Who painted the hunters at a rest stop. Perov, painting “Hunters at a Rest”: description, interesting facts. Some of the artist's works

"Hunters at Rest" (1871)

When I tell you my True Tales, I remind myself of a left-wing hunter, and my friends - both distrustful, like the average one, and heeding, like the right one.

The picture is known to absolutely every resident of our country. It is in textbooks, on the walls of many houses, even on candy wrappers. We know it by heart. Still, I’ll tell you a couple of points that you may not know.

"To be fully an artist, one must be a creator; and in order to be a creator, you need to study life, you need to educate your mind and heart, educate not by studying official models, but by vigilant observation and exercise in reproducing types and their inherent inclinations... By this study, you need to tune the sensitivity to perceive impressions in such a way that not a single object rushed past you without being reflected in you, as in a clean, correct mirror... An artist must be a poet, a dreamer, and most importantly, a tireless worker... Anyone who wants to be an artist must become a complete fanatic, living and feeding on art alone and only art.” .
V.G. Perov "Our teachers"

Vasily Grigorievich Perov was born on January 4 (December 23, old style) 1833 in Tobolsk, in the family of the provincial prosecutor Baron Grigory Karlovich Kridener. The boy was illegitimate; his parents got married later. All of him younger brothers received the titles of barons and the surname Kridener, Perov received the surname of his godfather- Vasiliev, later the artist changed it to the nickname “Perov”, given in childhood for his success in penmanship. Real father boy, Baron G.K. Kridener was a liberal, educated person, played the piano and violin, knew several foreign languages and even wrote poems. It was the latter that became the reason that some time after the birth of Vasily, the baron was dismissed for free-thinking poems.

Let's return now to the picture.

And Perov did not write it alone, but in tandem with another famous artist - Alexei Savrasov. They taught together at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. We don’t know Savrsov’s share, but there is an interesting point.

Perov wrote two versions of “Hunters at Rest”: the first is stored in Tretyakov Gallery, and the second - in the Russian Museum. Perov writes the second version a few years later. Did he turn to Savrasov again?

And the hunters all turn out real people! Friends of the artist.

He depicted the doctor Dmitry Kuvshinnikov on his famous painting"Hunters at a rest" artist V.G. Perov. The hunter-storyteller on the left is him. The other two characters in the picture are based on Kuvshinnikov’s friends: the skeptic hunter is a doctor and amateur artist Vasily Vladimirovich Bessonov, and the young hunter is Nikolai Mikhailovich Nagornov, a relative of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (he was married to his niece, Varvara Valerianovna Tolstoy).
http://proekt-wms.narod.ru/moscow/2_4.htm

The audience really liked the picture, but some celebrities sharply criticized it.
They didn't like unnaturally exaggerated emotions

M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin criticized the picture for its lack of spontaneity: “It’s as if when the picture is shown there is some actor present, whose role instructs him to speak aside: this is a liar, and this is a gullible one, inviting the viewer not to believe the liar hunter and have fun at the gullibility novice hunter."

The landscape in the film is written much better; compositionally it is closely related to the characters. There's something unsettling about surrounding nature- in the piercing wind, in the withered autumn grass, in the gloomy horizon. The sky is overcast and a thunderstorm cannot be avoided.

The most striking figure is, of course, the elderly hunter on the left, passionately telling his companions about his hunting adventures. The second hunter, who is in the middle, middle-aged, listens to the elderly hunter with a grin, scratches his ear, one might say that the narrator is clearly making him laugh with another tale, and he clearly does not trust him, but at the same time he is still interested in listening. The young hunter, on the right, listens attentively and trustingly to the stories of the old hunter; it is likely that he himself also wants to tell something about his hunt, but the old man clearly does not allow him to say a word.

I am not a hunter, but a friend is a hunter, he told me that there are many inaccuracies in the picture.

The dog in the background is apparently a setter, and they don’t hunt hares with cops. The black grouse is lying right, this is his prey, but there is also a horn in the picture, and it is used only when hunting with hounds. In addition, when hunting for black grouse is open (and, by the way, it is found in the forest, not in the field), hunting for the hare is closed. But I don’t know whether hunting was opened in that century. He also said that a self-respecting hunter would not throw his gun like that - the barrel would become clogged and the trigger would break. These are the grumblings from the modern hunter.

I found this story about the painting on the Internet, but I lost the link. But read:

"Hunters at Rest" is one of the most popular paintings outstanding artist second half of the 19th century century Vasily Grigorievich Perov.
Until recently, it was believed that the artist painted two versions of this painting. But there is an assumption that the author created three paintings “Hunters at Rest”. And one of them was kept in the Nikolaev Museum as a copy for 22 years...

The most famous painting by Vasily Perov in the century before last made a splash at an exhibition in Europe along with Repin’s “Barge Haulers on the Volga.” After the exhibition, the painting was bought by the famous collector Tretyakov, the artist wrote a second version for the Tsar, and now it is in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Sensation - the third version of the “hunters” was discovered in Nikolaevskoye regional museum.

The canvas was studied for two years. The picture was painted without a sketch in pencil, but immediately with paints - this is exactly the manner in which Vasily Perov worked. The “Nicholas” painting is the same size and was painted in the same year, 1871, as the work that is kept in the Tretyakov Gallery. And the version that Perov wrote for the Tsar and which is kept in St. Petersburg, created later - in 1877 - and smaller in area.

Kyiv restorers presented the research results to the Tretyakov Gallery. They agreed with the conclusions of experts from the National Academy of Arts; Perov's authorship is still under consideration.

It still remains a mystery who the artist Perov really was? Critical realist, Wanderer V.G. Perov was a friend of almost all the outstanding painters of his time.
He had eccentricities, which perhaps explain how Perov could paint such a painting as “Hunters at Rest” in the 19th century. The picture is literally stuffed with encrypted messages, mathematical formulas and prophetic predictions.

Many years ago, employees of the Russian Museum noticed that female caretakers gathered at the end of the working day in the Perov Hall, not far from the Hunters at Rest. The work was re-done several times, but the result was the same. And the caretakers, museum visitors, and excursions mostly grouped and spent time near this painting.

Some research was done that revealed a real anomaly. The air temperature in this painting was always 2.6 - 2.8 degrees higher than in the other halls. The mechanical clock in Perov’s painting slowed down, and the quartz mechanisms began to lose rhythm and even stopped. The picture also had a strange effect on people.

The canvas was subjected to infrared radiation and x-rays. The photograph showed an image of three men who very much resembled someone. The photo was printed and...the Yalta Conference arose! On the left, slightly leaning forward, sat Joseph Stalin and convincingly proved something. Opposite him, with his hands on his paralyzed legs, sat Roosevelt, and between them, looking skeptically at Stalin, lay Winston Churchill. Having superimposed a transparent map of Europe on the picture, the experts were amazed. Stalin's hands accurately indicate the opening line of the second front, while right hand rests on the coast of Normandy, where the allied landing took place seventy years later.

If we calculate the percentage of the area occupied by the three figures of hunters to the total area of ​​the picture, then we will get the exact percentage of the total share of the three countries of England, America and Russia in the production of weapons in relation to the rest of the world in 1945! The killed game in the right corner of the picture, outlined in a single line, strangely resembles the outlines of defeated Japan. And if we connect the eyes of three hunters with the same line, we will get the exact geometry of the Bermuda Triangle.

Perov ideally positioned his characters according to the parts of the world in relation to the gun, which lies slightly to the right and below the center of the picture and signifies the equator. This is the first thing that catches your eye...

Since its appearance, serious passions have been burning around this work by master Vasily Perov: V. Stasov compared the painting with the best hunting stories I. Turgenev, and M. Saltykov-Shchedrin accused the artist...

Since its appearance, serious passions have been burning around this work by master Vasily Perov: V. Stasov compared the canvas with the best hunting stories of I. Turgenev, and M. Saltykov-Shchedrin accused the artist of excessive theatricality and unnaturalness of the characters. In addition, in "Hunters at Rest" everyone easily recognized real prototypes- Perov's acquaintances. Despite mixed assessments critics, the picture became incredibly popular.

V. Perov. Self-portrait, 1870. Fragment

Vasily Perov himself was a passionate hunter, and the topic of hunting was well known to him. In the 1870s he created the so-called “hunting series”: the paintings “Birder”, “Fisherman”, “Botanist”, “Dovekeeper”, “ Fishing" For “Birdcatcher” (1870) he received the title of professor, as well as a teaching position at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. But the most striking and recognizable in this cycle was certainly the painting “Hunters at Rest.”

V. Perov. Birdcatcher, 1870

The canvas was exhibited for the first time at the 1st Traveling Exhibition and immediately evoked mixed responses. The critic V. Stasov admired the work. M. Saltykov-Shchedrin criticized the picture for its lack of spontaneity and life truth, for the pretense of emotions: “It’s as if, when showing the picture, there is some actor present, whose role instructs him to speak aside: this one is a liar, and this one is gullible, inviting the viewer not to believe the liar hunter and to have fun at the gullibility of the novice hunter. Artistic truth should speak for itself, and not through interpretation.” But F. Dostoevsky did not agree with the critical reviews: “What a delight! Of course, to explain it, the Germans will understand, but they won’t understand, like we do, that he is a Russian liar and that he is lying in Russian. We can almost hear and know what he is talking about, we know the whole turn of his lies, his style, his feelings.”

On the left is D. Kuvshinnikov. On right - central character*Hunters at rest*

The prototypes of the hunters were real people, acquaintances of Vasily Perov. The role of the “liar”, enthusiastically telling tall tales, was played by doctor Dmitry Kuvshinnikov, a great fan of gun hunting - the same one who served as the prototype for Doctor Dymov in Chekhov’s “The Jumper”. Kuvshinnikov's wife Sofya Petrovna was the owner of a literary and artistic salon, which was often visited by V. Perov, I. Levitan, I. Repin, A. Chekhov and others famous artists and writers.

Left: V. Perov. Portrait of V. Bessonov, 1869. On the right is an incredulous listener, one of the *Hunters at a Rest*

In the image of an ironically grinning hunter, Perov portrayed the doctor and amateur artist Vasily Bessonov, and the prototype for the young hunter, naively listening to hunting tales, was 26-year-old Nikolai Nagornov, a future member of the Moscow city government. This is confirmed in her memoirs by A. Volodicheva, Nagornov’s daughter. In 1962, she wrote to art critic V. Mashtafarov: “D. P. Kuvshinnikov was one of my father’s closest friends. They often went bird hunting. My father had a dog, and so the following gathered with us: Dmitry Pavlovich, Nikolai Mikhailovich and Doctor Bessonov V.V. They are depicted by Perov (“Hunters at a Rest”). Kuvshinnikov talks, father and Bessonov listen. Father - attentively, and Bessonov - with distrust...”

V. Perov. Hunters at rest, 1871. Fragment with game

Looking at “Hunters at Rest” by Vasily Perov, modern viewer hardly notices that the picture depicts the same nonsense as in the hunting tales that one of the characters “poisons”

Painting “Hunters at rest”
Oil on canvas, 119 x 183 cm
Year of creation: 1871
Now kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Two original copies of the painting are in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and in the Nikolaev Regional art museum named after V.V. Vereshchagin in Ukraine

“What a beauty! Of course, to explain it, the Germans will also understand, but they won’t understand, like we do, that he is a Russian liar and that he is lying in Russian. We can almost hear and know what he is talking about, we know the whole turn of his lies, his style, his feelings,” Fyodor Dostoevsky praised the picture, admiring the expressiveness and authenticity of the characters. However, the scene of the three comrades relaxing is not at all truthful in detail. Characters do not handle weapons correctly, and their equipment and loot are classified as different types hunting. It seems that the painter chose a topic about which he understood little.

In fact, Perov was well versed in hunting. The artist hunted the beast, as his first biographer Nikolai Sobko put it, “in all seasons and tirelessly,” and later even shared his experience in essays for the magazine “Nature and Hunting,” which was published by naturalist Leonid Sabaneev. Ultimately, his passion for hunting cost the artist his life: due to a cold caught in the forest, Perov developed consumption, from which he died before reaching the age of 50.

And Perov created “Hunters at a Rest” as a picture-anecdote, so that an understanding viewer would laugh at it no less than at completely false hunting stories.

1. Skeptic. The peasant laughing at the master's story was based on the doctor, amateur artist and writer Vasily Bessonov. Perov portrayed him as a commoner, emphasizing that the passion of the hunt, like this meal on the grass, unites nobles and their servants.

2. Newbie. He listened to the narrator so much that he forgot to light a cigarette. Judging by the new sheepskin coat and expensive equipment that have not yet worn out in the forests, the character has recently become interested in hunting. Perov painted a gullible neophyte from 26-year-old Nikolai Nagornov, in whose house his friends Kuvshinnikov and Bessonov usually gathered to go hunting together.

3. Brown hare. Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences Valentin Golovin noted: by the animal’s molting it can be determined that the action takes place in late autumn. It is strange that the carcass was not damaged: according to the rules of hound hunting, the killed hare had to be chopped off (poked with a dagger between the shoulder blades), beaten (cut off the front legs) and tied (inserted into the saddle).

4. Hazel grouse. A forest bird could not be killed on the same hunt as the brown hare, an inhabitant of the fields.

5. Liar. A friend, police doctor Dmitry Kuvshinnikov, posed for Perov in the role of the landowner-storyteller. In the 1880–1890s, the doctor, together with his wife Sophia, organized a literary and artistic salon in their home. The Kuvshinnikovs and the landscape painter Isaac Levitan, with whom Sophia cheated on her husband, became the prototypes of the heroes of Chekhov’s story “The Jumper”.

6. Boots. The beginner’s shoes, as Professor Golovin noted, also reveal the character’s inexperience: it was very inconvenient to hunt in such high heels.

7. Binoculars. The narrator has binoculars of an old model, from the first half of the 19th century, which indicates considerable hunting experience.

8. Horn. Used in hound hunting to gather hounds into a pack, but there are no signs of a pack of hounds. The only dog different versions, either a greyhound or a pointing setter. When hunting with hounds, guns are not needed, since the dog takes the game. And at the gun shop you don’t need a horn.

9. Guns. An experienced hunter, in order not to clog the barrel bore, will never place the gun with the muzzle on the ground. Especially if it is a first-class, expensive weapon from the English company Enfield, as here.

Artist
Vasily Perov

1834 - born on January 2 (NS) in Tobolsk. The artist was illegitimate son Baron Gregory Kridener, who served there as the provincial prosecutor.
1841 - for his beautiful handwriting, he received the nickname Perov from the teacher, which became his surname.
1853–1862 - student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
1861 - painted the paintings “Rural procession at Easter” and “Sermon in the village”.
1862–1864 - visited Germany and France.
1862–1869 - was married to Elena Sheins, three children were born in the marriage, but only his son Vladimir survived to adulthood.
1866 - created “Troika” and “The Arrival of a Governess at a Merchant’s House.”
1870–1877 - was a member of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions.
1872 - married a second time, to Elizaveta Druganova.
1882 - died of consumption in Kuzminki (now a Moscow region).

Photo: Fine Art Images / Legion-media

Around this picture Vasily Perov from the moment of its appearance, serious passions burned: V. Stasov compared the canvas with the best hunting stories of I. Turgenev, and M. Saltykov-Shchedrin accused the artist of excessive theatricality and unnaturalness of the characters. Besides, in "Hunters at Rest" everyone easily recognized the real prototypes – Perov’s acquaintances. Despite mixed reviews from critics, the film became incredibly popular.

Vasily Perov himself was a passionate hunter, and the topic of hunting was well known to him. In the 1870s he created the so-called “hunting series”: the paintings “Birder”, “Fisherman”, “Botanist”, “Dovekeeper”, “Fishing”. For “Birdcatcher” (1870) he received the title of professor, as well as a teaching position at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. But the most striking and recognizable in this cycle was certainly the painting “Hunters at Rest.”

The canvas was exhibited for the first time at the 1st Traveling Exhibition and immediately evoked mixed responses. The critic V. Stasov admired the work. M. Saltykov-Shchedrin criticized the picture for the lack of spontaneity and life truth, for the pretense of emotions: “It’s as if when the picture is shown there is some actor whose role instructs him to speak aside: this is a liar, and this one is gullible, inviting the viewer not to believe the liar hunter and have fun at the gullibility of a novice hunter. Artistic truth should speak for itself, and not through interpretation.” But F. Dostoevsky did not agree with the critical reviews: “What a delight! Of course, to explain it, the Germans will understand, but they won’t understand, like we do, that he is a Russian liar and that he is lying in Russian. We can almost hear and know what he is talking about, we know the whole turn of his lies, his style, his feelings.”

The prototypes of the hunters were real people, acquaintances of Vasily Perov. The role of the “liar”, enthusiastically telling tall tales, was played by doctor Dmitry Kuvshinnikov, a great fan of gun hunting - the same one who served as the prototype for Doctor Dymov in Chekhov’s “The Jumper”. Kuvshinnikov's wife Sofya Petrovna was the owner of a literary and artistic salon, which was often visited by V. Perov, I. Levitan, I. Repin, A. Chekhov and other famous artists and writers.

In the image of an ironically grinning hunter, Perov portrayed the doctor and amateur artist Vasily Bessonov, and the prototype for the young hunter, naively listening to hunting tales, was 26-year-old Nikolai Nagornov, a future member of the Moscow city government. This is confirmed in her memoirs by A. Volodicheva, Nagornov’s daughter. In 1962, she wrote to art critic V. Mashtafarov: “D. P. Kuvshinnikov was one of my father’s closest friends. They often went bird hunting. My father had a dog, and so the following gathered with us: Dmitry Pavlovich, Nikolai Mikhailovich and Doctor Bessonov V.V. They are depicted by Perov (“Hunters at a Rest”). Kuvshinnikov talks, father and Bessonov listen. Father - attentively, and Bessonov - with distrust...”

Of great importance in this work are the gestures of the characters, with the help of which the artist creates psychological portraits of their heroes: the narrator’s outstretched arms illustrate his “terrible” story, the grinning commoner scratches his head in disbelief, left hand the young listener is tensely clenched, his right hand with the cigarette is frozen, which betrays the enthusiasm and simple-minded horror with which he listens to fables. The hunters' prey depicted in the lower left corner could well have become an independent still life with game, but the artist deliberately focused all his attention on the faces and hands of the characters, highlighting these accents with bright light.

why Levitan was going to challenge Chekhov to a duel

Hunters at rest - Perov. Canvas, oil. 119 x 183

There is a period in Perov’s work when the master avoids acute social scenes. He turns to life simple, ordinary, familiar. Among these works, the most familiar is the painting “Hunters at Rest”.

In the center of the composition are three hunters, very different, but each of them is interesting and meaningful in its own way. The attention of two listeners was attracted by the passionate and fascinating story of an older, experienced hunter. In his posture, facial expressions, and eyes, there is a holy faith in the “truth” of the story that he decided to tell his comrades. Listeners react to the story differently. The young hunter eagerly absorbs every word of his experienced comrade, the third participant - a middle-aged man - is skeptical, he questions every word of the narrator.

If you carefully consider the composition proposed by the author, the idea becomes clear. The artist showed a certain life cycle: youth, eagerly exploring the world, absorbing it with faith in miracles; then comes maturity and experience, when nothing is taken for granted and is questioned; maturity is replaced by old age, living in memories, constantly falling into the idealization of the past.

Behind the simple and clear work there is a deep, philosophical, complex content. Critics have noted the shabbiness and tension that characterize surrounding landscape. An anxious sky, flying birds, faded grass - everything speaks of autumn, falling asleep, a premonition of winter. Why did the artist choose such a gloomy landscape to frame his painting? Most likely, it was important for the author to concentrate the viewer’s attention on central figures paintings, the background should not distract from the main thing in the work.

The heroes of the picture are real people, friends of the artist, who served as prototypes for the hunters. As you know, the author himself loved hunting. Therefore, every detail of the picture is painted with skill. In the lower left corner of the picture we see a delightful hunting still life, which, on the one hand, fits organically into general composition, on the other hand, may well be separated into a separate work, written with remarkable skill and realism.

The light in the picture concentrates on the faces and hands of the characters. This old technique, dating back to the Renaissance, allows the artist to more fully reveal inner world their models. All hunters are clearly satisfied with the results of the hunt, as evidenced by the trophies depicted here. The artist depicted different people social origin, but hunting united them all, made them forget about the realities of life and completely surrender to the ancient craft.

Interestingly, the artist again turned to this plot and created another painting for the Russian Museum. The second version of the plot is more schematic, simpler, and the color scheme is simpler.

It is known that some critics accused the artist of expressing overly feigned emotions in the characters he depicted. However, having unraveled the author's intention, this can be considered completely justified. This technique allows you to more clearly describe the character and inner world of the characters and reveal the symbolic component of the picture.