All in the Past (Russian: Всё в прошлом) is a painting by Russian artist Vassily Maximov (1844–1911), completed in 1889. It belongs to the State Tretyakov Gallery (inventory 589). The size of the canvas is 72×93.5 cm.Государственная Третьяковская галерея — каталог собрания / Я. В. Брук, Л. И. Иовлева. — М.: Красная площадь, 2001. — Т. 4: Живопись второй половины XIX века, книга 1, А—М. — 528 p. — P. 422. — Максимов Василий Максимович — Всё в прошлом (HTML). Государственная Третьяковская галерея — www.tretyakovgallery.ru. Дата обращения: 29 August 2020. Archive: 28 October 2020. The painting depicts two elderly women: a lady and her maid, sitting on the wing's threshold of an outhouse on a sunny spring day. In the background, the main building of the estate is in a neglected state, with boarded up windows.
The artist began to think about painting in 1866, when he lived in Shubino, Tver Governorate. In the 1880s he made a number of studies and sketches for the future canvas. Maximov worked on the painting itself in 1888–1889 at the Lubsha estate on the banks of the Volkhov River, which was inherited by his wife Lydia Alexandrovna in 1885.
Work on the painting was completed in early 1889. The canvas was exhibited at the 17th Exhibition of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions ("Peredvizhniki"), which opened in St. Petersburg in February 1889. Maximov's painting "was an extraordinary success": the critic Vladimir Stasov wrote that "this is a theme wonderfully taken and wonderfully rendered", and the artist Vasily Polenov noted the "wonderfully true and lively" figures of the barmaid and the maid.
After painting "All in the Past" Maximov had no more works of this level. In order to earn a living for himself and his family, he repeated this painting many times, which was very popular with buyers: in total, more than 40 author's repetitions were written.
The art historian Alexander Zamoshkin, noting the great skill with which the painting "All in the Past" reveals the theme of the collapse of "noble nests", wrote that after the creation of this work Maximov "rightly took a place in the first row of novelists of Russian painting of the 1890-s". According to art historian Alexei Leonov, the artist "created a canvas of deep social meaning and great artistic expressiveness", which became "a symbol of the passing post-reform Russia".
History
Previous events Since 1863 Vassily Maximov studied at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, and in 1866 he moved to the village of Shubino, located in Korchevsky uyezd, Tver Governorate, where he worked as an art teacher at the estate of Count Golenishchev-Kutuzov.Государственная Третьяковская галерея — каталог собрания / Я. В. Брук, Л. И. Иовлева. — М.: Красная площадь, 2001. — V. 4: Живопись второй половины XIX века, book 1, А—М. — 528 p. — P. 418. — Искусство. Современная иллюстрированная энциклопедия / А. П. Горкин (гл. ред.). — М.: Росмэн, 2007. — V. 3 (Л—П). — 296 p. — pp. 54-56. — The artist was impressed by the rich furnishings of the count's estate, along with stories about its former greatness and the fact that now everything is in decline. According to his daughter Ariadna Maximova-Skalozubova, it was there, in Shubino, in 1866, where Vasily Maximov "had the idea of painting 'All in the Past', which he nurtured for almost 30 years".
In the same area Maximov met his future wife, Lydia Alexandrovna, daughter of Alexander Alexandrovich Izmailov, a state councillor (later a full active state councillor), and his wife, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Izmailova, who owned a small estate called Lyubsha, located not far from Staraya Ladoga, on the banks of the Volkhov River (today the place where the estate was located is part of the village of Seltso-Gorka). Maximov, according to his own memories of Lydia Alexandrovna, "fell in love with this wonderful girl, loved her passionately, sacredly". They got married on January 29, 1868.В. Максимов. — М.: Де Агостини, 2011. — V. 47. — 32 p. — pp. 4-5. — (50 художников — шедевры русской живописи).
Alexander Alexandrovich Izmailov died in 1877,Петербургский некрополь / В. И. Саитов. — СПб.: Типография М. М. Стасюлевича, 1912. — V. 2 (Д—Л). — P. 259. — 727 p. Archive: 6 July 2020. and in 1885 Nadezhda Konstantinovna died, and the Maximov family inherited the Lubsha estate from her. Ariadna Maximova-Skalozubova wrote: "Lyusha is a small estate on the right, steep bank of the Volkhov. An old house with blueberry trees under the windows. A large neglected garden descended from the mountain to the shore, surrounded by the debris of slabs and fences, with a deep well at the bottom of the garden, in the shade of century-old firs, with a lime avenue, lilac bushes, roses and acacias, raspberries, gooseberries, currants". The garden of this estate and served as a setting for the painting, conceived many years ago, and the prototype of the bar house was a neighboring house, which belonged to the landlady Bogdanova. This house is depicted in the sketch, which was probably made by the artist in the early 1880s and later came into the collection of A. V. Maximova-Skalova. V. Maximova-Skalozubova. The first sketch of the future painting appeared in 1885, and for the next two years Maximov was busy organizing the estate.В. Максимов. — М.: Де Агостини, 2011. — V. 47. — 32 p. — P. 18. — (50 художников — шедевры русской живописи). In 1887, the construction of living quarters and the artist's studio, which was also located in the manor house, was completed. In the same year, Maximov celebrated a house-warming party and soon painted a picture on a related theme, called "Housewarming" (now in the Musée d'Orsay).Г. П. Стерликова, Ю. М. Аитова. «Новоселье» — в Париже… (HTML). Волховские огни — volhovogni.ru (28 January 2016). Дата обращения: 16 October 2021. Archive: 16 October 2021.Vasily Maximovich Maximov — Bénédiction d'une isba neuve (HTML). Musée d’Orsay — www.musee-orsay.fr. Дата обращения: 16 October 2021. Archive: 18 October 2021. Apparently, after its completion, the artist set about creating a new canvas — "All in the Past", on which he worked in 1888 and 1889.
In a letter to the artist Ilya Ostroukhov dated December 5, 1895, Maximov told about the creation of the painting "Everything in the Past":"I composed the house and the whole landscape before I worked on the figures, over whose twists and turns I pondered for a long time, and only in the painting itself did I come up with an idea, which I worked on with charcoal.The whole costume and all the furnishings were a legacy from my mother-in-law, a Frantikha professor of the forties". Maximov wrote a number of landscape studies for the painting. Among his works from this period is "Sunset Landscape" (1888), which was in the Tretyakov Gallery, and then through the State Museum Fund was transferred to the Zlatoust City Local History Museum.Живопись (HTML). Златоустовский городской краеведческий музей — zlatmuseum.ru. Дата обращения: 15 January 2017. Archive: 19 December 2016.
In a letter to Pavel Tretyakov dated January 14, 1889, Maximov used the name "Forgotten Villa" for his new painting — he wrote: "I'm looking forward to a visit to my dreary studio, fellow painters, to say something about my "Forgotten Villa"? But three months later, in a letter to Tretyakov dated April 8, 1889, Maximov already used the title "All in the Past", which had been fixed for this painting.
The 17th Travelling Exhibition and next events
The painting "All in the Past" was completed in early 1889. It was exhibited at the 17th Exhibition of the Society for Travelling Art ("Peredvizhniki"), which opened in St. Petersburg on February 26, 1889The Julian calendar ("old style") is used to date events that took place in the Russian Empire. and moved to Moscow in April of that year. The St. Petersburg part of the exhibition was held in Botkina's house on Sergievskaya Street (now Tchaikovsky Street), and the Moscow part in the building of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.Товарищество передвижных художественных выставок. Письма, документы. 1869—1899 / В. В. Андреева, М. В. Астафьева, С. Н. Гольдштейн, Н. Л. Приймак. — М.: Искусство, 1987. — 668 p. — P. 629. In the same year the painting was bought from the author by Pavel Tretyakov. In May 1889 the 17th traveling exhibition continued its journey through other cities of the Russian Empire, which ended in early January 1890. During this time the exhibition visited Astrakhan (in May), Saratov (in June), Kharkov (in September), Poltava (in October), Odesa (in November) and Kyiv (in December–January).
The painting "All in the Past" was the only work by Maximov presented at the exhibition,Иллюстрированный каталог XVII передвижной выставки «Товарищества передвижных художественных выставок» / Н. П. Собко. — СПб.: Типография М. М. Стасюлевича, 1889. — 48 p. — P. 3. and it received good reviews from the audience and critics.Гомберг-Вержбинская Э. П. Передвижники. — Л.: Искусство, 1970. — 236 p. — P. 68. In a letter to his wife Natalya Vasilyevna dated February 21, 1889, the artist Vasily Polenov wrote: "Maximov has painted a picture called "All in the Past". The old landowner-lady sits in an old armchair on the balcony of the porch and dreams <...>, and her keywoman sits on a ledge and knits. Wonderful two figures, wonderfully true and alive". Maximov and the art critic Vladimir Stasov, who published a review of the traveling exhibition "Our Wandering Artists Now" in April 1889 in the magazine "Severny Vestnik", were positive about the new painting. However, not all reviews were unambiguously positive — in particular, in an article published in the journal "Russian Mind" (May 1889 issue), the writer Mitrofan Remezov called Maximov's painting "weak in execution", noting that in this particular case "the content of the work largely redeems some of the shortcomings of the execution".
After painting "All in the Past", Maximov had no more works of this level. To make ends meet, he repeated the painting, which was still popular, many times, with a total of 42 author's repetitions. Discussing the reasons why the author's versions of the painting "All in the Past" were more popular than the repetitions of other paintings by Maximov, the art historian Alexei Leonov wrote that "it was probably due to its poetically told theme, which found an echo in the soul of each viewer and awakened in many memories of the past, of his youth, of the lived life". The title of the painting is associated with the consolidation of the catchphrase "All in the Past" in the culture. It was known before, but it was the popularity of Maximov's work that caused its widespread use.
According to Ariadna Maximova-Skalozubova, in the early 1930s the paintings "Grandmother's Garden" by Vasily Polenov and "Everything in the Past" by Vasily Maximov were exhibited in the Tretyakov Gallery with the additional "shameful" inscription "Noble reactionary painting". Maximova-Skalozubova considered this "an unfair, rude denigration of her father — an artist-democrat," and told of her naive desire at the time to save money and buy her father's painting from the gallery.