The remarkable Russian landscape painter Vasily Polenov lived in love and harmony with his wife Natalia Yakunchikov for 45 years. However, before that there were two really tragic love stories in his life, about which we wanted to tell in this article.
The first time Polenov truly fell in love, when he was 28 years old - by the standards of the time very late. His closest friend Ilya Repin was already a married man, and in due time he had several children.
Portrait of Ilya Repin
And all his other friends were married people - for example, Savva Morozov. And it is not even that Polenov few people liked or was characterized by a complex character, which was not uncommon among artists, you can remember, for example, melancholic Levitan or completely impractical and unsuited to real life Vrubel.
In the park. A place called Veulle in Normandy.
No, he was handsome, intelligent, talented, pleasant to talk to - a whole lot of advantages. And there was also something aristocratic in it - Polenov, according to the memories of contemporaries, even peeled an orange like a prince.
Therefore, any girl would be happy to have a fleeting affair with him. But only Polenov all this was alien - he is too serious for meaningless flirtation and very tired - affected several years of study at the Faculty of Law, which he graduated in parallel with the Academy of Painting.
Overgrown pond
But now the exhausting study is over, and ahead of six years of boarding, meetings with friends and the opportunity to fully devote himself to his favorite painting. At his friends Prakhovy, he and noticed the 18-year-old beauty Maria Obolenskaya - not by years serious and purposeful girl who is seriously engaged in vocal training and wants to become a singer of international renown. She is alien to meaningless coquetry, she does not talk about obvious trivia - so it is not surprising that the staid and thorough Polenov immediately fell in love with such a charming person. He often accompanies her home, and they have long conversations about music, which was a real passion of Mary. Even closer they are united by the need to help two Russian girls-idealists who came to conquer Europe, but fell ill with tuberculosis and were left without money.
Grandmother's garden
Polenov all wanted to explain with Mary in love, but could not make up his mind to do so. Days passed after days, and one day Maria contracted measles from the Mamontov children, in whose company she spent a lot of time. And the local obtuse doctor also vaccinated her against smallpox. Pneumonia started, and in a few days the girl died.
Posthumous monument to Maria Obolenskaya
Polenov instead of the required 6 years lived abroad only three - he wanted to return to his homeland, and his loved ones, in particular his sister Vera, wrote: "heavy news, I do not know her, but I cry for her as if she was my best friend. It is impossible to comfort, you can only share such a grief". He began to live in Moscow and once saw from the window of his rented apartment the very Moscow courtyard, which made him a famous artist.
Moscow courtyard
And Polenov went into artwork, wrote a lot of paintings, traveled to nature, trying to find the most picturesque views. And then he took a train to Moscow, in the compartment entered a girl who introduced herself and said that she wanted to go to the big city, to study at the conservatory and become a famous singer. It was as if fate had once again given the opportunity to meet Maria Obolenskaya, this time just in a different guise. But it turned out that there were more differences between the girls than similarities.
Ilya Repin. Portrait of Maria Klementieva.
Klementieva turned out to be a real femme fatale. With a career as a singer, she had everything going great, but Klementieva herself liked to play in love, rather than really love. And such a relationship with her and Polenov - some meaningless, exhausting the soul draggomotina. She was surrounded by crowds of rich admirers, because Klementieva tried to squeeze the maximum out of this situation - made novels, but at the same time maintained the appearance of relations with Polenov. And he loved her sincerely and passionately, wrote beautiful long letters. But all this was useless. Klementieva married a jurist Sergei Muromtsev - a man of wealth and influence, who later became chairman of the City Duma.
Egyptian girl.
And only the third woman, Natalia Yakunchikova, would sincerely love Polenov, with her he would live for 45 years, and his creativity and happiness would become the meaning of her life. She was perhaps the most devoted wife of Russian artists.
Portrait of N.V.Yakunchikova (Polenova) behind the sketch.
The Polenovs bought the Borok estate, where they will use their own money to hire workers and buy material for the school and church, pay school teachers, and organize a folk theater. Polenov will write for the peasants, who have never been farther than his county, canvases, which will display a kind of circumnavigation of all continents. He sincerely tried to make their lives a little better, brighter and more interesting, so that it somehow resembled his amazing paintings.
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