Fedotov's painting "Fresh Cavalier": description. Composition based on the painting by P.A.

“I wanted to get there several times, why all these differences are happening. Why am I a titular counselor, why am I a titular counselor? Maybe I'm not a titular advisor at all? Perhaps I am some kind of count or general, but this is the only way I seem to be a titular adviser. Perhaps I myself do not yet know who I am. After all, there are so many examples from history: some simple one, not that a nobleman, but just some bourgeois or even a peasant - and suddenly it is revealed that he is some nobleman or a baron, or whatever ... "

So it seems that with these words, the small face of Gogol's Poprishchina, clenched into a fist, is suddenly smoothed out, blissful contentment spreads over him, a lively shine lights up in his eyes, and he becomes taller, and the figure is different - as if he had thrown off his shoulders together with a worn-out uniform, a feeling of one's own insignificance, oppression, and its wretchedness ...

The plot of the painting "Fresh Cavalier"

Just why did we remember the Gogol hero, considering Fedotov's painting "Fresh Cavalier"? Here we have an official who celebrated the receipt of the order. In the morning after the feast, having not yet slept properly, he put on his new dressing gown and stood in a pose in front of the cook.

Fedotov, apparently, was occupied with a completely different plot. But what is a plot for a true artist! Isn't this a reason, a purely accidental opportunity to sculpt such characters, to reveal such aspects of human nature in order to make people compassionate, indignant, despise those they encounter as living creatures in a hundred and two hundred years ...

Both Poprishchin and Fedotov's "cavalier" are kindred, close to us. One manic passion possesses their souls: "- Maybe I am not a titular councilor at all?"

It was said about Fedotov that for some time now he began to live as a recluse. I rented some kind of kennel on the outskirts of Petersburg, damp, with the owner's half of the fumes coming, the children crying behind the wall - and it works in such a way that it is scary to look: in the evening and at night - with lamps, during the day - in sunlight.

When one of his old acquaintances expressed his surprise, Fedotov eagerly began to talk about the advantages of his present life. He did not notice the inconveniences, they simply did not exist for him. But here, on the 21st line of Vasilievsky Island, his natural inclination for observation finds constant food, there is more than enough material for creativity - his heroes live all around.

It was now that he was determined to start working in oils, to present his first canvases to the public. Of course, these will be pictures of manners, scenes that he spied on in life: one called "The Consequences of the Revel", the second "The Humpbacked Groom" (as the paintings "The Fresh Cavalier" and "The Choppy Bride" were originally called).

During the short hours of rest Fedotov suffered from pain in his eyes. He put a wet towel to his head and thought about his heroes, first of all about the "gentleman". The life of officials was familiar to him from childhood, from his parents' house in Moscow.

Here, in Petersburg, there is a different spirit - that of the capital. New acquaintances of the artist from those who served in different departments, as if they were born officials. How they sit down at a party, take a chair, how they talk to the janitor, how they pay off the cabman - in all manners, gestures, one could guess their rank and possible promotion. Their faces, when they cowardly into the department in the morning, wrapping themselves in shabby overcoats, reflect one service concern, fear of reprimand, and at the same time a kind of self-satisfaction. It is contentment ... The desire for all kinds of abstract benefits, they regard, of course, stupidity.

And among them there are funny ones, at least his "gentleman".

Description of the main character of the picture

Fedotov arranged the picture in such a way, saturating it with details so that one could read it as a story about the life of this person, a detailed story and, as it were, leading the viewer into the depths of the picture, so that the viewer was imbued with the very atmosphere of what was happening, so that he felt like an eyewitness - as if by chance the door to opened it to a neighbor - and this is what appeared to his eyes. It is tempting and instructive at the same time. Yes, the scene presented to the eyes should teach. The artist believed that he could correct manners, influence human souls.

When friends once gathered at Fedotov's, and among them the writer A. Druzhinin, the artist began to explain and interpret the meaning of the canvases, as he himself understood them: "an indiscriminate life." Yes, both in "The Consequences of the Revel" and in "The Humpbacked Bridegroom" every spectator should see the harm from an indiscriminate life.

Until her gray hair, the bride was sorting out the grooms and now she has to opt for a hunchbacked celadon. And the official! Here he stands in the pose of the Roman emperor, moreover, barefoot and in papillotes. The cook has such power over him that she laughs in the face and pokes her holey boot almost in the nose. Under the table, a sleeping companion is a policeman. On the floor are the remains of a feast and a rare guest in the house - a book. Of course, this is Bulgarin's Ivan Vyzhigin. “Where a bad connection starts, there is dirt on a holiday,” concluded Fedotov ...

In spite of all the difficult circumstances of life, he believed in the initially good nature of people, in the possibility of degeneration of the most evil and vicious of them; moral filth, vulgarity, he believed, - a consequence of disrespect for oneself.
With his art, he dreamed of returning a person to a person.

Friends liked the picture about the official to the extreme for its vitality, naturalness. Talking details that did not overshadow the whole, humor and this feature - to captivate, lure into the depths of the picture, to make you feel the atmosphere of the event. It seemed to them that Fedotov's moralizing, edifying interpretation did not reveal the entire meaning of the canvas. And time has confirmed it.

Fedotov exhibited his paintings to the public in 1847. The success of Revel was so great that it was decided to remove the lithograph from the canvas. This made Fedotov unusually happy, because everyone can buy a lithograph, which means that the picture will be able to exert its influence on many - this is what he was striving for.

It didn't work out. Censorship demanded to remove the order from the official's robe, the attitude to which was considered disrespectful. The artist tries to make a sketch and realizes that the meaning, the whole point of the picture, is lost. He gave up lithography.

This story became known outside the artistic circles, and when Fedotov exhibited the canvas for the second time in 1849 - and at that time the public's mood was fueled by the events of the French Revolution - they saw in the picture a kind of challenge to the bureaucratic apparatus of tsarist Russia, exposure of the social evil of modern life.

The critic V.V. Stasov wrote: “Before you is an old-fashioned, stiff nature, a corrupt bribe-taker, a soulless slave of his boss, no longer thinking about anything, except that he will give him money and a cross in his buttonhole. He is ferocious and ruthless, he will drown anyone and whatever you want - and not a single fold on his rhinoceros skin will tremble. Anger, arrogance, heartlessness, idolization of the order as the highest and categorical argument, completely vulgarized life - all this is present on this face, in this pose and figure of an inveterate official. "

... Today we understand the depth of the generalization given by the image of the "gentleman", we understand that the genius of Fedotov, undoubtedly, came into contact with the genius of Gogol. We are pierced by compassion and "the poverty of a poor man" for whom happiness in the form of a new greatcoat turns out to be an unbearable burden, and we understand that on the basis of the same spiritual poverty, or rather, complete lack of spirituality, oppression of an unfree person, mania grows.

"Why am I a titular counselor and why on earth am I a titular counselor? .." Oh, how terrible this face is, what an unnatural grimace it distorts!

Gogolevsky Poprishchina, who cut his new uniform into a mantle, is removed and isolated by society. Fedotovsky's hero will probably prosper, rent a lighter apartment for himself, take another cook, and certainly no one will even in their hearts say, "Crazy!" And meanwhile - look closely - the same inhuman face of a maniac.

The passion for distinction, for rank, for power, lurking latently and growing more and more into a poor, squalid life, eats up and destroys a person.

We peer into "Fresh Cavalier" Fedotov, a whole layer of life is exposed. The physiognomy of past centuries is outlined with plastic clarity, and in all the depth of generalization a pitiful type of complacency arises before us,

Pavel Andreevich Fedotov was an incredibly talented person. He had a good ear, sang, played music, composed music. While studying at the Moscow Cadet School, he achieved such success that he was among the four best students. However, the passion for painting won out over everything. Already while serving in the Finnish regiment, Pavel enrolled in the classes of the Imperial Academy of Arts under the guidance of the professor of battle painting Alexander Sauerweid.

For study, he turned out to be too adult, which another teacher of the academy Karl Bryullov did not fail to tell him about. In those days, art began to be taught early, usually between the ages of nine and eleven. And Fedotov has long stepped over this line ... But he diligently and worked hard. Soon he began to make good watercolors. The first work on display for the audience was the water-color Meeting of the Grand Duke.

Its theme was suggested by the meeting of the guardsmen with the Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich in the Krasnoselsky camp, seen by the young artist, who joyfully greeted the high person. These emotions struck the future painter and he managed to create a masterpiece. His Highness liked the picture, Fedotov was even presented with a diamond ring. With this award, according to the artist, "artistic pride was finally imprinted in his soul."

However, the teachers of Pavel Andreevich were not satisfied with the work of the aspiring artist. They wanted to get from him the slenderness and refinement in the image of the soldiers, which was required from the servicemen at the May parades.

One artist guessed the other

Fedotov did not like all this, for which he listened to constant remarks. Only at home did he take away his soul, depicting the most mundane scenes, illuminated by good-natured humor. As a result, what Bryullov and Sauerweid did not understand, Ivan Andreevich Krylov understood. The fabulist accidentally saw the sketches of the young painter and wrote him a letter, urging him to leave horses and soldiers forever and get down to the real thing - the genre. One artist sensitively guessed the other.

Fedotov believed the fabulist and left the Academy. Now it is difficult to imagine how his fate would have developed if he had not listened to Ivan Andreevich. And the artist would not have left the same mark in Russian painting as Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin in literature. He was one of the first painters of the mid-19th century to resolutely embark on the path of critical realism and began to openly denounce the vices of Russian reality.

High mark

In 1846, the artist painted the first painting in a new genre, which he decided to present to the professors. This picture was called "Fresh Cavalier". It is also known as "The Morning of the Official Who Received the First Cross" and "The Consequences of the Revel". The work on it was hard. “This is my first chick, which I“ nursed ”with various amendments for about nine months,” Fedotov wrote in his diary.

He showed the finished painting together with the second work - "The Choppy Bride" at the Academy. And a miracle happened - Karl Bryullov, who had not particularly welcomed Pavel Andreevich before, gave his canvases the highest praise. By the Council of the Academy, he was nominated for the title of academician and assigned a monetary allowance. This allowed Fedotov to continue the picture he had begun, "The Major's Matchmaking." In 1848, she appeared at an academic exhibition with The Fresh Cavalier and The Discerning Bride.

The next exhibition, along with the fame, brought the censorship attention. It was forbidden to remove lithographs from the "Fresh Cavalier" because of the irreverent image of the order, and it was impossible to remove the order from the picture without destroying its plot. In a letter to the censor Mikhail Musin-Pushkin, Fedotov wrote: “… where there is constant poverty and deprivation, there the expression of the joy of the award will reach childishness to rush with it day and night. ... stars are worn on robes, and this is only a sign that they value them. "

However, a request for permission to distribute the painting “as it was” was refused.

Here is what Fedotov wrote in his diary when he came from the Censorship Committee about the painting: “Morning after the feast on the occasion of the received order. The new gentleman could not stand it, he put on his new dressing-gown a little light and proudly recalls his importance to the cook. But she mockingly shows him the only, but even then worn and perforated boots, which she carried to clean. Scraps and fragments of yesterday's feast are scattered on the floor, and under the table in the background one can see a gentleman awakening, probably also remaining on the battlefield, but one of those who stick with a passport to passers-by. The cook's waist does not give the owner the right to have guests of the best tone. "Where a bad connection starts, there is a great holiday - dirt."

Pavel Fedotov gave a certain amount of his sympathy to the cook in his work. Nice looking, neat young woman, with a round, common face. A scarf tied around her head says she is not married. Married women in those days wore a warrior on their heads. Judging by the belly, she's expecting a baby. One can only guess who his father is.

For the first time Pavel Fedotov paints "Fresh Cavalier" in oil. Perhaps that is why the work on it was carried out for quite a long time, although the idea was formed a long time ago. The new technique contributed to the emergence of a new impression - complete realism, materiality of the depicted world. The artist worked on the picture as if he were painting a miniature, paying attention to the smallest details, leaving not a single fragment of space empty. By the way, critics later reproached him for this.

Poor official

As soon as the cavalier was not called by critics: "unbridled boor", "soulless official-careerist." After many years, the critic Vladimir Stasov burst out with an angry tirade: “... before you is a stupid, rigid nature, a corrupt bribe-taker, a soulless slave of his boss, no longer thinking about anything, except that he will give him money and a cross in his buttonhole. He is fierce and ruthless, he will drown whoever and what he wants, and not a single fold in his rhinocerian skin will tremble. Anger, arrogance, heartlessness, idolization of the order as the highest and peremptory argument, life completely vulgarized. "

However, Fedotov did not agree with him. He called his hero "a poor official" and even a "toiler" "with little pay", experiencing "constant poverty and deprivation." It is difficult to argue with the latter - the interior of his home, which is at the same time a bedroom, study and dining room, is rather poor. This little man has found himself someone even smaller, over whom he can ascend ...

He, of course, is not Akaki Akakievich from Gogol's "Overcoat". He has a small award, which entitles him to a number of privileges, in particular, to receive the nobility. Thus, receiving this lowest order in the Russian award system was very attractive for all officials and their family members.

The gentleman missed his chance

Thanks to Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, the official became a central figure in Russian literature of the 1830s-1850s. He was made hardly the only theme for vaudeville, comedies, novellas, satirical scenes and more. Even though they laughed at the official, they felt compassion and sympathy for him. After all, he was tormented by the powerful of this world and he did not have the right to vote at all.

Thanks to Pavel Fedotov, it became possible to see the image of this small performer on the canvas. By the way, today the topic raised in the middle of the 19th century sounds no less relevant. But among the writers there is no Gogol capable of describing the sufferings of a modern official, for example, from the council, and there is no Fedotov, who, with his usual dose of irony, would draw a local official with a letter of thanks in his hands from another official, higher in his rank. Cash prizes and serious awards are received by the management ...

The painting was painted in 1846. And in 1845, the awarding of the Order of Stanislav was suspended. So it is likely that the cook's laughter, which can be clearly heard from the canvas, just indicates that the broken girl knows the whole truth. They are no longer awarded and the "fresh gentleman" missed his only chance to change his life.

The genres of his paintings are varied.

Pavel Fedotov influenced the development of the fine arts and went down in history as a talented artist who made important steps in the development of Russian painting.

The genres of his paintings are quite diverse, ranging from portraits, genre scenes and ending with battle canvases. Particular attention is paid to those written in his characteristic style of satire or critical realism. In them, he exposes human weaknesses and the very essence of humanity. These canvases are witty, and during the life of the master they were a real revelation. Genre scenes where vulgarity, stupidity and, in general, different sides of human weakness are ridiculed, were an innovation in Russian art of the 19th century.

However, the artist's adherence to principles, along with the satirical orientation of creativity, aroused increased attention from the censorship. As a result, patrons of art who had previously favored him began to turn away from Fedotov. And then health problems began: his eyesight worsened, headaches became more frequent, he suffered from rush of blood to his head ... This is why his character changed for the worse.

Fedotov died forgotten by everyone except friends

Fedotov's life ended tragically. In the spring of 1852, Pavel Andreevich showed signs of an acute mental disorder. And soon the academy was informed from the police that "a madman who says that he is an artist Fedotov is being held in the unit."

Friends and the bosses of the Academy placed Fedotov in one of the private hospitals in St. Petersburg for the mentally ill. The sovereign granted 500 rubles for his maintenance in this institution. The disease progressed rapidly. In the fall of 1852, acquaintances procured the transfer of Pavel Andreevich to the All Sorrows Hospital on the Peterhof highway. Here Fedotov died on November 14 of the same year, forgotten by everyone except for a few close friends.

He was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox cemetery in the uniform of the captain of the Finnish Life Guards regiment. The censorship committee has banned the publication of the news of the death of Pavel Andreevich in the press.

Natalia Shvets

Reproduction of Pavel Fedotov's painting "Fresh Cavalier"

Fresh Cavalier (Morning of the official who received the first cross) is the first oil painting he painted in his life, the first completed painting.
Many, including the art critic Stasov, saw in the depicted official a despot, a bloodsucker and a bribe-taker. But Fedotov's hero is a small fry. The artist himself insisted on this, calling him a "poor official" and even a "toiler" "with little pay", experiencing "constantly scarcity and deprivation." This is too frankly evident from the picture itself - from mismatched furniture, mostly "white wood", from a plank floor, a tattered dressing gown and mercilessly worn boots. It is clear that he has only one room - a bedroom, an office, and a dining room; it is clear that the cook is not his own, but the master's. But he is not one of the last - so he grabbed the medal, and went broke for a feast, but still he is poor and pitiful. This is a small man, all the ambition of which is only enough to show off in front of the cook.
Fedotov gave a certain amount of his sympathy to the cook. A not bad-looking, neat woman, with a pleasantly rounded common-people face, with all her appearance showing the opposite of the ragged owner and his behavior, looks at him from the position of an outsider and spotless observer. The cook is not afraid of the owner, looks at him with a sneer and hands him a torn boot.
"Where a bad connection started, there is dirt on the great holiday" - wrote about this picture Fedotov, apparently hinting at the pregnancy of the cook, whose waist is suspiciously rounded.
The owner, on the other hand, has decisively lost what allows him to be treated with any kind of affection. He was filled with swagger and anger, bristled. The ambitiousness of the boor, who wants to put the cook in his place, rushes out of him, disfiguring, really, not bad features of his face.
The pathetic official stands in the pose of an ancient hero, with the gesture of an orator bringing his right hand to his chest (to the place where the ill-fated order hangs), and with his left, rested on the side, deftly picking up the folds of a spacious robe, as if it were not a robe, but a toga. There is something classic, Greco-Roman in his very pose with the body resting on one leg, in the position of his head slowly turned towards us in profile and proudly thrown back, in his bare feet protruding from under his robe, and even shreds of papillots sticking out of his hair is like a laurel wreath.
One must think that the official felt himself to be just such victorious, majestic and proud to the point of arrogance. But the ancient hero, ascended among broken chairs, empty bottles and shards, could only be ridiculous, and humiliatingly ridiculous - all the squalor of his ambitions crawled out.
The disorder that reigns in the room is fantastic - the most unbridled revelry could not have produced it: everything is scattered, broken, upside down. Not only is the smoking pipe broken - so the strings of the guitar are torn, and the chair is mutilated, and herring tails are lying on the floor next to the bottles, with shards from a crushed plate, with an open book (the name of the author, Faddey Bulgarin, carefully written on the first page, - another reproach to the owner).

Pavel Andreevich Fedotov (1815-1852) Fresh Cavalier (or "The Morning of the Official Who Received the First Cross", or "The Consequences of the Revel"). 1846 Oil on canvas. 48.2 × 42.5 cm Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

On the painting "Fresh Cavalier"–– a squandered nobleman who received a tertiary order. But what a gulf of importance! In the morning, with his hair curled on a newspaper, not having slept through after a drinking bout, he puts on the order on a greasy robe and, bragging to the maid, puffs out like a turkey! The maid is not inclined to admire them. She mockingly gives the "nobility" the boots he threw outside the door, and under the table, the owner's yesterday's drinking companion awakens with agony.

The painting "Fresh Cavalier" Fedotov sent to his idol Karl Pavlovich Bryullov for trial. A few days later he was invited to him.

Sick, pale, gloomy Bryullov sat in Voltaire's armchair.

- That you have not been seen for a long time? –– was his first question.

- I did not dare to disturb ...

- On the contrary, your picture gave me great pleasure, and, therefore, relief. And I congratulate you, you overtook me! Why have you never shown anything?

- I have not studied much yet, I have not copied anyone yet ...

- This is something that was not copied, and your happiness! You have discovered a new direction in painting - social satire; Russian art did not know such works before you.

An appeal to completely new topics, a critical attitude to reality, a new creative method - Fedotov raised genre painting to the level of social significance! The Council of the Academy of Arts unanimously recognized Fedotov as an academician.

Nina Pavlovna Boyko. Stories of famous canvases: essays on Russian painting. Perm, 2012

*****

Morning after the feast on the occasion of the received order. The new gentleman could not stand it: how did the light put on his new dressing gown and proudly reminds his importance to the cook, but she mockingly shows him the only, but even then worn and perforated boots, which she carried to clean.

Pavel Andreevich Fedotov (1815-1852) Fresh Cavalier, 1846 Fragment

Scraps and fragments of yesterday's feast are scattered on the floor, and under the table in the background one can see an awakening, probably remaining on the battlefield, also a cavalier, but one of those who stick with passports to visitors. The cook's waist does not give the owner the right to have guests of the best tone.

Some of the paintings I like because they sincerely show life from the outside with humor. So artists take on the responsibility of teaching all the subtleties of psychology to young inexperienced generations. One of these paintings belongs to P.A. Fedotov. What vividly illustrates the image of the protagonist and his environment? What attracts me to the work of the famous painter?

The light falls on a young man who, having received the order the day before, was having fun, so much so that his room now resembles a wretched hovel of a drunkard. A guitar with torn strings, empty bottles lying on the floor, all these attributes of the past happy holiday, testify to the correctness of my assumptions. The maid arrives, laughing at him, reprimanding him for the mess, and showing him the holes in his boots. The protagonist pays no attention to her words. Having received the order, he became proud. He sticks out his lower lip like a child and points to his robe, where his award hangs on his chest. With that, he said everything. And he does not intend to stoop to pay his precious attention to such a low person. Nor did she decree him.

The appearance of an official says that this person is only interested in how he looks. No matter how drunk he was yesterday, he did not forget to "decorate" his head with papillots. This character trait is evidenced by the presence on the table of a mirror, curling irons, combs and other hygiene products. Right there on the newspaper is a sliced ​​sausage and a decanter with something to drink.

The whole room is littered like confetti with fragments of a broken plate, parts of a broken chair. It is not clear how a cat and a cage with a bird appeared in this bustle. But they also complemented the interior of the cramped room. Another figure explains the scope of the holiday and the personality of the main character of the picture - a colleague of our official, who fell asleep under a work table. The artist's satire is always relevant. And although it is fun to look at the picture, one has only to think about the fact that such a hero lives at all times, and he can be found in any millennium, it immediately becomes sad.