Sleep grandmothers and granddaughters. 1829 Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (1799-1852)

Description of Karl Bryullov’s painting Dream of a Grandmother and Granddaughter

DAWN. SILENCE. COLORED DREAMS.

The painting carries an incredibly cheerful energy and is imbued with a multitude of meanings.

Bright colors pleasing to the eye, creating an atmosphere of lightness and goodness of the moment. The first thing that draws the viewer’s attention is the room, flooded with the morning sunlight, which as if illuminate the secret and intimate dreams of the heroines of this artistic image.

The sun shows the viewer the calm, tranquil, dreamy dream of the grandmother, who sleeps, practically unmoved in her sleep, the blanket evenly covering our heroine. And also the sun showed the powerful energy of the granddaughter, who twists in her sleep from her dynamic dreams, threw the blanket on the floor, and her whole posture of sleep suggests that she wants to close herself off from the unfriendly reality that surrounds her.

The humorous theme lifts the mood. The artist in the image of a nude woman hovering in transparent clothes shows the queen of dreams, with the dreams of heroines hovering in her clothes. Above the grandmother floats a dream from her happy youth, where she is young and flirtatious with a young man like her. Her bright feelings for this man are evidenced by her happy smile in the dream.

That it was her and the young man, the portrait on the bedroom wall told us. My granddaughter’s dreams are not as peaceful. She is plagued by pre-dawn nightmares with crosses and monsters on dragons. Her bed is all messed up, her hands are trying to cover her face against the impending danger, and her legs are ready to run away...

And only a very attentive viewer will notice the daytime clothes, which our heroines left on the chair before going to sleep. Here, the exact opposite of dreams is observed. The grandmother’s dress is black, you immediately understand that in reality her thoughts are not so light and cheerful, but the granddaughter’s day dress is yellow and airy, which also goes against her anxious and terrible dreams, which are full of creepy cemetery landscapes and dragon-jumping monsters. The complete opposite of the external visible characteristics of each person’s worldview and inner passions.

That’s how the artist showed the invisible plan of the dream, it’s as if he penetrated into the innermost thoughts and made them visible.

With his picture the artist makes it clear that not everything visible is true, but on the contrary, which often has quite the opposite meaning. It is as if he is urging the viewer not to judge a man by his clothes.

TO SEE THE INVISIBLE. DREAMS AND REALITY.