderers, advanced, democratically minded genre painters. But all the last years Vasnetsov was dissatisfied with his work and with himself. “Every day I am convinced of my uselessness in its present form,” he once wrote to Kramskoy and, as Repin said, “indulged in longing for the unknown.” Was it just longing for the unknown?

Vasnetsov was in disarray. He went through sketches, drawings, watercolors made over the years. What a multitude! Here are sketches of different people, and scenes from life, illustrations for alphabets, children's books, and thoughts about future paintings ... But fairy tales, epics - the firebird, the little humpbacked horse, Mikula Selyaninovich, the first sketches of the heroes and the most recently made watercolor drawing "The Knight at the Crossroads" ... He himself, perhaps, like his knight, stands at the crossroads. Vague, but constant dreams of new paintings on new, completely different than before, themes overcome him. Petersburg tired, seemed cold, uncomfortable. Repin and Polenov, who had been living in Moscow for about a year, called him, wrote that only in Moscow could a real artist create. Vasnetsov himself was drawn to Moscow. He wrote: “I felt with all my being that only Moscow, its people, its history, its Kremlin could revive, resurrect my fantasy, exhausted by Petersburg indifference and cold! Only Moscow, this primordial center of everything native, so close and understandable from childhood, will be able to correctly saturate my creativity, yearning for everything Russian, for all folk poetry, to direct me along the true, Russian artist’s characteristic path and direction.

Vasnetsov decided to move to Moscow. He was already married to Sasha Ryazantseva, who graduated from medical courses; its graduation was the first graduation of female doctors in Russia.

The Vasnetsovs arrived in Moscow in the early spring of 1878 and settled on Ostozhenka, in a quiet Ushakovsky lane. “When I arrived in Moscow,” Vasnetsov said, “I felt that I had come home and there was nowhere else to go - the Kremlin, St. Basil the Blessed made me almost cry, to such an extent all this breathed into the soul of my relatives, unforgettable.” Excited, he walked around Moscow, along narrow, crooked lanes, along high bridges; looked at the old walls and towers of the Kremlin. He joyfully met the first Moscow spring with golden sunsets, with verdant birches and lindens on wide boulevards.

In the autumn of 1878, Apollinaris arrived and settled with his brother. He broke with populism, gave up teaching and decided to devote his life to art. Victor Mikhailovich was delighted with this decision. He was again able to help his brother in his studies, to ease his first difficult steps on a new path.

Apollinaris, just like Viktor Mikhailovich, having arrived in Moscow, was delighted with the monuments of antiquity, the Kremlin, and was completely immersed in the study of the past. He tirelessly wandered around the neighborhood, which somehow reminded him of Vyatka and Ryabov, painted landscapes. Gradually he made friends with all his brother's friends and followed their work with excitement. Surikov at that time began the painting "Morning of the Streltsy Execution" and collected material for it; Repin worked on a painting from the same era - "Princess Sophia"; Polenov painted sketches of the cathedrals and towers of the Moscow Kremlin, and when the sixth traveling exhibition moved to Moscow, he gave his wonderful “Moscow Courtyard” to the exhibition. Vasnetsov at this exhibition was represented by paintings: "Acrobats", "Military telegram", "Victory" and watercolor painting "Knight at the Crossroads".

Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov bought the painting “Military Telegram” for his gallery, Vasnetsov met Tretyakov back in St. Petersburg, where Pavel Mikhailovich watched his genre paintings, and now in Moscow he got to know him better. Tretyakov's daughter tells very well about her first acquaintance with Vasnetsov in her memoirs about her father: “... In the summer, several familiar artists came to our dacha in Kuntsevo. They said that Vasnetsov was also going, but he was not there. We decided not to wait any longer and go for a walk. We walked along the path in a stretched group, the children in front. Not far from the house, a slender figure flew towards us with a sweeping sweep, which, despite the dark suit, seemed bright from the light face and hair. This was Vasnetsov. He was in a hurry, looking for us, mistakenly getting to the neighboring dacha. From the joyful exclamations of his comrades following us, the atmosphere of sympathy that surrounded Vasnetsov immediately became clear. This appearance of his will be remembered forever.

From then until Tretyakov's death, Vasnetsov was a welcome guest in his family. He always entered the Tretyakov Gallery with special trepidation and excitement, and later said that he truly understood and saw many works of Russian painting only after he became a regular visitor to the gallery, and then to the Tretyakov family.

Tretyakov's wife passionately loved music, played the piano beautifully, often arranged musical evenings, which especially attracted Vasnetsov. He usually sat in a corner by the stove, between two tables, and "reveled in the sounds that filled the room." Listening to music, he drew strength and inspiration from it for a new, his path in art.

6

In Vasnetsov's small room, occupying the entire wall, stood the unfinished painting, which now controlled all his thoughts. It was a picture inspired by the poetic legend of the Russian people "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", about the campaign of Prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the Polovtsy.

With the "eyes of the soul" he already saw this distant past, felt his connection with it. But this was not enough. It was necessary to study this past. He began to read historical works avidly, collected material, made many preparatory drawings and sketches. And most importantly, I re-read the Lay again and again, each time discovering in it a new lofty truth, a new poetic charm. Most of all, he was excited and inspired by the lines that spoke about the death of the Igor Regiment:

From dawn to evening, the whole day,
Arrows fly from evening to light,
Sharp sabers thunder on helmets,
With a crack of spears, damask steel breaks ...
... The third day they are already fighting;
The third day is approaching noon;
Here and Igor's banners fell!
... The brave Russians are gone
Here is bloody wine for a feast,
We got the matchmakers drunk, and ourselves
They fell for their father's land.

And let arrows fly, spears break, a terrible battle goes on.

Vasnetsov will not tell about her in his picture; he will talk about how brave Russians know how to die defending their native land, and will call the picture "After the battle of Igor Svyatoslavich with the Polovtsians."

The battle is over; the moon slowly rises from behind the clouds. Quiet. The bodies of the killed Russian knights lie on the field, the Polovtsians lie. Here, spreading his arms wide, the Russian hero sleeps in eternal sleep. Next to him is a beautiful fair-haired young man, struck by an arrow - he seems to be sleeping. The flowers have not yet withered - blue bells, daisies, and vulture eagles are already hovering over the field, sensing their prey. Deep sadness is poured throughout the Russian land.

It would seem that the Russians lost the battle and the picture should be gloomy, dull in color. But Vasnetsov thought otherwise. His picture will be a solemnly sad hymn to the Russian soldiers who died for their homeland. It should "sound like music, sing like an epic, and excite like a native song." Instead of the grayish-brown tones that were so characteristic of most of Vasnetsov's paintings, this painting of his shimmered with slightly muted yellow, blue, red, gray-brown tones and seemed almost festive.

When the canvas “After the Battle of Igor Svyatoslavich with the Polovtsy” appeared in 1880 at the eighth traveling exhibition, it caused the most contradictory rumors. One after another, negative reviews began to appear in the newspapers, and not even all the Wanderers realized what an amazing work it was; not everyone saw the new Vasnetsov.

Vasnetsov was depressed, confused. During this difficult time for him, his artist friends Kramskoy, Repin, Chistyakov and many others supported him. Repin wrote: "For me, this is an unusually wonderful, new and deeply poetic thing, such has never happened before in a Russian school." Chistyakov was delighted with the picture. “You, the noblest Viktor Mikhailovich, are a poet-artist,” he wrote. - I smelled such a distant, such a grandiose and in its own way original Russian spirit that I just felt sad: I, a pre-Petrine eccentric, envied you ... I wandered around the city all day, and familiar pictures stretched out in a string, and I saw my native Russia, and quietly passed one after another and wide rivers, and endless fields, and villages ... Thank you, sincere thanks to you from a Russian person ... "

Vasnetsov was deeply touched by the letter: “There are, Pavel Petrovich, in your letter such places that, although it’s a shame, I cried ... You inspired me, exalted me, strengthened me so much that the blues flew away and even though again into battle, the beast is not scary anything, especially newspapers. As if on purpose, they scold me now more than ever - I hardly read a kind word about my picture ... One thing torments me: my skill is weak, sometimes I feel like the biggest ignoramus and ignoramus. Of course, I won’t despair, I know that if you constantly look after yourself, then at least with a sparrow’s step, you can move.

But Vasnetsov walked forward not with sparrow steps, but with gigantic steps, and he should not have despaired. The circle of his admirers became wider, they began to understand Vasnetsov better, the artist-poet, selflessly in love with his native country, "the singer of the distant epic of our history, our people," in the words of the artist Nesterov. Nesterov himself did not immediately see the new Vasnetsov and about how his eyes opened, he spoke like this: “Once I wandered around the Tretyakov Gallery. A group of visitors was standing by Vasnetsov's "Igor's Battle". Among them, I noticed the then famous artist of the Maly Theater Maksheev; he passionately, enthusiastically explained to those around him the poetic charm of the picture. I involuntarily began to listen to the enthusiastic narration of the artist, and I don’t know how it happened, but like a veil fell from my eyes. I saw the light, I saw in the creation of Vasnetsov what had been hidden from me for so long. I saw and passionately fell in love with the new Vasnetsov - Vasnetsov, a great poet, a singer of a distant epic of our history, our people, our homeland.

7

One winter, Repin introduced Vasnetsov to Savva Ivanovich Mamontov. A major industrialist, an exceptionally gifted man, he was a good sculptor, musician, passionately loved the theater. In his house, as well as at the Tretyakovs, artists, actors, musicians gathered, home performances were often staged, and literary readings were arranged. “On the very first evening, I, a very uncommunicative and shy person in those days, was already standing on the home stage in the living painting “Marguerite’s Vision to Faust” in the form of Mephistopheles ... And after all, no one forced me to do this, but my figure simply seemed suitable ... and you're done! Vasnetsov later recalled. Thus began an acquaintance, and then friendship with the entire Mamontov family.

It was very difficult for the Vasnetsovs to live during these years: the family grew up, the paintings were poorly paid, there was always not enough money. More than once it happened to pawn the only thing of value - a silver watch - or to borrow from friends, although they themselves often sat without money. But Vasnetsov and his wife knew how to treat these worldly hardships steadfastly.

Life became easier when Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov bought the painting “After the Battle of Igor” for his gallery, and Mamontov ordered several new paintings. He was then finishing the construction of the Donetsk railway - the first railway line to the Donets Basin - and dreamed of decorating the board of the Moscow railway station with paintings by good artists. “We must accustom the eyes of the people to the beautiful at the stations, in churches, on the streets,” he said.

Decorate the board of the Moscow railway station with paintings? What? Vasnetsov faced a difficult task. From the very beginning, one thing was clear to him: each picture should tell the audience about the great love of the Russian people for their homeland, about their bold daring, dreams and hopes.

Here the rich Donetsk region is awakening to life, and Vasnetsov is presented with pictures of the distant past of this region: the wide Don steppes, nomads who several centuries ago attacked Russian lands, robbed them, took people prisoner. And now the battle ... Horses are rushing. A huge black horse rears up in front of a small, steppe horse of the enemy. Now the enemy will throw a spear and inflict a mortal blow, but the Russian warrior will reflect the blow. And across the field, warriors are already jumping to the rescue from both sides ... This is the “Battle of the Slavs with the nomads”. Everything in it is a movement, a whirlwind, it is all colorful, bright, impetuous.

The second picture will tell a fairy tale that Vasnetsov heard more than once in childhood. This is a story about how three brothers were looking for a bride. The elder one searched - did not find it, the middle one searched - did not find it, and the younger one, whose name was Ivanushka the Fool, found the treasured stone, pushed it away and ended up in the underworld, where three princesses lived - Gold, Precious Stones and Princess Copper. This is how the painting-fairy tale "Three princesses of the underworld" appeared. Three princesses are standing near a dark rock. The elders are in rich outfits studded with precious stones; the youngest is in a black dress, and on her head, in her black hair, an ember burns as a sign that the bowels of the Donetsk region are inexhaustible. Vasnetsov took some liberties here and turned Princess Medi into Princess Coal. According to a fairy tale, the youngest princess marries Ivan the Fool.

The hero of Vasnetsov's next picture - "Flying Carpet" - will be this Ivan the Fool - a wonderful prince. He is always laughed at by his older brothers. And he, when trouble comes, overcomes all obstacles, and his smart, kind heart conquers evil as the sun conquers darkness. He manages to wake up the sleeping beauty, make Princess Nesmeyana laugh, and get the firebird, which brings happiness to people.

A magic carpet flies high in the sky and firmly holds Ivan Tsarevich the firebird in a golden cage. Like a huge bird, the magic carpet spread its wings. In fear, night owls fly away from an unknown bird ...

When Vasnetsov painted this picture, he remembered that first Russian man, a lord's serf, who, on wings made by himself, even during the time of Ivan the Terrible, tried to fly into the sky from a high tower. And let him die, let people ridicule him then for his daring attempt, but the proud dreams of flying into the sky will never disappear, and the magic magic carpet will always inspire people to exploits.

The fourth painting commissioned by Mamontov was The Knight at the Crossroads. Vasnetsov thought about such a picture for a long time, back in St. Petersburg, when he listened to the student Savenkov read one of the epics about Ilya Muromets. Pencil sketches have been preserved from that time, later a pen drawing and watercolor on the same theme were made. And now the big picture has been painted.

At a roadside stone, on a white mighty horse, a hero stopped - a knight in rich armor, in a helmet, with a spear in his hand. The boundless steppe with boulders scattered over it goes into the distance. The evening dawn is burning down; a reddish stripe brightens on the horizon, and the last weak ray of the sun slightly gilds the knight's helmet. The field on which the warriors once fought is overgrown with feather grass, the bones of dead people and animals turn white, and black crows are above the field. The knight reads the inscription on the stone:

"How to go straight -
I live not to be:
There is no way for a passer-by
Neither a passer-by, nor a passing one.

“To the right to go - to be married,
On the left - to be rich.

What path will the knight choose? Vasnetsov is sure that the audience themselves will “finish” the picture. The glorious Russian knight is not looking for easy ways; he will choose the difficult but straight path. All other paths are ordered to him. Now he will shake unnecessary thoughts, raise the reins, spur the horse, and carry his horse to the battles for the Russian land, for the truth ...

Vasnetsov worked on paintings for the Donetsk Railway for about three years. New themes prompted new color schemes. Just as in the painting “After the Battle”, the cloudy painting of most of the first paintings was replaced by beauty and richness of colors. Unfortunately, none of these paintings made it to the Moscow railway station. There were such "connoisseurs and lovers of the arts" who rejected them. They simply did not understand the new Vasnetsov - an amazing artist who by this time was firmly on the new path. When Stasov asked him how it happened that he moved away from everyday painting, Vasnetsov said: “I have always lived only in Russia. How I became a historian from a genre painter, somewhat in a fantastic way, I can’t answer this exactly. I only know that during the period of the brightest passion for the genre in academic times in St. Petersburg, vague historical and fairy-tale dreams did not leave me.

Vasnetsov became friends with the Mamontov family, visited them more and more often, and each time, going up the big stairs, he felt some special high spirits. He was very fond of the literary readings that took place in the large office of Savva Ivanovich.

On a table covered with red cloth, candles burned in sparkling gilded candelabra, the guests sat around the table and read poems, stories, and novels in turn. Sometimes separate evenings were devoted to Lermontov, Pushkin, Nekrasov, Zhukovsky, Nikitin, Koltsov. They were especially fond of Nekrasov. Often read the plays of Ostrovsky, Pushkin, Gogol, A.K. Tolstoy, Schiller; at the same time, the roles were distributed among the participants in the readings, and a kind of performance was obtained, only without costumes and scenery.

Savva Ivanovich Mamontov, his family, children, all his numerous nephews and nieces - all lived by art, stage, music. “Savva Ivanovich had a special talent to excite the creativity of others, he had, as it were, an electric jet that ignited the energy of those around him,” said Vasnetsov. He was inexhaustible in inventions; then everyone, led by the owner, went to sketches and then arranged an exhibition in the dining room of a large house; then they vigorously discussed the buildings that were being started on the estate; then everyone - both family and guests - was involved in the staging of some kind of performance, and Vasnetsov invariably participated in it.

Once he had to portray an Englishman examining the Tretyakov Gallery. Red sideburns were attached to him, and, not knowing a single word of English, he uttered English sounds so amazingly that everyone was indescribably delighted.

In Abramtsevo, they liked to make distant excursions to the villages, where they enthusiastically examined the old Russian architecture, made sketches of some kind of peasant hut with an intricate ridge on the roof, with patterned architraves on the windows. After almost every such trip, they brought with them a lot of interesting things that they bought from the peasants: embroidered towels, wooden caskets, salt shakers covered with fine carvings.

Once Repin and Polenov saw a carved cornice in a neighboring village that adorned a peasant's hut. They managed to buy this board, decorated with such skill by a folk craftsman. When they brought it home, everyone was delighted.

Somehow, the decision arose of its own accord to arrange a museum of samples of folk art in Abramtsevo. Gradually, the museum grew, and the artists who lived in Abramtsevo, in their free hours, began to paint various utensils and wooden furniture in the old Russian style. So, Vasnetsov depicted a crow and a magpie on the kitchen table doors. Repin decorated several caskets with carvings...

This hobby of the inhabitants of Abramtsevo led to the fact that a wood carving workshop was created at the Abramtsevo school. Vasnetsov, of course, took the most ardent part in organizing the workshop. The workshop was led by Mamontov's wife and Polenova's sister, artist Elena Dmitrievna Polenova. Handicraft carvers were invited to work with the students, and Viktor Mikhailovich ordered his brother Arkady, an excellent carpenter, to work in the workshop. “Our goal,” Elena Dmitrievna Polenova wrote in one of her letters, “is to pick up ... folk art and give it the opportunity to unfold. We are mainly looking for inspiration and models, walking around the huts and looking closely at what constitutes their household items ... This art positively has not yet died among the people.

All the artists worked very hard. Repin wrote sketches for the painting "Cossacks", thought about the painting "They did not wait." Apollinary Vasnetsov tirelessly painted landscapes of Akhtyrka and Abramtsev. He already felt a master of precise, subtle, poetic landscape. “I studied in nature and from nature, and they helped me in this, eternal gratitude to them for this, and Viktor’s peers, led by him, and my peers,” Apollinary Vasnetsov later recalled.

What about Viktor Vasnetsov? He was literally obsessed with art, he devoted himself entirely to creativity. Almost at the same time he worked on paintings of the Mammoth order, dreamed of "Bogatyrs", was carried away by the idea of \u200b\u200bthe painting "Alyonushka". “I don’t remember exactly when Alyonushka was first born to me. It was as if she had been living in my head for a long time, but in reality I saw her in Akhtyrka when I met one simple-haired girl who struck my imagination. How much longing, loneliness and purely Russian sadness was in her eyes that I gasped directly, ”he later said.

Vasnetsov wandered around the outskirts of Akhtyrka for a long time, painted sketches - the Vorya River, white slender birch trees, young aspens, the shore of a quiet pond, which he later called "Alenushkin Pond", - he was looking for a landscape that would help the viewer understand his Alyonushka - a girl from a fairy tale .

By autumn, he took to Moscow a lot of sketches, sketches, sketches for Alyonushka. And in the spring, at the ninth traveling exhibition, he showed the paintings “The Battle of the Russians with the Nomads”, “Three Princesses of the Underworld”, “Alyonushka”.

A girl is sitting, with such an affectionate Russian name - Alyonushka, on a stone near a deep pool. She bowed her head sadly, clasped her knees with thin hands, thought, perhaps, about her bitter fate or about her brother Ivanushka. And all around is sad. Autumn day, grey. The forest is dark; thin aspens turn yellow, reeds stand motionless, golden leaves are scattered over the pool.

Everything in this picture is so simple that it seems that the artist painted it in one sitting. But one has only to look at the preliminary sketches, sketches for it, and we will understand how much, how thoughtfully Vasnetsov worked, until his first sketch "Alyonushka" turned into a lyrical picture. And if you have to visit the Tretyakov Gallery, by all means go to the Vasnetsov Hall, where you will see the first sketches for Alyonushka and the painting Alyonushka.

8

On a winter day in 1881, after a whole day of work on the painting "Alyonushka", Vasnetsov climbed the wide stairs of the mammoth house. He was in a hurry. That evening it was appointed to read the play by Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky "The Snow Maiden", which Savva Ivanovich had long dreamed of staging on the home stage.

The red sun is ours!
There is no more beautiful you in the world, -

everyone was silent for a long time, fascinated by this spring, bright and at the same time sad fairy-tale play with its Russian songs, round dances, and dances. Then they all started talking at once, they decided to put it on as soon as possible - by the New Year.

There was little time left before the performance. It was necessary to hastily learn roles, sew costumes, prepare props. Everyone got a job. Vasnetsov was instructed to paint the scenery and make drawings of the costumes.

At first he was even timid - he had never been a theater artist in his life. And then there's the role of Santa Claus! “Out of habit it was difficult ... - said Viktor Mikhailovich. - Savva Ivanovich cheers cheerfully, energy grows. I painted four scenery with my own hands - the Prologue, Berendeev Posad, the Berendeev Chamber and the Yarili Valley ... Until one or two in the morning, it used to be that you paint with a wide paint brush on a canvas spread on the floor, and you yourself don’t know what will come out. Raise the canvas, and Savva Ivanovich is already there, looking with a clear falcon's eye, saying cheerfully, animatedly: "It's good!" Take a look and it looks good. And how it was possible - you will not understand.

And what magnificent costumes did Vasnetsov make for the Snow Maiden, Lel, Tsar Berendey and for all the characters in the play! When asked where he got such wonderful colors from, he answered like this: “... From folk festivals in Vyatka, in Moscow, on the Maiden's Field, from the iridescent play of pearls, beads, colored stones on kokoshniks, padded jackets, fur coats and other women's attire, which I saw in my homeland and with which Moscow of the eighties was still overflowing!

The evening of the performance arrived. The curtain quietly parted, and the audience immediately fell into the fabulous country of the Berendeys. Lunar winter night; the stars twinkle a little; dark forest, birches, pines, houses with snow-covered roofs and a real Goblin on a dry stump:

The roosters crowed the end of winter,
Spring-Krasna descends to the earth.
The midnight hour has come, the gatehouse
Goblin Guarded - dive into the hollow and sleep!

And further, in the following actions, the audience sees both Berendeyev Sloboda with a huge yellow sunflower near Bobyl's hut, and the chambers of Tsar Berendey, painted with marvelous flowers and birds with stars, moon and sun - with all the "beauty of the heavenly", and Yarilina Valley, where they make noise , carefree berendeys and berendeys have fun.

Repin played the boyar Bermyata, Mammoths - Tsar Berendey, and Vasnetsov - Grandfather Frost. In a white shirt, in some places stitched with silver, in mittens, with a magnificent mop of white hair, with a large white beard, with his Vyatka accent on “o”, he created, as Mamontov’s son later recalled, “an unforgettable image of the master of the Russian winter.” And Viktor Mikhailovich himself, in his usual modesty, said this: “I have never played on any stage - the scenery and costumes are still everywhere. There was no need to give up. Yes, it was kind of embarrassing. Well, on January 1, 1882, he played Santa Claus, and played more than once. After Frost, since then, of course, not a foot on the stage. Then, I remember, I smeared four lines about this:

Yes, I wrote poetry
That was poetry, not prose!
Oh sins, my sins -
I played Santa Claus! .. "

A few years later, not on the home stage, but in a real theater organized by Savva Ivanovich Mamontov, The Snow Maiden was staged again. This time it was an opera by Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov, the libretto of which was written by the composer himself based on Ostrovsky's play. And Vasnetsov, having reviewed all his old sketches of scenery and costumes, did a lot anew. “It seems to me that it is impossible to imagine anything more perfect, artistic and talented to illustrate this wonderful opera,” Stasov wrote when he saw these Vasnetsov sketches.

The performance was a huge success. At the first performance of the opera was the artist V.I. Surikov. He “was beside himself with delight. When the Bobyl and the Bobylika came out, and with them a crowd of Berendeys with a wide Shrovetide, with a real old goat, when the woman danced in a white peasant coat, his broad Russian nature could not stand it, and he burst into violent applause, picked up by the whole theater.

But back to the winter in which Vasnetsov graduated from Alyonushka, made sketches of scenery and costumes for The Snow Maiden. As always, he then worked on several paintings at the same time and, along with Alyonushka and Snegurochka, painted the painting Bogatyrs, which had been conceived a very long time ago. Then he made the first pencil sketch of the future picture, and somehow, already in Paris, dreaming about Russia, he wrote a small sketch with paints. The sketch was seen by the artist Polenov, and he liked it very much. Vasnetsov immediately offered to give him a sketch. Polenov thought for a moment and said:

No, give me your word that the sketch will be a sketch for a big picture, which you must certainly paint. And when you write, give me this sketch.

The Vasnetsovs spent the summer after the production of The Snow Maiden in Abramtsevo, while the Repins were going to St. Petersburg and for the time being settled not far from Abramtsevo. The painting "Bogatyrs" did not fit in the small house where the Vasnetsovs lived, and the barn next to the house was hastily converted into a large workshop with overhead lighting. "Bogatyrs" for the whole summer comfortably settled in the workshop. One of Mamontov’s sons told many years later: “I remember how in the mornings a heavy worker stallion, then a riding horse of his father, Fox, from which Vasnetsov painted horses for his Bogatyrs, were taken to Yashkin’s house in turn. I remember how we envied my brother Andrey, whom Alyosha Popovich looked like in this picture.

And in Abramtsevo, the “Abramtsevo summer” was in full swing. Familiar artists often came and again every morning went to sketches, again made trips to the villages, and the Abramtsevo museum was replenished with new finds. Vasnetsov worked very diligently, and was rarely seen in the big house, mainly in the evening. In the evenings, as usual, a lot of reading aloud, arguing, drawing.

Once Vasnetsov made a drawing of a hut on chicken legs with a carved ridge on the roof and a bat spread its wings over the entrance. Everyone liked the drawing so much that they soon built a real “Hut on chicken legs” based on this drawing, which still stands in the Ambramtsevo park. Gray-haired fir trees rustle around her, and it seems that an evil Baba Yaga will look out of the window.

Autumn has come. It was necessary to move to Moscow, arrange "Bogatyrs" in a cramped Moscow apartment, think about how and with what to live. The Vasnetsovs already had three children, and it was increasingly difficult to make ends meet, but Alexandra Vladimirovna never complained; she was a kind, patient wife, she understood what a great artist Viktor Mikhailovich was, she took care of him.

Vasnetsov wrote "Bogatyrs", thought about fairy tales, was going to make illustrations for Lermontov's "Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov", which he loved very much ... There were a great many plans, and the work would have been enough for decades.

And here, quite unexpectedly, they offered Viktor Mikhailovich a new job - to design the Round Hall of the Historical Museum in Moscow, allotted to the antiquities of the Stone Age. The Historical Museum had just been rebuilt, and now its halls were getting off. The round hall was supposed to open the exhibition and take the visitors of the museum back into the depths of centuries, to show the life of primitive people. In the first minute, Vasnetsov was even confused - the topic seemed alien to him, distant, but at the same time very tempting. He stood for a long time in the Round Hall, spoke with the museum staff, examined some bones, clay shards, splinters, arrows already placed in display cases, and left home without giving final consent. And on the way home, he suddenly “saw” his future painting and, as he told one of his friends a few years later, “he mastered its composition in a rough way.” At home, on the first piece of paper that came across, he hastily sketched it and decided to accept the offer.

For a while, the "Bogatyrs" were pushed aside - their place was taken by the "Stone Age". It took many months to prepare for the picture. Vasnetsov made sketches, sketches, changed the original composition more than once, discarding the excess without pity, inscribing a new one. He carefully studied writings on issues of primitive culture, talked with scientists - historians and archaeologists, museum staff - with his brother Apollinaris, who had been interested in archeology since childhood. “I seem to have bothered everyone in the museum, demanding from them as many objects and samples as possible, which would allow me to feel at least a little and see the then way of life,” he said.

Gradually, the distant, distant past became clear, tangible for him - he saw it, it seemed, he lived in this past himself. “Now I am so immersed in my “Stone Age” that it is not surprising to forget the modern world ...” Vasnetsov wrote. In the summer in Abramtsevo, he spent whole days sitting in his workshop, and only in the evening he heard that they were playing gorodki, he would come running, brush away all the pieces one after another - he played gorodki very well - and again in the workshop.

When four paintings were drawn in pencil, which were supposed to make a frieze twenty-five meters long, Vasnetsov began to paint them in full size in oil on canvas.

On the first canvas - the entrance to the cave. At the entrance is a tribe of primitive people; some rest, others work. Women dress the skins of animals, children are near them. A huge man is carrying a bear killed while hunting, another is shooting from a bow, someone is drilling a hole in a stone. To the side, an ancient old man is basking in the sun.

On the second canvas in the center, in all his gigantic stature, stands the leader of the tribe with a spear and a sledgehammer thrown over his shoulders. There are different people around: they burn pots, chisel a boat, make fire, make arrowheads... Farther away, a girl, having pulled out a huge fish, dances with joy.

The third canvas is hunting for a mammoth. The mammoth was driven into a hole. Men, women, children - all participate in the hunt, finish off the beast with spears, arrows, throw stones at it. The last, fourth canvas is a feast. Prehistoric people eat a mammoth after a successful hunt.

The new theme that Vasnetsov worked on presented him with new pictorial tasks, which he solved perfectly. He managed to maintain the color of the paintings in harsh, muted colors, to find new and bold combinations of colors - brown-red, black, gray-blue, greenish.

By the beginning of autumn, the order of the Historical Museum was basically completed. In the cold workshop, the paints did not dry well, and the paintings had to be transported to a large house. Viktor Mikhailovich and his brother Apollinaris carried huge panels on themselves, pinned on long sticks. When the paints dried, the canvases, rolled up into tubes, were transported to the Historical Museum, where the workers pasted all the paintings on the walls of the Round Hall. Vasnetsov had to close up the joints, and had to re-register something, taking into account the new lighting conditions: it was darker in the Round Hall than in the Abramtsevo workshop. The paintings were glued so well that they completely merged with the wall and gave the impression that they were written on the wall.

But Vasnetsov was still dissatisfied with something, day after day he made new amendments, and several more months passed before the signature appeared in the left corner of the last picture - frieze: “Viktor Vasnetsov. 1885 April 10 "- the date of the end of the frieze.

A feeling of some kind of emptiness seized the artist when the scaffolding was removed, the workers left and he was left alone with his painting. Everything was behind - and daily hard work, and hours of true inspiration, and the joy of unexpected discoveries, and the bitter consciousness of the insufficiency of one's strength ... And now he is free. Again he returns to his "Bogatyrs", again full of creative ideas, but, according to his friends, "he was poisoned by the Stone Age, that he slept and saw the painting of large walls."

9

Summer, as usual, Vasnetsov spent with his family in Abramtsevo, often saw his brother Apollinarius, with whom his common passion for art more and more connected. "... In matters of art, - said Apollinary Mikhailovich, - in understanding the tasks and duties of the artist to the people, we did not have any differences." Apollinary Mikhailovich by this time had already begun to exhibit his wonderful landscapes at traveling exhibitions, and Tretyakov acquired them for the gallery.

"Bogatyrs" from Moscow moved to their old place - to the Abramtsevo workshop, and Vasnetsov worked on them with enthusiasm. Once Professor Adrian Viktorovich Prakhov came to Abramtsevo. He lived in Kyiv, supervised the interior decoration of the newly rebuilt large Vladimir Cathedral and arrived specifically to invite Vasnetsov to take part in the painting of the cathedral. He knew Vasnetsov for a long time, loved him as an artist, and after the Stone Age he believed in his gift as a muralist.

I am now occupied with completely different topics - Russian epics and folk tales, - Vasnetsov said and flatly refused the order.

But when Prakhov left, Vasnetsov regretted his refusal and the next day telegraphed him that he was accepting the order.

At the very end of the summer of 1885, Vasnetsov was already in Kyiv, and soon the grand opening of the archaeological hall, the Round Hall of the Historical Museum, took place in Moscow. The opening was attended by scientists, artists, were Vladimir Vasilyevich Stasov and Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov. Everyone was delighted with Vasnetsov's magnificent "murals"; everyone regretted that he was not at the opening. “An amazing, amazing picture! ..” - Stasov said with an endless number of exclamation points, literally choking with admiration. And Tretyakov wrote to Vasnetsov in Kyiv on the same day: “I wanted ... to please you as soon as possible that the Stone Age was in place ... it made a huge good impression on all the“ comrades ”(i.e., the Wanderers), it seems everyone without exception was delighted.”

And in Kyiv, Vasnetsov was already starting work, the dimensions of which he could not even dream of. Leaving Moscow, he expected to stay in Kyiv for about three years, but he stayed for almost ten years. During these years, he painted four thousand square arshins in the cathedral, made fifteen huge compositions, thirty large individual figures and many magnificent ornaments. True, he had several assistants, but he did the main work himself.

The work of painting the cathedral was difficult, requiring great effort and at the same time fascinating, but no matter how passionate Vasnetsov was about this painting, he could not help yearning for Moscow, for Moscow friends, for Moscow music. “Do you often hear music? - he asked in a letter to the artist I.S. Ostroukhov. - And I rarely, very, very; I need it terribly: music can be treated! But most of all, of course, he yearned for his "Bogatyrs" and could not resist - he ordered the "Bogatyrs" to Kyiv. And here are the "Bogatyrs", who generally traveled a lot both in Moscow apartments and in railways, now they began to move from apartment to apartment in Kyiv. In each apartment they were assigned the largest and brightest room, and Vasnetsov's children many years later recalled how, when playing, they loved to hide behind the Bogatyrs. Almost every day, before leaving for the cathedral, Viktor Mikhailovich sat at least for a short time in front of his “Bogatyrs”, either with brushes and a palette, or even just looking at them, thinking.

In the same room there was another painting, begun back in Moscow - "Ivan Tsarevich on the Gray Wolf." Viktor Mikhailovich was in a hurry to finish it by the seventeenth traveling exhibition. “I just sent my “Ivan Tsarevich on the Gray Wolf” to the exhibition,” he wrote to Tretyakov, “I forced myself to allocate at least a little time from the cathedral work ... Of course, I would like the picture to be liked, but did - see for yourself.

When the picture appeared at the exhibition, the audience stood in front of it for a long time. It seemed that they heard the dull noise of the dense forest, the pale pink flowers of the wild apple tree gently rustling, the leaves rustling under the feet of the wolf - here he is, a strong, kind giant wolf, out of breath, saving Ivan Tsarevich and Elena the Beautiful from the chase. And curious birds sit on a branch and look at him.

“Now I have returned from a traveling exhibition and I want to tell you what I feel under the first impression,” Savva Ivanovich Mamontov wrote to Vasnetsov. - Your "Ivan Tsarevich on the Wolf" delighted me, I forgot everything around, I went into this forest, I breathed in this air, sniffed these flowers. All this is my own, good! I just came alive! Such is the irresistible effect of true and sincere creativity.

The painting was bought by P.M. Tretyakov, and since then it has been hanging in the Tretyakov Gallery, in the Vasnetsov Hall, almost opposite Alyonushka. Vasnetsov, learning about this, was very happy. “I am sincerely grateful to you for the joy brought to me by the acquisition of my “Wolf” in your gallery. Needless to say, we appreciate the placement of our paintings to you,” he wrote to Tretyakov.

The work on the painting of the cathedral was coming to an end. Vasnetsov was impatient to return home to Moscow as soon as possible. “We, one might say, are already on the move, everything is busy with preparations for departure ... On or about June 15, we are thinking of being in Abramtsevo. We would like to get on the train to Abramtsevo directly from the courier, ”Vasnetsov wrote to the Mamontovs. And at the end of June 1891, he and his family had already settled in the Yashkin House, in his beloved Abramtsevo near Moscow. A new era of life has begun.

“I, Pavel Mikhailovich, have an old dream: to set up a workshop for myself in Moscow ... You yourself know how an artist needs a workshop,” Viktor Mikhailovich wrote to Tretyakov. But there had never been money to build a workshop before, and only now, after returning from Kyiv, when Tretyakov bought almost all the sketches for the painting of the cathedral for the gallery, he decided to fulfill his old dream. I looked for a place for a house for a long time, I wanted to be in silence, away from the main streets. Finally, a place was found - a small plot with a dilapidated house, a shady garden in one of the quiet lanes, almost on the outskirts of what was then Moscow. The old house had to be demolished, and soon a new one, built according to the drawings and project of Viktor Mikhailovich, took its place. Vasnetsov himself helped build it and rejoiced at "every crown of growing walls, every floorboard, every installed window and door."

The house was built in a special way, not like all the other houses in the alley. Made of logs, with a high gable roof, decorated with a log tower, it seemed to have come here from old Russian epics and fairy tales. And inside the house everything was unusual: chopped log walls, huge stoves with beautiful colored tiles on top, simple benches, wide oak tables and heavy, strong chairs around - if only the heroes could sit on such chairs, at such tables.

From the largest room, the hall, a narrow spiral staircase led upstairs directly to the workshop - huge, high, all flooded with light, and next to the workshop - a light room, its own room. At that time, perhaps, none of the artists of Moscow had such a workshop.

In the summer of 1894, the Vasnetsovs moved to a house that had not yet been completely rebuilt. Viktor Mikhailovich always said that it was one of the happiest days of his life. Life gradually improved both below and above - in the workshop. The Bogatyrs arrived and occupied almost the entire right wall of the workshop. Now they were at home and they no longer had to wander around other people's apartments. “It was somehow internally free for me to work in the new workshop,” said Vasnetsov. - Nobody bothered me, I'll drink tea, eat, go up to my room, lock myself up and do what I want! Sometimes he even sang while working. The main thing is that it was very good to look at my “Bogatyrs” - I’ll come up, walk away, look from the side, and outside the window Moscow, as I think, my heart will beat joyfully!

On the wall of the workshop, right next to the door, Viktor Mikhailovich drew a little girl's head with charcoal: a finger is put to her lips, and under the drawing is the signature: "Silence." “Art is born in silence, it requires long, lonely and difficult work,” said Vasnetsov.

In such a bright state, in the happy silence of his studio, he then painted a wonderful picture - "Snow Maiden". Here she is, dear, light Snow Maiden - a child of Frost and Spring - comes out of the dark forest alone, to the people, to the sunny country of the Berendeys.

Hawthorn! is it alive? alive.
In a sheepskin coat, in boots, in mittens.

Next to the "Snow Maiden" on the easel there were several more paintings that had been started, and among them were "Guslars", "Tsar Ivan the Terrible".

Over the "Bogatyrs" Vasnetsov did not stop working. It seemed to friends that the picture was completely finished, that it was time to give it to a traveling exhibition - Vasnetsov had not exhibited anything for a long time. Before the opening of the twenty-fifth traveling anniversary exhibition, the artist Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin wrote to him: “I am proud of you, as a blood Russian, a great artist, and I sincerely rejoice for you, as a fellow artist ... Viktor Mikhailovich! Move your "Bogatyrs" to her, because, as far as I remember, they are almost finished with you.

But Vasnetsov did not give Bogatyrs to the exhibition. It still seemed to him that the picture was not completely finished, somewhere it needed to be corrected, somewhere a little touched with a brush. He sent another picture - "Tsar Ivan the Terrible."

In April 1898, work on the painting "Bogatyrs" was completed. Tretyakov bought the painting and moved it to his gallery. It was especially difficult and sad to part with the painting - after all, the artist lived with her for almost twenty-five years, she was his favorite brainchild, "the heart was always drawn to her and the hand reached out!" - as he said. And he also knew that this picture was his “creative duty, an obligation to his native people,” and now he was giving this debt to him.

Three bogatyrs - Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich stand as a strong heroic outpost. In the middle on a black horse - "the great ataman Ilya Muromets, a peasant's son." His horse is huge, arched its neck like a wheel, sparkles with a red-hot eye. You won’t get lost with such a horse: “He jumps from mountain to mountain, jumps from hill to hill.” Ilya turned heavily in the saddle, took his foot out of the stirrup, put his hand in a patterned mitten to his eyes, and on his hand was “damask club forty pounds”. Vigilantly, sternly, he looks into the distance, takes a closer look, if there is an enemy somewhere. On his right hand on a white shaggy cop - the hero Dobrynya Nikitich, takes out his long, sharp sword-hoarder from the scabbard, and his shield burns, shimmers with pearls and gems. To the left of Ilya - on a golden horse - the youngest hero, Alyosha Popovich. He looks slyly with beautiful, clear eyes, took out an arrow from a colored quiver, attached a tight bow to the ringing bowstring, and a harp-samogudy hangs by the saddle.

The heroes are dressed in rich, beautiful clothes, clad in strong armor, they have helmets on their heads. Autumn day, gray - the sky is low, clouds are walking across the sky; the grass is crushed under the feet of the horses, the fir-trees are tenderly green. The free Russian steppe spread wide before the heroes, and behind them dense forests, hills and mountains, cities and villages - the whole native country. Rus.

Do not jump enemies on our land,
Do not trample their horses on the Russian land,
Do not overshadow our red sun ...

When Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy saw the painting “Heroes”, he said to Vasnetsov forever remembered, dear to him words: “I never really thought about what our heroes were like in life, but when I saw your paintings, I thought that these were the defenders and champions of our native land and no others, in the opinion of the people, could not be. And V.V. Stasov wrote in one of his articles that not a single painting by Vasnetsov “was so finished, so worked out, like this one. None, too, was written in colors like the current one. Here he put all his knowledge and all his skill ... I believe that in the history of Russian painting Vasnetsov's "Bogatyrs" occupy one of the very first places. And he wished Vasnetsov "to go even further and further unshakably, cheerfully and bravely with his Russian, real Russian paintings."

Many years have passed since then. From all over the Soviet Union, from all over the world, people come to Moscow and, examining our ancient capital, will certainly visit the Tretyakov Gallery. In the Vasnetsov hall, they will first of all approach the painting “Bogatyrs”, and this painting is understandable to everyone, because “the language of this ballad painting is simple, majestic and powerful; every Russian will read it with pride, every foreigner with apprehension if he is an enemy, with a feeling of calm faith in such power - if he is a friend, ”the Soviet artist Vasily Nikolayevich Yakovlev said so well.

10

At the end of 1898, in the year when the painting "Bogatyrs" took its place in the gallery, Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov died. His death was a great grief for Russian artists - a kind, caring friend, a wonderful person, selflessly devoted to Russian art, passed away. Together with everyone, Vasnetsov suffered this grief. In recent years, he was less likely to visit the Tretyakov family - Vera Nikolaevna Tretyakova was seriously ill, her daughters got married and parted in different directions and the musical evenings that he loved so much stopped.

The circle of Mammoths also broke up. Friends gathered less and less often in Abramtsevo and in the Moscow house, there was no former young, noisy fun, there were no performances, no literary readings, no heated debates. And Vasnetsov was very sorry about this. But gratitude for the past forever remained in his soul. “I never forgot, and certainly never. I will not forget that I, both as an artist and as a person, were given the Tretyakov and Mamontov families, ”he constantly said.

New people entered Vasnetsov's life: L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, A.M. Gorky, F.I. Chaliapin... He got closer to the artists M.V. Nesterov, V.I. Surikov ... Repin had not been in Moscow for a long time, and only on his rare visits did he visit Vasnetsov. Almost did not live in Moscow and Polenov, whom Viktor Mikhailovich did not forget to give the promised sketch of "Bogatyrs".

Brother Apollinary Mikhailovich was a well-known artist, a prominent historian and archaeologist. The older he got, the more he was fascinated by the history of Moscow in the 16th-17th centuries. He seemed to see this past: Moscow streets, squares, the Kremlin, bridges across the Moskva River, outposts near the wooden city - all his life old, gone forever and always dearly loved by him Moscow. From the depths of gray centuries, he transferred this life to his poetic and authentic drawings and paintings. “What a fine fellow he is! What imagination! Repin spoke about him. And when Viktor Mikhailovich saw the scenery for the opera Khovanshchina, which his brother had made, he was delighted and wrote to S.I. Mamontov: “Apollinaris distinguished himself, right, exactly, and most importantly, permeated to the smallest detail with the spirit of the times! No wonder he is a scientist in our family. Don't hold back on anything! Documents, and, moreover, found by the soul and heart of the artist!”

The feeling of the past, love for the Russian, national, for everything beautiful that was created by the Russian people, were common to the Vasnetsov brothers and brought them closer and closer. Apollinary Mikhailovich often visited the Vasnetsovs, still valued his brother's advice. And life in the house-terem went on as usual. Downstairs, Alexandra Vladimirovna was in charge, as always, calm, caring. The children were growing up, and now young people often gathered in the large hall and the dining room, and performances were staged. Viktor Mikhailovich, according to old memory, together with his brother Apollinaris, painted scenery, helped the actors, made them up. “What a restless people these Vasnetsovs are - they stick their nose everywhere!” he said jokingly.

According to the recollections of his friends, despite the fact that he was in his sixties, he was mobile and slender, walked easily, quickly, and it seemed that he was not walking, but flying. Once, in the first years of acquaintance, V.N. Tretyakova wrote about him: "A gentle, noble blond, a deep nature, a man who worked hard on himself, with a poetic tender soul." And until now he has retained all these qualities and possessed some special gift to ennoble everything he touched.

He has long been a famous artist. Books are written about him, articles in magazines are devoted to him, and he is known not only in Russia, but also abroad. But fame touched him little, he seemed not to notice it. And if someone began to praise him excessively. sometimes he said: “Okay. it is good, but the Puppeteer thought of himself that he was Pushkin, but he was mistaken, so he remained the Puppeteer. It is necessary to remember this, ”and at the same time sparks of laughter lit up in the eyes.

As always, along with his main work, Vasnetsov was busy with orders for painting, he was fond of, as he himself said. "various architectural ideas" - the project of the Russian pavilion for the world exhibition in Paris, made plans for the reconstruction of the Kremlin buildings, developed a project for a new facade of the Tretyakov Gallery, and according to his project, the facade was redone and has been preserved to this day.

In the same years he painted portraits of his son, daughter, brother Arkady. But the main thing that he thought about, what worried him, was the new big picture that had been started. He dreamed about it for a long time, maybe when he was still painting the painting “After the Battle of Igor Svyatoslavich with the Polovtsy” or reading and re-reading “The Tale of Igor's Campaign”. He called this picture "Bayan".

O Bayan, O prophetic songwriter.
Nightingale of times long past

Here he is, the “prophetic songwriter” Bayan, sitting on a high burial mound, among field grasses and flowers, sorting out the psaltery, composes and sings songs. Around the prince's retinue and the prince himself with his little prince, and clouds swirl and float across the sky. This decorative, widely painted picture caused a lot of the most controversial interpretations. They also said that she was pretentious. But in this seemingly so simple and at the same time complex picture, Vasnetsov's inherent sense of proportion, an amazing ability not to cross the line beyond which begins bad taste, mannerisms, affected.

When Gorky saw the painting “Bayan”, he wrote to Chekhov: “More and more I love and respect this great poet. His "Bayan" is a grandiose thing. And how many lively, beautiful, powerful plots for paintings he still has. I wish him immortality!

The painting "Bayan" stood in Vasnetsov's studio for a long time, and he loved at dusk, after labor day, to sit in front of her, carried away by thoughts into the distant past, as if listening to Bayan's song.

Sometimes friends visited him, Gorky often came. “If you knew,” Vasnetsov wrote, “what kind of conversations we had with Alexei Maksimovich, your head could spin! How many good words he said to me! With what delight I reacted to my undertaking to write the “Poem of Seven Tales”, which was supposed to include seven plots: “The Sleeping Princess”, “Baba Yaga”, “The Frog Princess”, “Princess Nesmeyana”. "Koshchei the immortal", "Sivka-burka" and new version"Flying Carpet".

These were all the fairy tales of his childhood, which lived with him for many years. He began to write them at different times, and in the last years of his life and until his death he worked on them tirelessly, lovingly. He "told" these tales one after another, and his studio gradually turned into a wonderful world of Russian fairy tales.

And now, many years after the death of the artist, we enter his house, which became known as the House-Museum of Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov. We pass through the rooms, where every thing is connected with him, “the mighty hero of Russian painting”, we climb the steep stairs to his studio and quietly go from picture to picture, from fairy tale to fairy tale. Before us opens a mysterious, magical world sparkling with all colors, all shades. Miracles lie in wait for us at every step. We are in the forest ... Here Baba Yaga grabbed Ivashka, and “a terrible noise went through the forest: the trees crack, dry leaves crunch, Baba Yaga flies in a mortar, drives with a pestle, sweeps the trail with a broom ...” And then - the enchanted forest , trees, grasses, birds are sleeping, in the palace the princess has been sleeping for a long time, hay girls, buffoons are sleeping, guards are sleeping; sleeping on the steps of a seven-year-old girl, a brown bear, a fox with a hare... Somewhere in the Far Far Away kingdom, in the Far Far Away state, the terrible Koschei the Immortal lives in an underground palace... The sad Nesmeyana-tsarevna sits in a high tower, and no one can to make you laugh... The cheerful and clever Frog Princess is dancing in the royal chambers: “she waved her left hand - a lake became, she waved her right hand, and white swans floated on the water ...” And Ivan Tsarevich flies through the heavens on a magic carpet with his Elena Beautiful. A clear moon is shining, a cheerful, free wind is blowing, far below the forests, fields, seas and rivers - the native land. Motherland, to which the artist Viktor Vasnetsov gave his whole life, all his beautiful art.

Notes

Basil the Blessed is an outstanding monument of ancient Russian architecture. Cathedral, built by order of Ivan the Terrible in memory of the capture of Kazan. Currently a museum.

Archeology is a science that studies the life and culture of ancient peoples on the basis of preserved material monuments. An archaeologist is a specialist in archeology.

Summary of a lesson on literary reading

according to UMK Primary School XXI century"

4th grade

Lesson topic. Essays about people. N.S. Sher "Pictures - fairy tales".
Goals. 1. To reveal the features of the genre essay on the material of the essay by N.S. Cher

"Pictures are fairy tales".

2. Improve reading skills.

3. Improve your skills in working with text.

4. Develop students' coherent speech, enrich their vocabulary.

5. To cultivate love for the subject, for the history of Russia.
Equipment: paintings by V.M. Vasnetsov “Alyonushka”, “Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf”, “Three heroes”, textbook part II, notebook part II.
I. Introductory talk.
- Read.

On the desk.

I. Sokolov - Mikitov "Motherland"

M. Sholokhov "Beloved mother - fatherland"

L. Tolstoy "Jump"

What literary genre are we familiar with?

Is it possible to put the word "essay" above the title of these works? Why?

How is an essay different from a story?

In the essay real events and heroes, and in the story there may be fictional events and heroes.

What is an essay? Where can you find the answer to this question?

In the textbook - p.122.

Read.

I found another definition for the word essay. Read it on the board to yourself. Compare it with the article in the textbook. What new did you learn about the essay.
On the desk.

The essay is always documentary, written in artistic, not scientific language and expresses the author's attitude to events.

Who saw the new information in the definition on the board?
Dictionary.

Documentary - based on documents, on facts. (Documentary data. Documentary film.)
- The essay must meet the following criteria:

1.) real facts, events, people;

2.) artistic language;

II. Setting the goal of the lesson.

We will read the essay by N. Sher "Pictures - Fairy Tales" and try to see what real facts, events, people the author is talking about, pay attention to the artistic language and the author's attitude.
- They opened the textbooks - p.124. Let's take a look at the title.

What is the name of the essay?

Can you tell from the title what it is about?

About the artist.

What artist are we talking about? Who knows the name of the artist?
III. Work with essay text.
- We read the entire essay to ourselves and note the real facts in the margins.

(Assignment in a notebook for those who quickly coped with p. 59 No. 1)

What did you learn about V.M. Vasnetsov? State only the facts.

Prepare a short story about the life of V.M. Vasnetsov, using only facts.

Who can tell what they learned about the artist's life.

Listening to student stories.

Now let's pay attention to the artistic figurative language of the essay.

What pictures did you most vividly imagine while reading the essay?

Let's look at the description of the house. What language means did the author use?

Find the description of the house in the text.

What indicates that the house is old? (darkened by time)

What is the name of the house? (Russian tower)

Which phrase lends a fairy tale to the description of the house?

Is it possible to say that the description of the house is figurative, beautiful, artistic?

Are all words understood?
Dictionary.

Tiles- baked clay tiles for wall cladding, stoves.

Chest- a large wooden box with a lid for storing grain, flour.
- How does the author talk about the workshop?

What is the old word? (cherished)

Why is this picture hanging in the studio? (Art is born in silence)

How do you understand these words?

How did Vasnetsov write fairy tales? (paints)

What pictures did he paint?

Description of which paintings are given in the essay in detail
Showing pictures. The children name the pictures.
Options assignment.

Prepare an expressive reading of the passage describing the picture.

1 option. Painting "Alyonushka".

Option 2. Painting "Ivan - Tsarevich on the Gray Wolf".

Checking the work done.

1 option.

Painting "Alyonushka".

Can we say that the author loves Vasnetsov's paintings? Prove it.

Which sentence shows the attitude of the author of the essay to the picture? (He painted a touching and poetic picture.)

Look at the picture.

What is the main thing in the picture? (The girl and the nature around her.)

What impression does the painting make on you?

(Sad, there is a feeling of pity for the girl, a desire to help her.)

Option 2.

Painting "Ivan - Tsarevich on the Gray Wolf".

Find the description of the painting "Ivan - Tsarevich on the Gray Wolf". Read. How does one description of a painting differ from another?

What impression did the picture make on the viewer? (They not only looked, but also heard the picture.)

What did the audience hear? Read.

What can you say about the nature that is depicted in the picture?

What feeling does this picture evoke in you?

(Nature is inseparable from the fate of the heroes. In one picture, a dense forest became thoughtful, subsided; and in another, a dense, fabulous forest.)
IV. Homework.

1. Description of which painting is still in the essay. Prepare at home to read this description on your own. Find the answer to the questions: “Why did the author create this picture? What dream of a person did he express in this picture?

2. The task of choice. Complete the assignment in your notebook. Anyone who wants can prepare a detailed story about the artist or about the artist's painting they like.
V. Summing up the lesson.

What genre of work did we read in class?

What did you learn about the essay?

Way there Vasily Midyanin

Tales and fairy tales Boris Shergin

Tales of the Homa and the Gopher Albert Ivanov

A MIRACLE IS REQUIRED. Tales of the big city Sergey Abramov

Grigory Oster

Elimination of witchcraft in fairy tales by Marie-Louise Franz

Chinese Folk Tales Trans. Riftina

The Tale of Strength by Carlos Castaneda

The bizarre: Russian poetic tale Undefined Undefined

Dirty Tales Sergei Pozharsky

Kazakh folk tales Undefined Undefined

Stories by Alisa Ponikarovskaya

Tales and fairy tales Boris Shergin

Tales of the Homa and the Gopher Albert Ivanov

A MIRACLE IS REQUIRED. Tales of the big city Sergey Abramov

Grigory Oster

Elimination of witchcraft in fairy tales by Marie-Louise Franz

Chinese Folk Tales Trans. Riftina

The Tale of Strength by Carlos Castaneda

The bizarre: Russian poetic tale Undefined Undefined

Dirty Tales Sergei Pozharsky

Kazakh folk tales Undefined Undefined

Forest tales. Sky for two Maxim Meister

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Notes

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