Choosy Bride a short description of the painting. Description of the painting "Choosy Bride" Fedotov

Pavel Fedotov's painting "The Choppy Bride" was written in 1847. With this painting Fedotov paid tribute to the memory of the fabulist Krylov three years after his death. As a basis, the artist took Krylov's fable of the same name about a fastidious beauty who for several years refused to all the suitors wooing her, until she caught herself, drawing attention to her fading skin ...

Beauty, until it faded at all,

For the first one who grabbed her, I went,

And I'm glad, I was already glad,

That she was a cripple.

Attention is drawn to the unnatural emotional expression on the faces of the depicted: courtesy of the indulgence of a middle-aged lady and a plea for the opportunity to be with her by an already middle-aged gentleman, who understands that his chances are small: the groom is disgusting outwardly. However, the artist shows the bride's clear interest in another contender for her hand. Realizing the need for her consent this time, because she apparently had no choice left, she pretends to think about it before entrusting herself to this ugly old man, although it is obvious that she has already made a decision, the announcement of which her parents are eagerly awaiting. watching the process outside the door. The groom's chic clothes - an expensive jacket, a shiny top hat, patent leather shoes - attracts them much more than sincere feelings, and guarantees a "successful marriage."

The artist emphasizes the outward ugliness of the groom with the moral image of his chosen one. The abundance of makeup on her face betrays a desire to please and avoid rejection on his part.

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Painting by Pavel Fedotov Choosy bride: description, biography of the artist, customer reviews, other works of the author. A large catalog of paintings by Pavel Fedotov on the website of the BigArtShop online store.

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Pavel Andreevich Fedotov was born in Moscow in 1815 into the family of a titular councilor. His father during the time of Catherine served in the army, upon retirement he received the rank of lieutenant and nobility.

Pavel, at the age of 11, was determined by his father to the First Moscow Cadet Corps, where he showed aptitude for military service, and in 1830 he was promoted to non-commissioned officer, and in 1832 - to sergeant major, and in the same year he graduated with honors ...

During his studies, he was fond of mathematics and chemistry, and in his free time - drawing.

In 1833 Fedotov was promoted to the first officer's rank, in 1834 he was sent with the rank of warrant officer to serve in the Life Guards Finland Regiment in St. Petersburg, where he served for 10 years.

After three years of service, the young officer began attending evening drawing lessons at the Academy of Arts, practicing at home, drawing portraits of his colleagues, scenes of regimental life, and cartoons. The portraits turned out to be very similar, but the portrait of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, whose images were willingly bought, came out especially well from under Fedotov's brush.

In the summer of 1837, Fedotov painted a watercolor painting "The Meeting of the Grand Duke", for which the prince himself granted the artist a diamond ring. With this award, according to Fedotov, "artistic pride was finally imprinted in his soul." After that, the artist began the painting "Consecration of the Banners in the Winter Palace, Renovated after the Fire." The still unfinished painting was presented to the Grand Duke, who in turn showed it to his august brother, which resulted in the highest command: “to grant the drawing officer the voluntary right to leave the service and devote himself to painting with a content of 100 rubles. in banknotes per month ".

After much deliberation, Pavel Andreevich decided to take advantage of the royal favor: he submitted a letter of resignation, and in 1844 he was dismissed with the rank of captain and the right to wear a military uniform.

Despite the fact that now he had to live on a meager pension, his love of art helped to persistently go towards his goal - to become a real artist.

At first, Pavel Andreevich chose the battle genre for himself, but later found his true vocation in genre painting.

The fabulist Krylov helped the artist to make his choice, who saw some of Fedotov's works and advised him to take up genre painting. Having obeyed this advice, Fedotov painted in oil, one after the other, two paintings: "The Fresh Cavalier" and "Choosy Bride" and showed them to Bryullov, the all-powerful in those years at the Academy of Arts, who was delighted. The Council of the Academy nominated Fedotov for the title of academician and received a monetary allowance, which allowed him to continue the picture he had begun, "The Matchmaking of a Major"

After the exhibition of this painting, the Council of the Academy unanimously recognized the artist as an academician, the name of Fedotov became known to the general public, and laudatory articles from critics appeared in magazines. Simultaneously with "The Major's Matchmaking" a poem became known, which explained the meaning of this picture, composed by the artist himself. Then it turned out that from a young age Fedotov loved to write poetry, fables, romances, which he himself transposed to music ...

However, despite the fact that by the beginning of the 1850s the artist had received well-deserved recognition, his success was overshadowed by the increased attention of censorship, which caused the satirical orientation of Fedotov's work and his adherence to principles. Patrons of art began to turn away from Fedotov.

Concerns and disappointment, together with the constant strain of the mind, hands and eyes, especially when working in the evening and at night, had a devastating effect on Pavel Andreevich's health. The artist's eyesight deteriorated, he began to suffer from rush of blood to the brain, frequent headaches, grew old beyond his years, and an increasingly noticeable change took place in his very character: cheerfulness and sociability were replaced by thoughtfulness and silence.

In the spring of 1852, Pavel Andreevich showed signs of an acute mental disorder. The people around him began to consider him crazy.

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

The texture of the canvas, high-quality paints and large-format printing allow our reproductions by Pavel Fedotov to match the original. The canvas will be stretched onto a special stretcher, after which the picture can be framed in the frame of your choice.

The picture "The Choosy Bride" was painted by PA Fedotov in 1847. The painter borrowed its plot from Krylov. By the way, the picture itself was created with the intention of honoring the memory of the great fabulist, who recently died, whose work Fedotov put extremely high.

The main character of the picture is a fastidious and arrogant old maid. From year to year, she refused all applicants for her hand and heart, and only caught herself when the line of suitors melted away. Now she is glad to any bridegroom, even a cripple.

Before us is an old maid and a smartly dressed hunchback, offering her his hand. Fedotov shows the decisive moment of the explanation. Obviously, this explanation will be followed by a marriage-transaction, so characteristic of the aristocratic environment. The outward ugliness of the groom, thirsty for wealth, is balanced by the moral ugliness of the bride. Parents peeping from behind the curtains exacerbate the feeling of hypocrisy and falsehood.

The Choosy Bride painting vividly demonstrated the artist's pictorial skill. Fedotov masterfully conveys the play of the fabric of the bride's dress, the shine of gilded frames and the texture of wooden surfaces. All furnishings of the room are necessary and appropriate. For example, a top hat with gloves overturned by a playful groom aggravates the comic situation.

In The Choosy Bride, Fedotov demonstrated an excellent knowledge of morals and the ability to create accurate psychological portraits. The painter is by no means inclined to treat his characters with sympathy - rather, their images are permeated with merciless satire.

In addition to describing the painting by P. A. Fedotov "The Choppy Bride", our site contains many other descriptions of paintings by various artists, which can be used both in preparation for writing an essay on the painting, and simply for a more complete acquaintance with the work of famous masters of the past.

First, a bike read somewhere. The father says to his son: "Let's go today to the Gogol Museum, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a very funny writer." And now the father walks between the windows, and the boy trails behind him and whines: "Dad, I'm not funny ... I'm not funny! Not-funny!"

In the Russian Museum, in front of Pavel Fedotov's painting "The Matchmaking of a Major", everyone becomes ridiculous. I specifically watched: the most melancholy spectators' faces light up with sudden smiles. Either they rejoice at recognition - this work was widely replicated, even on a postage stamp. Either the plot itself amuses. He really cannot but amuse.

At the time of Fedotov, genre paintings were considered entertaining, low-quality art. The top of the hierarchy was occupied by historical canvases, biblical and antique subjects. And everything that is "about life" - these are topics that are not worthy of a real artist.

It's nice, after all, that everyone writes as he hears. What if from the adorable Pavel Fedotov, who has been delighting us with the "Choosy Bride", "Breakfast of an Aristocrat", "Fresh Cavalier" for almost two hundred years, there were only paintings like "Meeting of the Grand Duke in the Life Guards Finland Regiment" or "Transition of Jaegers wade on maneuvers. "

But life is an amazingly wise thing: it washed away all these semi-official constructions with scenes of shabby life. It was they - clumsy, funny, sometimes almost shameful - that remained interesting to the public many generations later. And they also helped poor Fedotov, a poor officer, covered by the Nikolaev drill, to enter the history of art forever.

Someone said: literature is divided into funny and bad. When you look at Fedotov's canvases, you believe: this also applies to other arts. Anything devoid of humor is lifeless and short-lived.

Interestingly, the artist himself has never been married. And in The Major's Matchmaking, perhaps he made his secret dream come true. It is no coincidence that in the first version of the picture, more sarcastic (it is kept in the Tretyakov Gallery), Fedotov painted the groom-major from himself. And the brave mustache, which the hero twists in anticipation of the reception, is quite recognizable.

It is generally accepted that Fedotov here makes fun of contemporary manners and customs: they say, marriage is a prudent deal, when an impoverished rank and status is combined with low-breed capital. I would like to have a story about love, but it turns out, as always, about benefits.

But marriage in the 19th century was not only the choice of a life partner, like ours. Rather, they chose life itself, its entire structure, way of life and perspective. It's as if today a young girl had to pass the USE at one time, enter the desired university and find a job she likes with a white salary and career prospects. Successful or unsuccessful marriage determined everything: the sphere of communication, the standard of living, the circle of acquaintances, the health and well-being of children. Nowadays, any decision can be played back. In the century before last, brides and grooms were deprived of such a right.

Well, how can you not lose your head from doubts and worries? Our heroine lost, rushing like a wounded bird. And her mother, a very young woman, not forty yet, is trying to stop this flight - in her lips folded in a tube, one can clearly read: "Ku-u-ud, you fool ?!" One cannot help but recall Gogol's Agafya Tikhonovna with her composite sketch of the ideal groom.

Before the canvas "Major's matchmaking" everyone gets ridiculous

Pavel Fedotov, who traded the guards service for the wrong craft of the artist, was funny and observant. And he adored fables: he even corresponded with Ivan Andreevich Krylov himself. He also composed his paintings as fables - it is enough to give their full names:

"The old age of an artist who married without a dowry in the hope of his talent"

"The Choosy Bride, or the Humpbacked Groom"

"Not in time for a guest, or Breakfast of an aristocrat"

"Fresh Cavalier, or Consequences of a Revel"

"The Household Thief, or the Scene at the Dresser"

And with what performances he accompanied the exhibited works! For example, at "Major's Matchmaking" he pulled with a squeaky parsley talk: "But our bride will not find a foolish place: A man! A stranger! Oh, what a disgrace! .. And a smart mother to grab her dress! .. But in another room the hawk threatens the turtle dove - the major is fat, brave, his pocket is full of holes - twists his mustache: I, they say, will get to the money! " Moreover, these rhymes were sung by a man in a captain's uniform.

Yes, he laughs at his heroes, but he also loves them, and admires them, and sympathizes with them. So he dressed up the bride on this canvas in almost a wedding dress, and placed the samovar - a symbol of a comfortable home life and the fusion of two elements, fire and water, male and female principles - in the very center of the composition. But it remains to be seen how the matchmaking will turn out. But the artist is in a hurry to rejoice for his heroes. Let them, funny and ridiculous, be happy.

In his diaries Fedotov wrote: "Happy is he who can find poetry everywhere, pearl equally a tear of sorrow and a tear of joy."

He could. And he tried to teach it to others. After that, in the next generation, the Itinerants will appear with their love for the genre, Dostoevsky with the "tear of a child", Leskov and Ostrovsky with the colors of the bourgeois or merchant life. Pavel Fedotov, a poor officer endowed with the talents of a draftsman, cartoonist, writer and actor, was the forerunner of all of them. And he was the first to introduce us to their heroes.

And he himself did not manage to get married: at thirty-seven, he died in a madhouse from mental disorder. Funny.

And next we will see another picture. You don't have to go far for this. Here it is, hanging right next to it. The Choosy Bride. Every time I happened to look at this small pictorial picture, framed by some too disproportionate gilded frame, I felt that very vague, vague and unpleasant sensations were born in my soul.

The artist seems to urge us to laugh, have fun. And I don't want to have fun. And this despite all the artist's efforts to simplify the scene to primitivism, to caricature. In this strained meeting of an ugly, pitiful hunchback and an overripe young girl, who is trying with all her might to keep on her face the charming coquetry and benevolent attention that is necessary for the occasion and the love confession of a wretched kneeling man, one sees not a funny anecdote, but a cruel drama of life.

On the one hand, there is the sincere joy of the unfortunate creature offended by God, and on the other, in response, there is a huge volitional effort not to betray his true feelings to the capricious and discerning nature. Is it really, or it just seems, the artist calls on us to laugh evilly at what is happening. And even more than that, this crazy artist, who himself ended his days in complete mental breakdown, invites us to stubbornly gloat over the grief of his unfortunate heroes?

No, only in a completely insensitive soul this whole nagging scene will not evoke bitter sympathy for all the participants in the drama. And not only to the “lovers”, but also to the parents hiding behind the curtain a stone's throw from them.

When I come to a museum with another group, I rarely draw her attention to this small picture. I know from experience that the degree of attention in this place to my words will be very high. Because I easily assume that among the foreigners standing in front of me there are those to whom this picturesque scene could recall something from their own lives. Even if not in such a rigidly hypertrophied form.

A drama of suppressing inner feelings. The drama of realizing that the romance of a feeling that calls for high and, as it turns out, unrealizable sensations, is just a luxury that is impermissible and inaccessible to you. And the sad conviction finally triumphs in you that it is necessary to use for the time being what life is still capable of giving you as a gift, no matter how miserable it may seem. Well, what is the reason for fun and scoffing here?

No, such insensitivity and even rudeness, standing in front of people in this tiny room, I rarely allow myself. I cannot help but know that with my careless words I can easily injure some sensitive soul. I cannot, with vulgar playfulness, remind the listener of lost illusions, of a similar drama experienced in my own life. And whoever did not have them, lost hopes in the distant years because of the exorbitant pride inherent in youth.

And I no less want to hurt the feelings of those who internally compare themselves to this pitiful hunchback, who has fallen to his knees with trepidation, who, as the greatest reward in life, gets this overripe, cutesy girl.

And she? She is about to cross the line, after which she is destined to remain forever an old maid. She is still cautiously and insultingly referred to as "Mademoiselle." And if not for this hunchback, she would hear this disgusting "Mademoiselle" until the end of her mournful age. What a lot of fun.

But it also happens that the group, and even if not the whole one, but only someone from it rudely and shamelessly annoyed me with exorbitant whims, or even rudeness with the tacit consent of all the others, then in a joyful and vengeful feeling I deliberately and for a long time stop in front of this picture. And then, with playful, vulgar intonations in my voice, I describe the plot. And it gives me bad pleasure.

When I myself am looking at a picture alone, I inevitably always come to the idea that in an overly discriminating search for happiness, we are losing the most precious thing in the world - the time of life. We pay not so much with tears and suffering for all unreasonably missed, lost opportunities, but also with this most valuable item - the time allotted to us by God's grace to each in his own measure. And, in the end, we still stop at the sorrowful need to take what else can be taken, or be left with nothing at all.

I peer into the small space of the canvas with tension and begin to feel in myself completely different sensations that the artist wanted to evoke in the viewer. I'm beginning to realize that both of them have accumulated annoying fatigue in anticipation of the fulfillment of romantic hopes. And that both have already come to a sober everyday understanding of the fact that nothing can be demanded from life or fate, but sometimes one should only humbly ask.

And now they deliberately close their eyes to all visible and already easily guessed shortcomings in each other, with the hope in spite of everything to jointly create, at least not bright, but so long-awaited and deservedly earned happiness.

And then, who knows, there may be a life experience, albeit an unsuccessful one, acquired by each individually, as well as an unrelenting desire already in the real world, far from romantic dreams, to finally get everything possible from life, and it will become the basis for the rapprochement of two weary hearts.

You can, of course, standing in front of this genre picture, laugh evilly and cruelly in front of Fedotov's creation, or, on the contrary, feel a sense of pity for the two unfortunate lovers, aching to tears. But who said that happiness will not smile on them further in life. Who said that they are doomed to a joyless existence devoid of heartfelt warmth. The world of human relations in the most sensitive and subtle areas is so rich, varied and colorful.

And how it will manifest itself in these two - none of the most talented imaginations can now predict. No amount of math and the smartest approach will help you figure it out. This is the living miracle of life, on which we alone should hope.

What about parents? Now they hid behind a curtain in a sinking heart and in impatient anticipation to finally hear the cherished word that their beloved, but also partly already boring child, will utter. And now they are overshadowing themselves with the sign of the cross. It has come to pass. A stone fell from the soul. A little joy also visited this house, which had long been filled with despondency and hopeless expectation to attach at least someone a native child suffering in loneliness for someone.