A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding is a painting by the Russian artist Vassily Maximov (1844–1911), completed in 1875. It belongs to the State Tretyakov Gallery (inventory number 585). The size of the canvas is 116×188 cmГосударственная Третьяковская галерея — каталог собрания / Я. В. Брук, Л. И. Иовлева. — М.: Красная площадь, 2001. — Т. 4: Живопись второй половины XIX века, book 1, А—М. — 528 p. — pp. 420-421. — . (according to other data - 117.7×189.8 cm).Максимов Василий Максимович — Приход колдуна на крестьянскую свадьбу (HTML). Государственная Третьяковская галерея — www.tretyakovgallery.ru. Дата обращения: 26 November 2020. Archive: 26 October 2020.Максимов Василий Максимович — «Приход колдуна на крестьянскую свадьбу» (1875) (HTML). Государственный каталог Музейного фонда Российской Федерации — goskatalog.ru. Дата обращения: 17 April 2021. Archive: 22 June 2019. The painting depicts an episode of a peasant wedding feast, the joyful course of which is disturbed by the sudden appearance of a snow-covered village sorcerer.
Maximov worked on this painting in 1871–1875 and it was presented at 4th Travelling Exhibitions, which opened in St. Petersburg in February 1875.Товарищество передвижных художественных выставок. Письма, документы. 1869—1899 / В. В. Андреева, М. В. Астафьева, С. Н. Гольдштейн, Н. Л. Приймак. — М.: Искусство, 1987. — P. 125. Maximov's work made a good impression — in particular, the critic Adrian Prakhov wrote that the painting was "conceived and painted as if his popular imagination had created it". Immediately after the exhibition, the canvas was bought from the artist by Pavel Tretyakov.Государственная Третьяковская галерея — каталог собрания / Я. В. Брук, Л. И. Иовлева. — М.: Красная площадь, 2001. — Т. 4: Живопись второй половины XIX века, book 1, А—М. — 528 p. — P. 435. — . In 1878 the painting A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding was included in the Russian exposition at the World Exhibition in Paris.
Critic Vladimir Stasov wrote that this painting was a profound and talented picture of "village faith and that domestic spirit which generations of centuries live at home, in remote villages"; in his opinion, it is "the best, most important and most significant" of what Maximov created. Ethnographer Sergey Tokarev noted that in this work the artist "managed to convey extremely expressively and aptly those mixed feelings of superstitious fear, anxiety in the face of some out-of-place power, but at the same time and reverence, which causes all the personality of the old sorcerer who suddenly appeared in the midst of the wedding festivities..." The art historian Dmitry Sarabianov considered the painting A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding to be Maximov's best work and wrote that this canvas brought its author universal fame and placed him "in the first ranks of Russian artists-realists".
History
Previous events and work on the painting From 1862, Vassily Maximov studied at the Academy of Arts, first as a free student, then in 1863-1866 in the class of history painting, where his mentors were Fyodor Bruni, Timofei Neff, Alexei Markov and Pyotr Shamshin. In 1864 Maximov was awarded a small gold medal for his painting Sick Child (Village Scene). Having refused to participate in the competition for the large gold medal, he left the academy in 1866 with a certificate of class artist of the 3rd degree.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. 418. — . In the same year, 1866, the artist moved to the village of Shubino, located in Korchevsky uyezd, Tver province, where he worked as an art teacher at the estate of the Counts Golenishchev-Kutuzovs.Искусство. Современная иллюстрированная энциклопедия / А. П. Горкин (гл. ред.). — М.: Росмэн, 2007. — V. 3 (Л—П). — 296 p. — pp. 54-55. — . In January 1868, Maximov married Lydia Alexandrovna Izmailova,В. Максимов. — М.: Де Агостини, 2011. — V. 47. — 32 p. — pp. 4-5. — (50 художников — шедевры русской живописи). and in June of the same year, he and his wife settled in the village of Chernavino, which was part of Novoladozhsky Uyezd, St. Petersburg province. Maximov himself came from a peasant family — he was from the village of Lopino in the same uyezd as Chernavino.
In 1870, for the paintings Grandma's Fairy Tales (1867, now in the State Tretyakov Gallery), Dreams of the Future (1868, now in the State Museum of Fine Arts), Gathering for a Walk (1869, now in the State Museum of Kazakhstan) and Old Woman (1869, now in the State Tretyakov Gallery), Maximov was awarded the title of artist of the first clas. According to the architect Rimma Aldonina, such works as Gathering for a Party can be considered as preparatory stages on the way to the great work A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding to a Peasant Wedding, the direct work on which began in 1871.
In the fall of 1870, Maximov returned from Chernavin to St. Petersburg. The strenuous work in the village affected the artist's health, and he was ill throughout the winter of 1870-1871. On the doctor's advice, Maximov went south to Kyiv in the spring of 1871 to improve his health; his companion on this trip was the artist Viktor Vasnetsov. During the trip Maximov drew a lot, he was interested in "folk types" that he found in the surrounding villages and towns, as well as among the worshippers in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. The artist returned to St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1871, and in the winter of the same year he went back to Chernavino.
Working in the village made it easier for the artist to find peasant sitters for the figures of the future painting The Coming of the Witch at a Peasant Wedding. Besides, the necessity of working in the village house was due to the lack of funds to rent a studio in the city, which would have provided enough space to work on a large painting. However, the village house where Maximov lived was cold and dark. It was not suitable for working on canvas. The artist wrote: "The bad thing is that I often have to spend a whole day with a tow in my hands near the walls — the wind is blowing everywhere, the cold is merciless in my hornitsa. Well, that seems to be the fate of my studios; I have to fiddle with them more than with paintings, but what can you do?"
In the early 1870s, Maximov approached the "Peredvizhniki" group — members of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions, whose first exhibition opened on November 29, 1871.The Julian calendar ("old style") is used to date events that took place in the Russian Empire. In November 1872 he was elected a member of the Society.Товарищество передвижных художественных выставок. Письма, документы. 1869—1899 / В. В. Андреева, М. В. Астафьева, С. Н. Гольдштейн, Н. Л. Приймак. — М.: Искусство, 1987. — pp. 69-70. In a letter to his wife dated February 28, 1873, Maximov reported that he had been "accepted as a full member of the Society for the painting 'Family Prayer' and unanimously accepted, all this is very pleasant". In the same letter, the artist reported that the Partnership urged him to finish his work on A Sorcerer's Coming as soon as possible. Later, the writer Vladimir Porudominsky noted that "Maximov was probably the most peasant artist of all the Peredvizhniks".
While working on the painting, Maximov often consulted with the peasants and took their criticism into account. The artist Ilya Repin wrote that Vasily Maximovich did not consider his painting finished "until it was completely approved" by the peasants. As an example, Repin quoted a dialogue in which Maximov said: "No, wait, wait, and this? — asks a cheeky neighbor. — Who? — "Groomsman" thought to plant here. — No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! You should put an older man here, not a matchmaker. On the other hand, your boyfriend is young, inexperienced. And he's not a fighter either, he's a bit boring... Gli-ko, I'll show you my friend. Look, what a happy, broad face! They always take him to weddings: he's a joker, a merrymaker..." This is followed by general laughter, and "the beloved 'friend' expresses his full desire to sit for the picture".
Nevertheless, the work on A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding progressed very slowly. There were periods when Maximov liked the state of the canvas — for example, in a letter to his wife on February 28, 1873, he wrote that "the current picture of my find from the technical side of the best of all now written" and "it may come out of it in fact a thing not good". At times, the artist was dissatisfied with the result of his work: in particular, in a letter to his wife on October 28, 1874, he wrote: "In the last week, my case goes particularly bad, forward not a step, what did not write, today all cleaned off with a knife, I want to do better ...", "... confidence with each failure is lost, ahead is almost the greatest difficulty, to manage the light is easier than with the shadow — now it is their turn". Be that as it may, in a letter to his wife dated December 11, 1874, written shortly before his return to St. Petersburg, Maximov was more optimistic: "If the character of the sorcerer and another, the middle one, with which I do not get along, I will arrive even earlier. I have only four characters to write, one of which is almost finished today — it is a balalaika player".
The 4th Travelling Exhibitions The painting A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding (under the shorter title A Sorcerer's Coming to a Wedding) was exhibited at the 4th Exhibition of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions ("Peredvizhniki"), which opened on February 27, 1875 in St. Petersburg and moved to Moscow in April of the same year. The canvas was well received by the public and critics. In particular, in an article by the art critic Adrian Prakhov, published in the magazine Pchela (No. 10 for 1875), it was written about Maximov's painting: "The characters are depicted on the highest degree of success. These simple people, for all the limitations of their existence, so human that involuntarily love them, move to them at the table and themselves happy to participate in this feast". Concluding the description of the painting, the author of the article noted that "its main dignity lies in the sincere, truthful attitude towards the depicted environment, or, better said, in the fact that it is conceived and created as if the popular imagination had created it".
In a letter to Pavel Tretyakov dated March 12, 1875, the artist Ivan Kramskoi wrote about the paintings presented at the exhibition: "Maximov has decided to sprinkle his sorcerer with snow in abundance, and this has only improved the matter considerably. In my opinion, he does not need to touch anything else, except for the balalaeshnika, yes, perhaps even (and that, by the way) the face of the owner, to make his face a little more visible".Переписка И. Н. Крамского: И. Н. Крамской и П. М. Третьяков, 1869—1887 / С. Н. Гольдштейн. — М.: Искусство, 1953. — P. 108. Directly from the exhibition, the canvas was bought from the author by Pavel Tretyakov — apparently this happened soon after Kramskoi's letter, because in a letter to Tretyakov dated March 22, the art critic Vladimir Stasov wrote: "I congratulate you on buying Maximov's painting, I think it is one of the most remarkable Russian paintings, especially in the choice of subject..." Approved of the purchase of the canvas and the artist Pavel Chistyakov, who wrote in a letter to Tretyakov on April 14, 1875: "A good picture you bought from Maximov ... I am happy for Maximov. He has entered the path of the artist..."