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Peasant family

Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko • Painting, 1843, 72.5×60 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Painting
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1843
Size: 72.5×60 cm
Artwork in collection: Smart and Beautiful Natalya Kandaurova
Artwork in selections: 5 selections

Description of the artwork «Peasant family»

"The peasant family" Taras Shevchenko only on a very superficial glance, it may seem straightforward ethnographic sketch. But do not distract from the essence of national clothing of Ukrainian hut-hut under a thatched or reed roof. In fact, the us – Ukrainian version of the Holy Family, "the Holy family", one of the archetypal stories of European painting.

By the time of the shooting Shevchenko a little less than thirty. Only 5 years have passed since the moment he became free from bondage and was able to attend classes at the famous Karl Briullov at the Imperial Academy of arts. All this time his favorite techniques was the pencil, and watercolor. He feels free: his pencil is sharp and precise, his watercolors are extremely harmonious in color. Take even the famous "Odalisque": what kind of live lines of the female body, what luminous pure colors!

But oil painting Shevchenko at first afraid to approach. Oil and canvas, as working tools, like a fetter him, bind his academic shackles, deprived of freedom of expression – but no one values freedom (in all forms and spheres) as the one who had been once deprived of.

Before beginning work on the "Peasant family" Shevchenko is doing a lot of pencil sketches from Ukrainian life. He has traveled extensively throughout Ukraine, and his travel albums filled with sketches. Starting, finally, a work of oil, he refuses to enamel "gladkovichi" his teacher Briullov. Strokes Shevchenko go spot, nervously. Objects and figure paintings are devoid of clear contours. But that is what creates a feeling of tremulous motion of life. Even suggest that if not for the arrest and exile, Shevchenko could, as planned, to go to continue in Europe, it is unlikely there would continue the academic tradition and, very likely would have entered the circle of founders of impressionism.

We have already mentioned that Shevchenko did not hundreds - thousands of sketches of national life. Why, of all visual impressions thread he chooses this simple and simple plot? The child is surrounded by his mother and father. The motion of their hands and lines of their bodies form a smooth oval – an area of safety, security for the baby that just started walking. Shevchenko describes not a specific situation of domestic family life – it conveys something deeper: a sense of spiritual unity, family unity, the family as a "little Church."

Who are the least familiar with biography of Shevchenko, he will surely be able to read in the "Peasant family" one of the most deep and intimate feelings. The fact that it is families in that ideal vision, which he painted himself, Shevchenko just had neither in childhood nor in adult life. Current psychoanalysts believe that childhood Taras has been deprived of parental attention and love: childhood traumas of abandonment will accompany him throughout his adult life.

Family in a bit idealized, even idyllic sense (as the pinnacle of human relations, protection from the cold outer life) will be his "obsession". But due to various circumstances capable of exciting the plot is not a novel to create my own family, Shevchenko did not succeed.

If we continue the psychoanalytic analogy, Shevchenko "Peasant family" - this is pure sublimation: embodiment in the works of what you really crave, but can never get in reality.

Author: Anna Yesterday
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