Exhibition of one painting for the 155th anniversary of the birth of Vasily Nikitich Meshkov (1867 - 1946) "Spring is Coming" Automatic translate

Almost every work of painting has its own artistic context, the environment that brought it to life. The plot may at first glance seem mundane and random, like a photograph taken in a hurry. But behind this deceptive impression, there may be a composition that reflects the life and even the way of life of a bygone era, along with their perception of the artist.

The question naturally arises: who was the author of this picture? Vasily Nikitich Meshkov (1867 - 1946), an artist with a very complex and unusual fate. He was born in the city of Yelets in the family of a baker and miller, who died when his son was four years old. The mother went to the convent of the Sign, where she donated all her fortune, and the boy was brought up by a local priest, who later assigned him to the bursa. After graduating from a three-year school. Vasily wandered around the monasteries. He received his first drawing lessons from the artist M. I. Gorshkov. In 1882-1889. studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under the guidance of E. S. Sorokin, I. M. Pryanishnikov and especially V. D. Polenov. In 1889-1890. continued his education at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts under P. P. Chistyakov.

In 1893, VN Meshkov became a member of the Moscow Association of Artists. After 1917, he worked in the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquity under the Moscow City Council. Since 1922 he has been a member of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. He taught at his own school of painting and drawing in Moscow (1892-1917) and at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad (1937-1940). Among his students are B. N. Yakovlev, V. N. Yakovlev, P. M. Shukhmin, his son, landscape painter V. V. Meshkov.

In the early period of his work, V. N. Meshkov painted genre paintings in the spirit of the late Wanderers: “Dentistry” (1891), “Evening Serenade” (1893), “At the Lamp” (1895), “Alien Child” (1897), “ In the Morning (1897), Blinded Artist (1898). Then he became widely known as a portrait painter, especially active in the 1930s. His works convey the individual psychological traits of a person, reveal his social appearance, and are distinguished by an accurate drawing and expressive facial modeling.

The canvas “Spring is Coming” (1901) is adjacent to the master’s early genre scenes. A scene is presented in a house on the embankment of the Moskva River, overlooking the Simonov Monastery, in a darkened interior, lit only by a window, with children sitting on a wide windowsill, watching the ice drift. The excited state of the kids is not transmitted to the teenage boy and does not affect the old woman, immersed in her thoughts, sitting in an armchair. In essence, the theme of fast-flowing time is being developed.