The battle of Borodino captivates artists not only with the scope and power of battle scenes, but also with extraordinary dedication and a rush of powerful national unity.
Historical battle
At the end of the summer of 1812, Napoleon approached Moscow. The Russian army detained the invader troops 125 kilometers from Belokamennaya, near the village of Borodino. The battle picture described by M. Yu. Lermontov in a poem known to every student, reproduces with great accuracy the tension and tragedy of the famous battle. The author managed to show both an unprecedented heroic spirit and the inspiration of Russian soldiers. It is not surprising that many paintings by artists about Borodino are based on the work of Lermontov.
Invincible
The battle lasted 12 hours, the French managed to partially win on the left flank and take the position of our army in the center. After stopping the fighting, Bonaparte decided to withdraw his troops to the starting lines. It is believed that near Borodino the Russians won that day. The losses on both sides, however, were monstrous, so Mikhail Kutuzov ordered the Russian army to retreat: a reserve was already hurrying to help the Napoleonic regiments from France.
According to the memoirs of his contemporaries, Bonaparte appreciated the persistent indestructible spirit of the Russians, saying that they deserved to be invincible.
Time documents
The anniversaries of the most bloody one-day battle in painting and graphics were artists on both sides. Russian and French etchings and paintings by Borodino present the battle as a document of the era. Rapid pencil sketches of the attacks and their reflections engulfed in smoke and dust were later translated into engravings and lithographs.
French look
The Gallic artist J. C. Langlois considered his compatriots to be the winners in the battle of Borodino, in his drawings we will not see a single defeat of the Napoleonic army. Draftsman A. Adam, who fought in the fourth corps of Beauharnais, was deprived of this bias. Impartial sketches convey a chronicle of events where there are no losers and winners, but there is only a decisive battle for life and death. Returning home, the painter created a series of works in liquid oil on 83 paper sheets. Then they were recreated in lithography.
Russian truth Vereshchagin
Unconditional attention deserves the paintings of the battles of Borodino, created by Russian artists. Two paintings on this subject were painted at the end of the 19th century by the famous battle painter Vasily Vereshchagin. In the painting “Napoleon at the Borodino Heights” (1897), we see a smug and alarmed emperor sitting in deep thoughtfulness before the ranks of his generals, who peer through the binocular lenses intensely at the Russian camp. The artist managed to express involuntary confusion, the uncertainty of the officers who are accustomed to victories. Here they met with something beyond their understanding and experience.
Another picture is called "The End of the Battle of Borodino", her artist painted in 1899-1900. A strange impression is born when you look at this canvas. Vereshchagin chose an amazing effect - the transfer of tragedy and the meaninglessness of the battle, which claimed more than 80 thousand lives, through the image of jubilant French soldiers in a smoky mess of overturned horse bodies, people dying of wounds, bristling bayonets and flying feathers of soldier shakos.
At the beginning of the XX century
In the first decades of the 20th century, the paintings of the battle of Borodino were created by Russian and Soviet battalist Nikolai Semenovich Samokish. During the Russo-Japanese War, and then the First World War, he was a front-line correspondent.
The canvas, which depicts the military operations of the Life Guards of the Lithuanian Regiment, is filled with the greatest tension. In a sketch made by oil, the soldiers resolutely rushed to the attack, they are not afraid of bullets, fear does not stop them. The rapid impulse is supported by a picturesque composition: lines and color spots with rays emanate from the center of the picture, mixing and getting lost beyond its edge.
Unparalleled daring and willingness to sacrifice are the soldiers of the Life Guards of the Grenadier Regiment on the Old Smolensk Road in the work of Mitrofan Grekov (1913).
Soviet artists about the battle of Moscow
Pictures dedicated to the events of Borodino appeared even a century and a half after the iconic battle. The picturesque “report” about the mortal wound on the battlefield of Peter Ivanovich Bagration in the work of Georgian artist Alexei Vepkhadze (1948) is filled with sadness. The fallen general is concentrated, his eyebrows frowning menacingly, he makes an attempt to rise, stretching out his hand to the soldiers around him. No one can believe that the illustrious officer will no longer rise from the bloodied land. General confusion contradicts the determination of the hopelessly wounded Bagration.
We will pay special attention to the description of the painting “Borodino” by N. N. Pobedinskaya (1960), which created in the graphic a sincere scene of a respite from the night fire. The soldiers rest, forming a circle, busily clean their weapons, inspect the details of uniforms, light a pipe. The lines of the famous Lermontov poem come to mind. Flames curl, smoke rushing toward the sky from the pot. The faces of the characters are serene. But in the background, guns blew menacingly from beneath the wheel, and nearby, piled in a pile, the nucleus awaited battle. At dawn, the fighters will face a serious battle.
Description of paintings about Borodino in a series of battle paintings by Roubaud
One of the most famous panoramas of the Battle of Borodino belongs to the talent of Franz Alekseevich Roubaud, a Russian artist of French origin. The exhibition opened in 1912 at Chistye Prudy. Half a century later, the panorama was restored and placed in a building on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Roubaud's project is a combination of a painting with a three-dimensional layout, making it seem like the battle is taking place before your eyes.
The panoramic image consists of 12 fragments devoted to the most crucial and difficult episodes of the battle of Borodino. These are actions on the Semenov heights, hand-to-hand bayonet battle of the Russian grenadiers with the Frian’s division, an attack on the Shevardin redoubt, seeing off the wounded Bagration to the rear. The realism of the panorama is mesmerizing with a sense of ownership of the greatest feat in the history of Russia.
The legends of our century
The interest in past victories of the Russian spirit over circumstances does not cool down even today. At the beginning of the XXI century, Russian artist Yuri Averyanov devoted his paintings to Borodino events.
On one of the paintings, the artist captured a legendary event when, at the time of the reflection of the hot attack, General Kostenetsky, like an epic hero, grabbed an artillery banner in his hands and began to crush enemy riders with crushing blows. The fighters followed the example of the commander, wielding what came to hand. The attack was repelled, and the glorious general subsequently received the Order of St. George. The fantastic palette, verified composition, and the detail of Averyanov’s paintings make his paintings equally interesting for a schoolboy and a wise historian.