Composition: description of the painting by V. A

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This picture is known even to people far from art. We are talking about the famous "Girl with Peaches" by Valentin Serov. Those who are interested in the work of this artist also know that 11-year-old Vera Mamontova, the daughter of a well-known philanthropist and wealthy industrialist, posed for him.

But few people know what happened to the heroine when she grew up, and what a tragic fate awaited her family. Faktrum publishes the story of the same Girl.

Source: Kulturologia.ru

1. Valentin Serov created his most famous work at a young age - at that time he was only 22 years old. In the spring of 1887, he returned from Italy and stayed for a stay at the Abramtsevo estate of Savva Mamontov near Moscow. The artist worked with inspiration and as if in one breath, but at the same time the girl had to pose for a long time.

Serov later wrote about that period:

“All I wanted was freshness, that special freshness that you always feel in nature and you don’t see in pictures. I wrote for more than a month and tortured her, poor thing, to death.

2. The estate in Abramtsevo was a real home of creativity: Turgenev, Antokolsky, Surikov, Korovin were guests here. Vera Mamontova was painted by many artists who visited Abramtsevo: Repin, Vasnetsov, Vrubel also created her portraits. Vrubel endowed her with the features of "Snow Maiden", "Egyptian", Tamara in the illustrations for "Demon". Vasnetsov explained the desire of artists to paint her in this way: "It was the type of a real Russian girl in character, beauty of her face, charm." But the most famous was Serov's painting "Girl with Peaches".

3. The artist painted a portrait of Vera in the dining room, outside of which one could see Abramtsevo Park with an alley named Gogol in honor of the writer who once loved to walk here. In the next room - the Red Drawing Room - writers and artists often gathered.

4. Serov presented the painting to Elizaveta Mamontova, mother of Vera, and the portrait hung for a long time in the room in which it was painted. Later, the painting ended up in the Tretyakov Gallery, and a copy remained in Abramtsevo. After "The Girl with Peaches" they started talking about Serov, and soon he became one of the most fashionable portrait painters. But what was the fate of Vera Mamontova herself?

5. Vera married Alexander Samarin, leader of the Moscow nobility, Minister for Church Affairs. The wedding took place in the church of Boris and Gleb, later destroyed by the Bolsheviks. Now in its place, near the exit from the Arbatskaya metro station, there is a chapel.

6. The marriage was very happy, Vera gave birth to three children, but at the age of 32 her life was suddenly cut short. In a few days, she burned out from severe pneumonia.

7. After her death, Alexander Samarin never married, and in memory of his wife he built the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Averkievo, near their estate. In Soviet times, the temple was devastated and used as a warehouse. Now it has been restored. Vera Mamontova's husband was exiled to the camp in the 1920s, and their daughter Liza went with him. And he died in 1932 in the Gulag.

The main cultural event of the year, no doubt, was the exhibition of paintings by Valentin Serov, arranged by the Tretyakov Gallery for the 150th anniversary of the artist. The main exhibit of the exhibition was "The Girl with Peaches" - Serov's most famous painting, which met every visitor to the Tretyakov Gallery building on Krymsky Val. Especially for the exhibition, the organizers even revived the picture by filming the video “Girl with Peaches”, which received one and a half million views in just one day.

What is the secret of such attractiveness of this picture of Serov?

... The canonical story of the creation of the picture says that on the August day of 1887, 12-year-old Vera Mamontova, distracted from street fun, ran into the living room and sat down at the table, grabbing a peach - these fruits were grown especially for the girl in the Mamontovs' greenhouse in their estate in Abramtsevo. The sight of the girl suddenly impressed the painter Valentin Serov, who was sitting in the same living room, so much that he suggested that the girl paint her portrait. Moreover, Serov himself later recalled: “I wrote for more than a month and exhausted her, poor thing, to death, I really wanted the freshness of painting, with complete completeness, just like the old masters ...”.

But, of course, things were actually a little different.

Verusha was the most beloved daughter of the millionaire and philanthropist Savva Mamontov (in total, the oligarch had five children, and the initial letters of their names were the father's name - Savva: Sergey, Andrey, Vsevolod, Vera and Alexandra). And therefore, to paint portraits of the girl was an honorable duty of all artists who lived in Abramtsevo, using the patronage of Savva Ivanovich. And no other girl in Russia had as many portraits as Vera Mamontova had. And what are these portraits! For example, in Vasnetsov's painting "Alyonushka" it is Vera who sits on a pebble over the smooth surface of the Abramtsevo pond. By the way, this pebble has been preserved in the museum-estate to this day. Vasnetsov also painted her in the image of the Snow Maiden. Ilya Repin portrayed Vera in the painting “They Didn’t Wait” - this is the daughter of a Narodnaya Volya member who returned from hard labor. Vrubel cast Vera's face for his Egyptian sculpture. But the most famous portrait, of course, is “The Girl with Peaches”.

Serov ended up in Mamontov's house as a child - at the age of 13. His childhood can hardly be called happy. Father - Alexander Nikolaevich Serov - was a famous composer and music critic at that time, who married at the age of 43 to his 17-year-old student Valentina Semyonovna Bergman due to an unexpected pregnancy. The scandalous story was quickly hushed up, but the child that appeared clearly weighed on the spouses, preventing them from leading their usual bohemian lifestyle with sprees and friendly feasts. Moreover, if Alexander Nikolayevich’s social circle consisted of intelligent and aristocratic people (for example, he was friends with Turgenev and Nikolai Ge), then the young wife dragged nihilists and outcasts to the house. “There were a lot of shaggy students,” Repin recalled, “the manners of all were unusually cheeky.”

However, the child interfered with the parents only at first, and then they simply stopped paying attention to the boy, locking him in a back room with colored pencils so as not to interfere with the guests' fun. So Valentin Serov began to draw.

When he was 6 years old, his father died. And Valentina Semyonovna, feeling like a free woman, went to Paris. She gave her son to be trained by the artist Ilya Repin, a family friend who also lived in Paris.

Young Serov lived with Repin almost as a family member, accompanying him on all kinds of trips, doing sketches, and copying Repin's canvases the rest of the time - this was his only entertainment. Gradually, Serov became withdrawn and gloomy - character traits that remained in him for the rest of his life. A drawing by Repin depicting Serov at the age of thirteen has been preserved. It is enough just to look at this drawing to understand the character of the boy - a wild, unsociable, frowningly looking intently and stubbornly.

In 1875, Repin introduced his dependent student to the millionaire Mamontov, who planned to implement a grandiose project - to create in Abramtsevo a kind of art center for the creation of primordially Russian art, a unique national style. It is difficult for us, the current ones, who have absorbed the artistic standards of “Russianness” from kindergarten: from Khokhloma to paintings by Bilibin, to understand this. But a hundred and fifty years ago, there were no canons of the “Russian style”: moreover, the very word “Russian” was associated with some long-gone archaism, thick-dog boyar beards in sauerkraut, with bast shoes, caftans and other towels. The aristocracy - that is, the main consumer of art - even preferred to speak French among themselves, study classical Greco-Latin art, order dresses from Italian tailors and read French secular novels. But in the first half of the 19th century, a fashion for romanticism appeared, and it was the romantics who gave rise to the fashion for the revival of the national spirit. This fascination swept across Europe: in France they remembered that they were descendants of the recalcitrant Gauls, in Germany they spoke of the heroic ancient Teutons and established popular archaeological societies. In Russia, the “pseudo-Russian” style in architecture flourished, a great admirer of which was Emperor Alexander III himself. But Savva Mamontov, we recall, earned his capital on the construction of railways with stations under the contracts of the government of the Russian Empire. And it was the stations in those years that were considered a kind of “showcases” of the state, as, for example, airports are considered to be such “showcases” today. That is why it was very important for Mamontov to have his own design bureau. And he entrusted the revival of the “Russian style” to very serious people: initially, the “Abramtsevo circle” included professor of art history Adrian Prakhov, sculptor and academician Mark Antokolsky, Ilya Repin, Vasily Polenov and Viktor Vasnetsov.

Young Serov in this company was a simple apprentice and accustomer, whom Mamontov, out of respect for Repin, allowed to live in the estate. Moreover, the boy was even renamed Anton - that's how all the children of the millionaire began to call him (why Anton? - God knows them), with whom he began to stage home performances. And, as Repin recalled, Serov soon became Savva Ivanovich's favorite actor - because the audience rolled with laughter, watching how a gloomy teenager with an invariably mournful face portrays either a “magic bunny” or a “funny hedgehog”.

In 1880, he entered the Academy of Arts, which he left five years later and went to Italy to look at the work of European masters.

He returned to Russia in 1887 and again came to Abramtsevo. It was necessary to get settled in the "Abramtsevo circle", and for this, the first thing was to effectively attract the attention of Savva Ivanovich.

You know, today the guides in the museum-estate "Abramtsevo" love to breathlessly talk about the selfless love of the oligarch Mamontov for art, his passion for painting and sculpture, his desire to save the world with the help of beauty. We will not repeat this high-flown verbiage, but rather open the memoirs of Vladimir Telyakovsky, director of the imperial theaters, a member of the “Abramtsevo circle”: “There is no doubt that Mamontov has a great merit in gathering a whole galaxy of artists around him. It would seem that he should both love and respect them, meanwhile, the qualities of the Russian merchant Savras often made themselves felt. For example, at dinner, when the famous Vrubel reached out for wine, Mamontov stopped him in front of everyone and said: “Wait a minute, this wine is not for you.” And he pointed to another, cheap one, which stood nearby. Korovin often made Mamontov wait in the front. In general, those of the artists who often endured a lot ... Vrubel, Korovin and Golovin were poor ... Mamontov bought "Spanish flu" from Korovin for a 25-ruble coat. Vrubel Mamontov ordered a panel for 3,000 rubles, and when the panel was ready, and Vrubel came for the money, Mamontov told him: “Here is 25 rubles, get it.” When Vrubel protested, Mamontov told him: "Take it, and then I won't give you anything." I had to take it - Vrubel did not have a penny of money ... ".

But Anton-Valentin knew how to please Savva Ivanovich.

He arrived in Abramtsevo and began to paint a portrait of Vera, trying to express in colors that remnant of harmony that had not yet been dissolved by Russian life - this feeling is familiar to every yesterday's vacationer.

And it was not just a portrait, it was a challenge to the entire "Abramtsevo circle", it was a real artistic protest of Russian "Westernism" against the cult of Russian Asianism, the dominance of all these long-brimmed brocade robes, kokoshniks and caftans, appropriate in some medieval tower, but not in an enlightened European state. A protest that was never heard.

Well, to say that his work made a splash is an understatement. No one expected that the eternally gloomy and unsociable Anton would paint such a sunny picture, so overflowing with joy and light.

Look at the girl. Is this 12-year-old and always restless Verusha, a hooligan tomboy and prima ballerina of her own theater?

Most of all, the girl depicted in the picture resembles Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa: the same mysterious smile, the same light hidden in the eyes, a little ironic and tired. She looks like she's about to say something... What? But more on that later.

And of course, all the "Abramtsevo" inhabitants paid attention to the hidden symbolic subtext of "Girls with Peaches". Look again at the vertical composition, which is formed by two large objects: at the top - a cold white dish with a blue ornament, at the bottom - three juicy bright fruits, between them - the girl herself. (By the way, an interesting fact: today in Abramtsev’s living room there is indeed a white-and-blue plate hanging on the wall, but only this plate was made two years after the picture was painted - that is, there was no plate on the wall at the time the picture was painted.)

Well, in any other picture it would be just a dish and fruit, but in this case we are talking about the artists of the “Abramtsevo circle”, for whom the collection of folk tales by the folklorist A.N. Afanasiev was a real reference book, an inexhaustible source of images and themes for creativity. And for them, the meaning of these symbols was obvious - this is a direct reference to "The Tale of the Silver Saucer and the Liquid Apple" - a work that became a kind of discovery for Russian romantics: it was not without reason that Konstantin Balmont translated this tale into verse for his poetry collection "The Dawn of the Dawn".

Here, of course, it is worth explaining that any person who decides to get acquainted with folk tales - whether Russian, German or French - not from films, but from serious scientific books, will have a very unpleasant discovery: folk tales are least of all like kind cartoons for children with happy ending. On the contrary: these are, as a rule, gloomy and cruel stories about the triumph of death (remember the same “Kolobok” - what kind of happy ending is there ?!). But there are exceptions in these tales that remind us of the power of love and life. “The Tale of the Silver Saucer and the Filled Apple” is just one of them. This is a story about a girl who received a magical gift - a saucer with an apple that can reflect the whole world. This is a kind of model of the Earth with the sun - an apple: “An apple rolls on a saucer, poured on a silver one, and on a silver platter all cities are visible one after another, ships on the seas and regiments in the fields, and mountains height and beauty of heaven; the sun rolls after the sun, the stars gather in a round dance - everything is so beautiful, marvelous - that neither in a fairy tale can be said, nor written with a pen. (Afanasiev himself writes in a special note that in the mythology of the ancient Greeks, this silver dish belonged to the goddess Zara, seated on a golden throne, while the goddess rolled the sun over the dish.)

Out of envy, the sisters killed the girl and hid her corpse in the forest, but the power of her love and the love of her father did the impossible - the girl is resurrected. And the first thing she did was, with tears in her eyes, she asks for forgiveness for her unlucky killer sisters:

You find living water
Here you wake me up
Though killed, I only sleep
Don't kill your sisters
I love my sisters...

Thus, the victory of life over death, according to Balmont, is inextricably linked with all-forgiving love.

It was with this love that the eyes of Vera Mamontova shone on the canvas: only by love will you be saved.

The smile of his daughter became the only treasure that Savva Ivanovich had left when, as a result of political intrigues, he lost all his millions of capital and was imprisoned on charges of theft. And although Mamontov was acquitted at the trial, his business reputation was dealt a mortal blow. The case was closed, but, despite the acquittal, Mamontov lost almost all of his fortune during the time that no one was involved in cases. In fact, he had only a small ceramic workshop left, the income from which was barely enough.

The last years of his life, Savva Mamontov lived in a small wooden house, trying not to appear in public and not even maintain relations with former artist friends. His mistress left him, but Alexander's wife and daughter returned. He was very worried about the death of his beloved Vera - she died in December 1907 from transient pneumonia, having burned out in just three days. After her death, Savva Ivanovich quickly aged, there was not a trace left of the former frequenter of theaters and restaurants. He died in April 1918. There was not a single line in the newspapers about this event.

But I don't want to end the post about such a life-affirming and joyful picture "Girl with Peaches" on a sad note. After all, there were still the main characters of the picture - peaches. Appetizing ripe peaches lying on the table in front of the girl grew up in the greenhouse of the Abramtsevo estate. The greenhouse was a special pride of the owners. They built it in Abramtsevo in 1871, shortly after acquiring the estate. The decision came to the owners spontaneously: greenhouse plants were being sold on a neighboring estate, and the Mamontovs bought fruit-bearing peach and plum trees for next to nothing. For them, two greenhouses were built and an old gardener Mikhail Ivanovich was invited from a neighboring estate. Transplanted with the light hand of Mikhail Ivanovich, peaches and plums in the Mamontovs' greenhouse regularly gave a harvest. - About this from the letters of Savva Ivanovich, one of which is dated February 28, 1873: “Yesterday I went to Abramtsevo ... At Mikh. Iv. (just a golden old man) such an order that you couldn’t wish for better, peaches fade in the first greenhouse, bloom in the second, there is such air that I was simply delighted. There will be a lot of fruit, and peaches and plums, if only the stomachs would be in order.

"Girl with Peaches" Serov wrote all three summer months of 1887, while he was visiting Savva Mamontov in Abramtsevo. He wrote with difficulty: firstly, he barely persuaded Savva's daughter, 12-year-old Verochka Mamontova, to pose, and secondly, she could not sit at the table for hours in the heat without moving. Serov finished work on the portrait in September. The yellowing foliage outside the window and on the table is evidence of the girl's long patience. In addition, autumn maple leaves next to summer peaches seem to remind you that life is fleeting, and you should rejoice while you are young and the sun is shining.

Vera Mamontov. Abramtsevo, 1890s.

Valentin Serov received his primary art education under the guidance of I. E. Repin. He studied with him in the same way that Renaissance artists once studied, working next to the master - often on the same model. I. E. Repin conveyed to the young student his love of life and passion for painting, and they fell on fertile ground.

Valentin Serov. girl with peaches

Then in the life of Valentin Serov there was the Academy of Arts with the Chistyakov teaching system, which combined the best traditions of the academic school and a new, realistic perception and depiction of nature. And it all ended with an acquaintance with classical art in European museums, which V. Serov visited as a child, living with his mother in Paris and Munich. In 1885-1887, he examined them as an adult, professionally understanding painting. Admired and fascinated by Venice, Valentin Serov nevertheless wrote in one of his letters to his bride: "In this century, everything is written that is difficult, nothing encouraging. I want, I want something encouraging, and I will write only encouraging things."

Such a "pleasant" work of art, a work of young happiness and a bright perception of the world, is the "Portrait of V. C. Mamontova". The young artist painted it in the summer of 1887 in Abramtsevo, on the estate of the famous philanthropist Savva Ivanovich Mamontov, where he visited after Italy.

Valentin Serov lived in Abramtsevo as if at home, he was almost a member of the mammoth family. He was known and loved here from the earliest youthful years, he lived here a cheerful and free life. So this time, he did not manage to quickly leave here, although he tried to visit his relatives.

The artist eagerly peered into familiar landscapes. Often he ran away alone, in the morning, without even having breakfast. He walked - and suddenly stopped for a long time at the sight of a sunbeam falling on a flower, at the sight of a shadow descending on the grass from a cloud. He looked closely at how the air becomes in bad weather, how its properties change when it is penetrated by light, how its darkening changes and what shades the shadows lying next to it ... The artist gradually and completely took possession of one thought: "Write as I see , forgetting about everything that was taught. And, of course, to paint in the first place a portrait, not a landscape. "

But adults had no time to pose. The Mammoth boys also grew up, became young people - restless, talkative. You can't force them to sit... More than once, V. Serov caught the eye of the grown-up Verochka Mamontova, whom he knew from birth. She, too, has turned into a cheerful, independent little person, charming with her youthful freshness.

She still loved to play pranks, bullied her artist friend, loved to ride with him or on a boat, and V. Serov spoke more than once about her portrait. This sweet teenage girl was very colorful: bright lips, dark hair, eyes dark as ripe currants with bluish whites. And the skin is tender, a little more fluffy like a child, and now, under the summer tan, it’s completely peach ...

And V. Serov, whom everyone in Abramtsevo called Anton, began to persuade Verochka: "Well, sit down, do yourself a favor ... I'll paint such a portrait, you won't recognize yourself. You'll be beautiful!" And she, sweetly and slyly capricious, answered: "You will torture me ... It's boring to sit, summer ...".

Here, in Abramtsevo, V. Serov painted one of the youngest portraits in Russian painting. Not only because it depicts a 12-year-old girl and that the artist who painted it was young. The main thing was that the childhood happiness of Verochka Mamontova and her serenity coincided with the happiness of the artist himself. He wrote every day, for about three months, but his "torments of creativity" are invisible to the viewer, and it seems that the picture was created in a single burst of happy inspiration.

There is probably no person now who would not know this pictorial work. The portrait of V. Mamontova has become something much more than just a sketch from nature, it is not without reason that the name "Girl with Peaches" has firmly stuck to it. It was precisely a painting, not a portrait, since this canvas outgrew all sorts of ideas about a portrait.

“Everyone remembers,” writes the art critic V. Smirnova-Rakitina, “the corner of a large room flooded with silvery daylight: a swarthy, black-haired girl in a pink blouse with a black pea-sized bow is sitting at the table. The girl has a peach in her hands, the same swarthy pink as her face. On a dazzling white tablecloth lie withering maple leaves, peaches and a silver knife. Outside the window is a bright, bright summer day, tree branches stretch through the glass, and the sun, making its way through their foliage, illuminates both the quiet room and the girl, and antique mahogany furniture...".

The portrait of Verochka Mamontova enchants the viewer with her extraordinary vitality and ideality of the artistic image. This work of a young artist immediately struck many contemporaries with the freshness of light, radiant color, subtle transmission of light and air. Savva Ivanovich Mamontov and everyone who came to Abramtsevo just gasped in front of the picture. Konstantin Korovin also grunted, his colorful skill of Valentin Serov pierced to the depths of his soul.

Everything in this picture is natural and unconstrained, every detail is connected to one another, and all together they create an integral work. The beauty of the girl's face, the poetry of the life image, the light-saturated colorful painting - everything in this work seemed new. Not without reason for the most insightful critics it became clear that in the person of the 22-year-old artist, Russian painting acquired a master of European proportions.

In this small picture, which has retained all the charm and freshness of the etude, two trends, two forces, have organically combined to form a single form of pictorial vision. Every detail in "The Girl with Peaches" is in its place, all the chairs of the winter dining room are painted, the candlesticks on the window, even the figurine of a toy soldier in the back of the room, a china plate on the wall, a garden outside the window in the days of late summer. Nothing can be removed or moved without disturbing the internal balance of the entire canvas.

Everything seems so simple and natural, but there is so much depth and wholeness in this simplicity! As in all these supposedly "accidents", the unique joy of life shines through! With the utmost expressiveness, V. Serov conveyed the light pouring in a silvery stream from the window and filling the room. This light shines on the wall and on the porcelain plate, reflects with glare on the backs of the chairs, lies softly on the tablecloth, glides over the girl's face and hands. And the white color of the tablecloth, the white color of the wall, the white color of the plate suddenly turn out to be completely different, and the shadows, the green reflection of the foliage and the pinkish reliefs of the blouse also fall on them in different ways.

The girl is sitting at the table and is not busy with anything, as if she really sat down for a moment, automatically picked up a peach and holds it, looking at you simply and frankly. But this peace is only momentary, and a passion for frisky movement peeps through it. Even the bow, like a butterfly, seems ready to fly away. And how the girl herself looks like a butterfly: she fluttered into the house for a moment, with the sun and a warm wind, sat on the edge of a chair, illuminating the room with a smile, and immediately flew back to the street, where the summer day was shining with might and main.

Yes, and in the room itself, everything seems to want to break the silence and tranquility. The table "ran" into the depths, dragging the viewer's eye with it. The sonorous rays of the sun are pouring, bringing with them the aroma of the garden, the door to the next room is open ...

That, it would seem, is all that Valentin Serov depicted in his picture. And at the same time, this is a whole novel about people who own a house, a garden, all these things; this is the story of a girl, a story about her character, about her experiences - pure, clear and young. The inner world of the heroine interested the artist not in complex contradictions, not in deep psychological nuances, but precisely in her natural simplicity and chastity. In her soft, but smart and energetic face, V. Serov foresaw insight into the future. Perhaps, without realizing it himself, the artist told in this canvas everything that he knew about the Mamontovs, showed everything that he loved in them - in their family and in their house.

The painting "Girl with Peaches" was in Abramtsevo for a long time, in the same room where it was painted. And then it was transferred to the Tretyakov Gallery, while a copy of this work is currently hanging in Abramtsevo.

"One Hundred Great Paintings" by N. A. Ionina, publishing house "Veche", 2002

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Valentin Alexandrovich Serov(January 7 (19), 1865, St. Petersburg - November 22, 1911, Moscow) - Russian painter and graphic artist, portrait master.