the last barge hauler, with his head down, his face is not visible, but it seems that he is trudging along with all his strength. But this is probably not so - the last barge haulers were weak, but experienced, and their task was to make sure that the towline did not catch on the rocks.

But in the paintings of Pukirev and Perov, the humiliated and oppressed are frankly unhappy, while Yaroshenko went further; at this moment, both the man with the moustache and the shaved peasant with the beard and the intellectual who is shy of his arresting hairstyle are smiling and laughing. They are happy for the boy who enjoys feeding the pigeons.

Алексей Саврасов (1830—1897) — русский художник, мастер лирического пейзажа, один из основоположников этого жанра в России. Природ...

Подобный удар надломил его, он стал жаловаться на боли в сердце, его железное здоровье, несгибаемая воля и вера в людей надломились.

At first, Pukirev’s fate turned out to be the best - the peasant son, thanks to his drawing abilities, entered the Academy of Arts at the age of 16. He did not have to, like Vasily Tropinin, who was a serf by birth, already in the status of a fairly famous artist, serve at the table of his masters.

It is possible to see in this view a challenge to the whole sanctimonious “decent” society of the nineteenth century, in which a woman was given a completely insignificant role, and she must fully comply with all the strict, and not always feasible for a young, life-loving girl, requirements.