Nikolai Alexandrovich Yaroshenko (1846-1898) was a Russian artist who painted portraits and genre compositions. However, in addition to painting, Yaroshenko was a professional artilleryman and rose to the rank of major-general. How he managed to combine the incongruous - writing paintings at a high artistic level and service in the army, we will tell in this article, at the same time and talk about the main picture of Yaroshenko - "Life is everywhere".
Nikolai Yaroshenko. Self-portrait.
The life of Nikolai Yaroshenko as if created from paradoxes - how could a faithful servant write pictures denouncing the existing state of things, and draw portraits of those who in Russia of the XIX century were considered enemies?
He was born into a military family, his father - Alexander Yaroshenko was a major-general and other fate, except for service in the army, for his son did not imagine. Even his mother Lubov Vasilyevna knew the peculiarities of military service from childhood, as her father was a retired lieutenant. Therefore, at the age of 9, Kolya became a cadet of the Poltava Cadet Corps, then there was a military school in St. Petersburg and the Artillery Academy. However, Yaroshenko did not participate in military operations - he was lucky to get a quiet job as head of the stamping workshop at a cartridge factory in St. Petersburg, where he safely served for 20 years, eventually reaching the rank of major-general. One can envy such a career.
But in addition to the boring military routine service Yaroshenko had another passion - painting. First he studied at the cadet corps at Ivan Zaitsev, then at Ivan Kramskoy, who taught at the Society for the Encouragement of Artists. By the way, Kramskoy was a master of psychological portraiture, wrote the famous "Unknown" - more details, who was the lady in that picture and why this canvas can be called obscene by the standards of morality of the XIX century, you can read on our channel. Yaroshenko's teachers were more than worthy, and this was reflected in his artwork.
Portrait of Dmitry Mendeleev
Yaroshenko's diligence and patience were enough to study simultaneously in two educational institutions - the Artillery Academy and the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. But he went to the Academy of Arts as a free student and studied there for 7 years - from 1867 to 1874.
Yaroshenko is not unreasonably called the conscience of the Peredvizhniki, thanks to his friendship with Kramskoi, the ideologist of this artistic association, they together led the Peredvizhniki. After Kramskoi's death, the management of the Peredvizhniki solely continued Yaroshenko, and here arose some contradictions between him and the young artists. The latter disliked his army-style strict requirements to the choice of subject, composition and manner of writing, which stifled any initiative in the bud.
Old and new
Yaroshenko became famous as a master of the portrait genre, but his portraits were of two types - the first, quite traditional, which are painted famous scientists, artists, painters and other celebrities of the time. Due to his main job in the military department, Yaroshenko could only paint people of interest to him, not distracted by portraits of rich merchants and nobles, as many other artists, in particular Konstantin Makovsky, who can well be called Nikas Safronov XIX century.
Portrait of artist Nikolai Ge
And there were also artworks on the bayonet of the portrait and genre composition. In them Yaroshenko wrote nihilists, prisoners, revolutionaries, that is, in fact, the enemies of the then regime. Since he was an officer, he had access to prisons, could quietly draw from life the types he needed.
Prisoner
However, Yaroshenko also sympathized with his characters, he painted all the "humiliated and insulted", for example, workers in factories, who for a pittance worked for 10-12 hours a day at heavy and harmful industries and lived in absolutely unbearable conditions. His maximum task was to paint a collective portrait of the epoch, expressed through many different portraits of unknown and famous people.
Stoker
Yaroshenko painted his perhaps most famous artwork, "Life Is Everywhere" in 1888.
Life is everywhere
At first glance, there is nothing special in it - an ordinary prisoner's train, and the car painted with dull green paint occupies a significant part of the picture. At the car window there are people feeding pigeons. Something like this can be seen in life - you can pass by and not notice, but why did this painting make such a strong impression on Yaroshenko's contemporaries and what is so special about it?
Yaroshenko as a true itinerant painted a picture in the genre of critical realism, the main task of which is to draw attention to any problems and vices in society. Based on the carriage and bars on the windows, it is clear that the people in it are prisoners, but they do not look like typical criminals at all, there is rather a connection with the painting "The Holy Family" by the Italian artist of the High Renaissance Correggio. It is clear that a boy with an angelic appearance cannot be a criminal, and it is him that Yaroshenko depicted in the foreground, emphasizing the injustice of the arrest.
Left: Nikolai Yaroshenko. Life is everywhere (fragment). 1888. Right: Correggio. The Holy Family with St. Jerome. 1519.
Other Peredvizhniks, like Vasily Pukirev in his great painting "Unequal Marriage" or Vasily Perov with his famous "Troika", familiar to every Soviet schoolchild, performed the same task in their art - denouncing the vices of society. Well, one should not give away underage girls against their will to elderly rich men, children should not, toiling, carry a heavy barrel and under no circumstances should not arrest and imprison innocent people.
Left: Vasily Pukirev. Unequal marriage. 1861. Right: Vasily Perov. Troika. 1863.
But in the paintings by Pukirev and Perov, the humiliated and oppressed are frankly unhappy, while Yaroshenko went further; at this moment, both the man with a mustache and the shaved peasant with a beard and the intellectual shy of his arresting hairstyle are smiling and laughing. They are happy for the boy who enjoys feeding the pigeons.
Life is Everywhere. excerpt
This is the feeling of inner freedom, people who find themselves in absolutely terrible conditions do not give in to despair, but rejoice in every little thing, live in the moment, here and now. This has a deep meaning - it is known that many prisoners die not from the harshness of prison life, but from despair, the inability to come to terms with their situation, to find joy in absolutely ordinary things. This is very important for mental health. And for some reason I want to believe that a peasant, an intellectual and a blatar with a mustache will be able to survive exile and prison, will endure any trials.
But about the man who turned his back to the window, you can argue - he is clearly despairing, he is no longer happy about anything, and only hopelessness lies ahead. The problem of innocent prisoners, the ability to rejoice in small things, the feeling of inner freedom, hopeless despair - how many layers of meaning there are in one seemingly simple picture! This is what makes it an outstanding work of art.
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