Winter Palace Taken! (also known as Winter Palace Taken without the exclamation mark) is a painting by Soviet artist Vladimir Serov. It depicts the storming of the Provisional Government during the October Armed Uprising in Petrograd. The painting is currently on display at the State Tretyakov Gallery. It is considered one of the artist's best works. The painting is short and simple, without details of the outside world. According to Soviet art historians, it captures an event from the time of revolutionary upheaval. The action takes place on the Jordan stairs of the Winter Palace. At the foot of the stairs the artist depicted two active participants in the struggle for the Provisional Government's residence — a soldier and a militiaman of the Red Guard, which, according to Soviet art historians, embodied the union of the working class and the working peasantry. Among the merits of the canvas: the mastery of revealing characters, careful execution of details, "expressive" simplicity.
Soviet art experts considered Vladimir Serov's painting to be one of the most significant works of art from after the war. Important Soviet art experts like Ivan Astakhov, Sofia Korovkovich, and Andrey Lebedev looked closely at the painting's idea, how it was put together, and its use of color. The painting is still used in history classes in secondary and higher schools in the Russian Federation. During the Soviet period, it was also used in classes for teenagers.
The painting was reflected in the work of individual figures of Russian nonconformist culture and served them to create art objects that ironically interpreted the history of the USSR and its so-called .
Description The action of the painting Winter Palace Taken! takes place on October 26, 1917 in the interiors of the Winter Palace, which was the seat of the Provisional Government immediately after its capture during the October Uprising in Petrograd. One of the staircases of the Palace, the Jordan Staircase, is depicted as the scene of the action. The staircase is decorated with sculptures and gildings, bronze candlesticks. Traces of the battle that took place here can still be seen on it. On the steps of the staircase there are broken bricks — the result of artillery shelling of the Winter Palace), there are shell casings lying in disorder, an empty machine-gun belt, doctor of art history Andrey Lebedev saw an officer's cap.
At the foot of the stairs, the artist depicted two participants of the battle that had already ended — an armed soldier and a Red Guard militiaman, who, according to Soviet art historians, embodied the union of the working class and the working peasantry. The Petrograd worker's affiliation with the Red Guard is indicated by the red armband on his sleeve, which the artist depicts. According to Lebedev, this is not a chance encounter, but a patrol stationed here to "protect the former citadel of tsarism and the Provisional Government". A soldier lights a Red Guardsman's cigar. Doctor of Art History Sophia Korovkovich believes that this gives the scene a decidedly peaceful character. Doctor of Art History Svetlana Chervonnaya, on the contrary, emphasized the heroism and self-confidence of the figures in the painting, calling them heroes of the new world.
On the top landing of the stairs —deep in the space of the painting— a sailor sits with a rifle in his hands, absorbed in reading a newspaper. Sofia Korovkovich called it a "new Soviet newspaper".
Background Andrey Lebedev, a doctor of art history, noted that Vladimir Serov's work was generally characterized by a return to the same theme, a desire to solve it more deeply and in a new way.
The artist was interested in the capture of the Winter Palace long before he created the painting Winter Palace Taken! At that time he had already made a large painting The Storming of the Winter Palace with a large number of actors. In the first half of the 1950s, the artist decided to change the interpretation of the theme of the October Armed Uprising. In his opinion, the previous interpretation did not allow for a deep characterization of the psychology of the participants of the event. According to Andrey Lebedev, the artist "tried to deepen the images of the heroes of the historic attack, to show the greatness of the revolution through everyday life". Serov himself spoke about his idea:Andrey Lebedev cited in his 1965 book on the work of Vladimir Serov, a fragment from an unpublished transcript of the artist's speech at a meeting with him listeners of the lecture hall of the Academy of Arts of the USSR February 5, 1959, which is stored in its archives (Archive of the RAH, v. 8, op. 76, p. 38)."I decided to open the topic in a "domestic" way. The battles have subsided. The winter is over. Traces of destruction are everywhere. Somewhere high up on the stairs, next to the sculpture, a sailor is reading a newspaper. In the middle is a patrol set up by the victors, the new masters of this palace — a man-soldier and a simple worker. A little break to smoke. I wanted to show these simple people together. After a smoke break... brutal, bloody battles began again".When the artist decided to make a new painting about the October Uprising, he went to the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad on a day off. The usually crowded halls were empty. Vladimir Serov had already passed many rooms when he found himself on the Jordan Stairs. He was overwhelmed by the thought of how much this staircase had seen in its existence. The deserted grand staircase was echoed only by the rumbling footsteps of museum workers, invisible to the artist. Serov began to mentally recreate the appearance of the palace in the days of the October events. In his mind, and even before that, "a lot of vague, unclear, not yet formed images" appeared. At the same time, he began to form the plot of the future painting and his creative solution. It was here that the artist made pencil sketches that fixed the emerging idea.
After his return, Serov made a sketch of the painting, which included the general compositional solution, especially the two figures in the foreground, which were later incorporated into the final version of the painting without any major changes. The pencil sketches made in the Hermitage by Vladimir Serov did not take into account the final solution. Later, he worked on fragments of the future canvas, which, in his opinion, could and should be changed, as well as on the original compositional solution. He made sketches of important, from his point of view, defining elements of the picture: eyes, hands, head... Andrey Lebedev wrote that the creative work on the creation of a painting goes in two directions at the same time: from the general to the particular and from the particular to the general. Andrey Lebedev wrote that as Serov continued to work on the canvas, he filled the space with more and more figures. In various fragments of the painting, he tried to paint a sailor bandaging a wounded hand. He tried to paint a group of prisoners and junkers coming down the stairs. Vladimir Serov was disappointed with the results of such attempts. The more figures were added, the more the originally unified composition was fragmented. Most importantly, the main idea of the work was lost among the large number of independent fragments. The original atmosphere of the work also disappeared — "the impression of silence, the humming of the room, which so well emphasized the state of rest between battles".
Vladimir Serov decided to return to the original compositional solution: he had to abandon the already developed image of the Junkers and the wounded sailor. However, the artist remained dissatisfied with the composition. He tried again to fill the canvas with several figures, but was again disappointed with the result of his search. In the final version of the painting, only the sailor remained in the depths of the painting. In general, the final version was close to the original sketch.
The painting as a part of the Tretyakov Gallery collection The painting Winter is taken! was bought by the State Tretyakov Gallery and now it forms part of its collection. It is made in oil on canvas. Its size is small, despite the apparent scale of the composition — only 85 x 70 cm. The painting is signed and dated by the artist at the bottom right of the front: "V. Serov 54. Serov 54". Andrey Lebedev also mentions the existence of the 1965 study Jordan Staircase of the Winter Palace (canvas, oil paint, 81 x 75.5 cm). It is known that this sketch was shown at Vladimir Serov's personal exhibition in Moscow in 1964.Владимир Александрович Серов. Каталог выставки. [Vladimir Serov. Exhibition catalogue]. М.: Искусство, 1964. P. 34. Four other sketches for the painting Winter Palace Taken! refer to both the final and unrealized versions of the canvas:
The following sketches for the canvas are also mentioned in art history bibliography:
Sketch of the composition of the painting (1954, 26 x 17.5 cm); Life drawing of two figures (1954, 32 x 22 cm); Sketch of one figure (1954, 33 x 22.5 cm); Sketch of a sailor (1954, 31 x 22,5 cm); Sketch of a figure (1954, 32.5 x 22 cm).
A number of sketches for this painting were shown at the artist's personal exhibition in Moscow in 1964 (the catalog does not give the specific names and sizes of the drawings presented in the exhibition). P. 48. In his 1984 book on Serov's work, Andrey Lebedev wrote about the hundreds of drawings and sketches in the artist's sketchbooks and the many sketches he made on the way to the realization of his final idea. Some of them are in the Vladimir Serov Memorial and Art Museum, which is a branch of the Tver Regional Picture Gallery.Мемориально-художественный музей Владимира Серова. Тверская областная картинная галерея. 14 July 2020. The Soviet art historian repeatedly wrote about Serov's three methods of working on the material for the canvas: he "inscribed people and objects directly from life into the painting", worked from memory or preliminary sketches, and created fragments of the canvas based on his imagination.
During the Soviet period, the painting was exhibited in the permanent collection of the museum in Hall 44. It was repeatedly presented at important national and international exhibitions. Among them: All-Union Art Exhibition in 1954, the 3rd Exhibition of Works by Full and Corresponding Members of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, as well as the XXIX Venice Biennale in 1958, at the personal exhibition of Vladimir Serov in Moscow in 1964, at the exhibition of works by members of the Academy of Arts of the USSR on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the transformation of the All-Russian Academy of Arts into the Academy of Arts of the USSR in 1973, pp. 299—301. and at a solo exhibition of works by the then deceased artist in Moscow in 1981.