Why did all his contemporaries laugh at Perov’s painting “Hunters at Rest”? What was wrong there?
Vasily Perov (1833–1882) was a Russian artist who painted portraits and various scenes from the life of ordinary people. Fully sharing the ideas of populism, he denounced the rich and depicted in his paintings the real life of the common people, without unnecessary embellishment, so characteristic of Konstantin Makovsky, who can easily be called Nikas Safronov of the 19th century. You can read why this is so at the link in the article.
But Perov himself was honest. His paintings were perfectly understandable to everyone who saw them, regardless of education and social status. In his genre paintings, he showed not only the life situation itself - quite ordinary and close to most people of the 19th century, but also masterfully reflected all the feelings of the people who participated in it. That’s why his genre paintings are so interesting - they are about the realities of that time, about the real life of Russia in the 19th century, as it really was.
In this article we will talk about why Perov began to paint in this particular vein, did not varnish reality like Konstantin Makovsky , or did not primarily paint portraits of rich merchants and nobles, like Vasily Tropinin . At the same time, we’ll tell you what was wrong in the famous film “Hunters at Rest.”
