“Verbal counting. At the Rachinsky Folk School ”, Bogdanov-Belsky – description of the painting
Description of the picture:
Verbal counting. In the public school of S. A. Rachinsky – Bogdanov-Belsky. Canvas, oil. 100 seven x 70 nine cm
Especially the creative fate of the Russian painter Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky. Surely, every inhabitant of Russia at least once saw his work, but occasionally who remembers the name of the creator. But many of his works can be called textbook. These include the work “Oral Account. At the Rachinsky Folk School. ”
Perhaps she herself is more famous for herself than the creator. In old Russian textbooks and entertaining books on arithmetic for schoolchildren, you can certainly find it.
The canvas is curious, at first, by the reality of the characters, many later recognized in their own fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers.
The painting shows a classroom in a school in the village of Tatevo, Tver Region. The school was up to one thousand nine hundred and seventy-four years. At the moment, a local history museum is organized and operates in it.
There is a lesson in arithmetic, an example for verbal counting is set on the board. The task is already very complicated and all the boys with enthusiasm plunged into its solution.
Ordinary village babies in bast shoes and shirts, but how much in their eyes inquisitiveness, excitement, reason.
One of the guys is standing at the blackboard in his mind making calculations. Two on the side to the right are discussing a possible solution among themselves. One of the boys, for sure, reports to the teacher a ready answer.
Two students on the frontal plane are especially expressive. “This is the task” – with a gesture of the hand, scratching the back of the head, the “blond” boy says “at a distance”. The expression on the face and the deeply thoughtful gaze of the first guy suggest the idea that the correct answer will be calculated for another minute.
Bogdanov-Belsky with love and warmth draw rural kids, whom he always considered gifted, sincere and professional.
To the left near the wall of hewn logs the teacher sits. This is a real portrait of the founder of public schools – Sergey Aleksandrovich Rachinsky. A unique person of his own time – from Polish nobles, a doctor at the Moscow Institute, a botanist, mathematician, educator, and an enthusiastic teacher – at his own expense made a public school with a very creative atmosphere, instilling in children the ability to think and teaching the necessary sciences.
There were not so many sciences, but they also included teaching the Law of God. Rachinsky believed that the knowledge of Church Slavonic letters, church services and singing, gives the key to success in other sciences and in life. Maybe that’s why on the wall we see a reproduction of the icon of the Mother of God and a poster with notes.
But, naturally, specifically, mathematics was a lover and the main subject in the educational system in Rachinsky schools.
Bogdanov-Belsky expressed his gratitude to his own dear teacher, who played a decisive role in his life, also captured ordinary village children who were dear to his heart, proving once again that children are always gifted regardless of their origin.
The painting is in the Tretyakov Gallery and people always stop near it. You can’t walk past her just like that. They stop only in order to experience solving the problem from the school board.
By the way, the correct answer to the mathematical charade is very common – the number two."