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Self-portrait on the background of the window, overlooking the Kremlin
Vasily Tropinin • Painting, 1846, 106×84.5 cm
Description of the artwork «Self-portrait on the background of the window, overlooking the Kremlin»
In the mid-40s, Vasily Tropinin reached the peak of recognition and fame in Moscow, but at the same time, his main customers are aging, their children and grandchildren begin to order portraits to fashionable young portrait painters. Tropinin will soon begin to lose popularity. The younger generation of artists is fascinated Bryullov, imitates the southern color of his paintings, and customers increasingly want to look just as impressive as Bryullovsky Italians and Odalisks. “A self-portrait on the background of a window overlooking the Kremlin” Tropinin writes at this turning point: his popularity is unprecedented, his fame will soon predictably fade.
But while he is the main Moscow portrait painter, Bryullov himself is perplexed when the Moscow nobility orders portraits for him: “You have your own portraitist”. Tropinin writes local noblemen and merchants, their families — he sees how children grow and whole generations change. His famous homely “careless” portraits are walled by family archives and family history.
In Moskvityanin magazine, an anonymous author will write in 1849: “The great knowledge of the work and the conscientious work of the famous portrait painter V. A. Tropinin have achieved that perfect truth, which you no longer wonder and which becomes, if such an expression is allowed, artless by the ingenious naturalness of its ... High dignity, the brush of Tropinin leaves the last field aide in neglect . The distant horizon, the tree, the flower, the book at hand, the carving of furniture, the variety of fabrics, the furiness of furs — everything is filled with the strictest, charming fidelity ... But it is remarkable that, with all this finality, the whole view of Tropinin is such that the main subject does not cease to dominate above the picture and at the same time it is separated from the frame, without looking out of it as from a opened window ”.
All these fairly accurate characteristics of the Tropinin method are easy to find in self-portrait: “charming fidelity” of the details of the near and far plan, which do not suppress or overshadow the main thing - the figure of the person being portrayed. One would have thought that the artist, quite arrogantly and vainly enough, wrote his own figure against the background of the Kremlin. It would be possible if it were not Tropinin. He was a strikingly modest man who fought for personal freedom for half his life - and received his freedom as an Easter gift only at the age of 47. When in 1833 the first public art class opened in Moscow, where the poor could receive education, Tropinin began to attend him as a teacher completely disinterested. He did not take money for his teaching and did not give private paid lessons, but every sincerely interested beginning artist was ready to help with advice. Students of the Moscow class spoke of him as the most sensitive and influential teacher.
A former serf, and now a freelance artist, Tropinin led a very modest life, did not participate in secular meetings, but received at his home the most advanced and famous writers, publishers, and artists. He went out to the guests, even the most eminent ones, in an invariable work coat. Here, in the “Self-portrait on the background of a window overlooking the Kremlin,” he is in the same work coat, and not in a ceremonial suit. And if the artist was going to declare something, placing his own figure against the background of the main Moscow sight, it’s rather a blessed opportunity to live and work freely in his beloved city, the opportunity to influence the fate of Russian art and educate young artists, regardless of their wealth .
Author: Anna Sidelnikova
But while he is the main Moscow portrait painter, Bryullov himself is perplexed when the Moscow nobility orders portraits for him: “You have your own portraitist”. Tropinin writes local noblemen and merchants, their families — he sees how children grow and whole generations change. His famous homely “careless” portraits are walled by family archives and family history.
In Moskvityanin magazine, an anonymous author will write in 1849: “The great knowledge of the work and the conscientious work of the famous portrait painter V. A. Tropinin have achieved that perfect truth, which you no longer wonder and which becomes, if such an expression is allowed, artless by the ingenious naturalness of its ... High dignity, the brush of Tropinin leaves the last field aide in neglect . The distant horizon, the tree, the flower, the book at hand, the carving of furniture, the variety of fabrics, the furiness of furs — everything is filled with the strictest, charming fidelity ... But it is remarkable that, with all this finality, the whole view of Tropinin is such that the main subject does not cease to dominate above the picture and at the same time it is separated from the frame, without looking out of it as from a opened window ”.
All these fairly accurate characteristics of the Tropinin method are easy to find in self-portrait: “charming fidelity” of the details of the near and far plan, which do not suppress or overshadow the main thing - the figure of the person being portrayed. One would have thought that the artist, quite arrogantly and vainly enough, wrote his own figure against the background of the Kremlin. It would be possible if it were not Tropinin. He was a strikingly modest man who fought for personal freedom for half his life - and received his freedom as an Easter gift only at the age of 47. When in 1833 the first public art class opened in Moscow, where the poor could receive education, Tropinin began to attend him as a teacher completely disinterested. He did not take money for his teaching and did not give private paid lessons, but every sincerely interested beginning artist was ready to help with advice. Students of the Moscow class spoke of him as the most sensitive and influential teacher.
A former serf, and now a freelance artist, Tropinin led a very modest life, did not participate in secular meetings, but received at his home the most advanced and famous writers, publishers, and artists. He went out to the guests, even the most eminent ones, in an invariable work coat. Here, in the “Self-portrait on the background of a window overlooking the Kremlin,” he is in the same work coat, and not in a ceremonial suit. And if the artist was going to declare something, placing his own figure against the background of the main Moscow sight, it’s rather a blessed opportunity to live and work freely in his beloved city, the opportunity to influence the fate of Russian art and educate young artists, regardless of their wealth .
Author: Anna Sidelnikova
