Who can get to know Moscow, a modern metropolis with a twelve-million population (this is only official data, but actually approaches twenty million), skyscrapers, metro, water parks, wide highways, which still do not fit all the vehicles, huge shopping centers, in this cozy quiet the corner? Yes, and where is he? There was only a picture of V.D. Polenova "Moscow courtyard."
Painter
Vasily Dmitrievich was born under the air sign of the zodiac Gemini. This means that he had a light character (not to be confused with a lightweight), mobile, mobile, friendly. Polenov was a nobleman, the son of an archaeologist and bibliographer. He received his drawing abilities from his mother. Moscow, depicted in the picture, then was small, fit mainly inside the Garden Ring.
A great success of his life was a meeting with the brilliant teacher of drawing P. P. Chistyakov. Usually nature was established for a long time, but Chistyakov could crumple an ordinary sheet of paper, throw it on the table and say: “Draw.” This drawing school seems to be gone forever. It was the most accurate transmission of nature, a very professional approach to drawing, in particular to painting as a whole.
Doubts and hesitations
Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov initially hesitated: he receives a law degree and is engaged in music. By about thirty, he was quite defined as an artist. At an internship in Paris, Polenov receives the title of academician. Then the artist travels to Italy. Rome seemed to him a dead city, but Polenov fell in love with Venice and studied with originals from Paolo Veronese. It is abroad that he begins to realize that he is a landscape painter. And one of the first things written in Russia upon return is the painting (VD Polenova) “Moscow Courtyard”.
At the exhibition of the Wanderers
The picture shows the beginning of summer, morning, the very beginning of a clear sunny day. At first, the eye goes around without focusing on the details, the whole landscape, encompassing both grass-ant, and paths, and a high white bell tower, and a five-domed church in the distance. And there remains the impression of a holiday and a special silence, which nothing can break. Serenity - this, apparently, is the general structure of the picture. But where exactly is the painting of V.D. Polenova "Moscow courtyard" is not known for sure. It was rumored that in the Arbat lanes behind the
theater. Vakhtangov. But now there is nothing of the kind to be found.
The inhabitants of this courtyard merged with nature. They live quietly and naturally. The lifestyle is by no means metropolitan. A woman walks slowly from the houses with a bucket to the well. At the barn digging, looking for worms, chickens. It is still standing, but, probably, the horse harnessed to the cart will soon set off. The sun rises higher and higher, which means it's time to go on business. All this is a picture of V.D. Polenova "Moscow Courtyard" tells poetry with elegiac notes. A white two-story mansion, illuminated by the sun, stands out festively, and lush green trees peep out from behind a fence. Above all this, the sky peacefully turns blue with white light clouds.
When there were not even a million inhabitants in Moscow, this picture was easily and quickly created in 1878. She was demonstrated at the exhibition of the Wanderers. The artist was very worried that in his picture there is no ideological orientation, showing the life of oppressed people. But still lives in our days with his leisurely simple life, a picture of V.D. Polenova "Moscow courtyard." The work should reflect a personal attitude to the life of Muscovites more than a hundred years ago and to the benevolent look of an artist who openly admires this life.