“Repair work on the railway”, Savitsky – description of the painting

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Description of the picture:

Repair work on the steel road – Konstantin Apollonovich Savitsky. 1874. Oil on canvas. 100 three x 180.8 cm

The presented picture is a very atmospheric work of Konstantin Savitsky. Then the creator acted as a serious, attentive observer. The multi-figure composition with an abundance of parts has a completely definite message – the creator condoles with the hard work of ordinary workers who rebuild the metal road, armed with simple tools (shovels, picks, wood cars that can not withstand gravity).

The idea of ​​the picture arose in the summer of one thousand eight hundred and 70 for three years in the Tula province, where Savitsky rested with fellow artists Ivan Kramsky and Ivan Shishkin. Living in a specific vicinity of the Kozlov Zasek station, the painters were eyewitnesses to the hard work of laying the tracks. Savitsky almost every day walked along the paths to write sketches and sketches.

The ordinary working life of ordinary people is perceived as a feat. Everyday life of these people was filled with hard work, because of all available forces at that time there was only draft and human (which was even cheaper). Savitsky condoles and admires the workers who, through their utter efforts, bring to life an invention, beyond which the future is a metal road.

But before us is not a faceless mass, the creator deliberately identifies several guys: a strong, sinewy man in a snow-white scarf in the front view, a frowning worker, whose face is covered with black hair, a young guy holding a heavy wheelbarrow a little.

An ordinary labor feat is accomplished against the backdrop of an elegant village landscape. And this contrast also has its own dynamics: a measured, pacified background and people outside this beauty, united at a hurricane pace, which are set by the creaky wheels of the carts and heavy blows of axes.

The picture was first presented at the 3rd exhibition of the Wanderers and immediately received the highest ratings from critics and the public. As the highest measure of recognition – the purchase of paintings by Pavel Tretyakov. In one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight years, the canvas was presented to the Parisian public."