Mikhail Vrubel forever remained an unsolved mystery in world culture.
This is what happens with genius: it is called strange, emotions rage around it, passions boil, rumors creep, and real recognition comes late. Contemporaries appreciated Vrubel’s amazing gift only when he was already on his deathbed. The artist was proclaimed a symbol of the era. About “wonderful colors” in Vrubel’s creations and about “bizarre drawings stolen from Eternity”, Alexander Blok spoke in a farewell speech at the grave of the painter. The painting “The Swan Princess” by Vrubel hung in the poet’s office in Shakhmatov.
Russian myth
Vrubel has always been attracted by the poetry of a fairy tale, folk mystification, embedded in the images of the mysterious magi and wizards from folk works. The first major artistic experience in this area was the monumental panel "Mikula Selyaninovich", which the master presented in 1896 at the All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod. The work caused a scandal, the commission of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts recognized the work as "non-artistic." This could not but hurt the forty-year-old artist. However, Vrubel soon had a muse that inspired him to create in the spirit of Russian folklore. The artist met the singer Nadezhda Zabela, whom she fell in love with when she heard her unique voice - “even, light, soft-flute, full of colors,” as contemporaries recalled. This surprisingly echoed in the artistic consciousness of Vrubel with the expressive tints of shades and halftones of his peculiar painting. The artist and singer got married the same year.
History of the painting
Vrubel was inspired by the production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” based on the work of A. Pushkin, where Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel played the role of the canvas “The Swan Princess”. At first it was conceived as a sketch of a costume for a performance, but then it grew into something much bigger - into a mysterious and alluring image, mesmerizing with longing for otherworldly worlds. The painting "The Swan Princess" by Vrubel became a kind of hymn to the female image of the era of modernism - irrational, almost ethereal, slipping away and foreshadowing some changes.
Music of color
Immersion in the world of music of Rimsky-Korsakov was a beneficial turn in the creative fate of Vrubel. Nadezhda Ivanovna, the artist’s wife, recalled that, for example, Mikhail Alexandrovich had listened to the opera Sadko about a hundred times. He said that he could listen to the orchestra endlessly, especially the scenes of the sea, that every time it finds new fantastic tones in it. Their master embodied in his amazing works. Vrubel’s inspired Swan Princess, created in 1900, breathes in these shades and midtones.
In the paintings of Vrubel it is almost impossible to see the colors of a sunny day. He loved the transitional states - sunset evening, a nascent morning. The color concentrates the artist’s particular worldview, his tendency to be irrational, his passion for secrecy, and his sense of anxiety spilled over into the world. In the artist’s color palette, melting modulations of pearl tones in the lilac twilight are similar to the harmonious harmonies of a musical work. The same tremulous and elusive depicted the one whose name is the Swan Princess, Vrubel.
Description of the canvas
In the twilight slowly descending to the earth with a scarlet sunset line, the princess floats away, she looked around to make the last meaningful and warning gesture to Guidon. In her sad eyes, anxiety and sorrow froze, while the gaze of these beautiful eyes was strangely cold and indifferent to the earthly bustle. The Vrubel Swan Princess is saddened for something invisible behind the veil of the visible world. Another moment - and she will turn into a marvelous white swan. This bird in the worldview of symbolism embodies inspiration that can break through the rational world and carry the dream into other spheres.
Quiet trembling emanates from a picture in which precious stones flicker in an expensive kokoshnik, the eyes of a beautiful maiden glow with the same precious radiance on the pale face, the scarlet reflections of the setting sun fall on a sea ripple, a transparent air veil and huge snow-white wings.
The Tsarevna-Swan Vrubel has nothing to do with the stately ruddy and cheerful beauties-princesses, as traditionally illustrated by illustrators of Russian fairy tales. Her crystal image is much closer not only to the face of the mythical Aphrodite, not to the bewitching appearance of the demoness Lilith.
Promise of happiness
The angelic face of the princess resembles the face of another angel - the fallen - from the last paintings of Vrubel. The image of the troubled Demon has haunted the artist for decades, he saw in him the spirit is not so much "evil" as "suffering and domineering." However, the Swan Princess cannot be likened to a fallen angel. It has the stamina, patience and power of true love, and its witching charms are entirely on the side of goodness, for the sake of which it seems ready to sacrifice life itself. That is why the mysterious appearance and shrouded in such a gentle and majestic beauty, captivated Prince Guidon.
A man at all times dreams of a transcendental secret and a fairy tale with a happy ending. One of them was told in a delightful language of colors and images by Vrubel M. Tsarevna-Swan who lives in every heart that seeks poetry and magic.