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Barge Haulers on the Volga

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Barge Haulers on the Volga, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. 131.5 cm × 281 cm

Barge Haulers on the Volga or Burlaki (Russian: Burlaki na Volge, Бурлаки на Волге) is an 1870–1873 oil-on-canvas painting by the Russian realist painter and sculptor Ilya Repin (1844–1930). The work depicts 11 labouring men who seem to almost collapse forward in exhaustion under the burden of dragging a large boat upstream.[1]

The work is intended as both a celebration of the men's dignity and fortitude, and a highly emotional condemnation of those who sanctioned such inhumane labour.[2] Although they are presented as stoical and accepting, the men are largely defeated; only one stands out; in the centre of both the row and canvas, a brightly coloured youth fights against his leather binds and takes on a heroic poise.

The painting was conceived during Repin's travels through Russia as a young man and depicts actual characters he encountered. It drew international praise for its realistic portrayal of the hardships of working men, and launched his career.[3] Soon after its completion, the painting was purchased by Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich and exhibited widely throughout Europe as a landmark of Russian realist painting. Barge Haulers on the Volga has been described as "perhaps the most famous painting of the Peredvizhniki movement [for]....its unflinching portrayal of backbreaking labour.[4]

Description

Repin's 1872 Volga Boatmen was painted during the same period and shares many compositional qualities with Barge Haulers on the Volga. 62×97 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The painting shows a row of eleven burlaks dragging a barge on the Volga River that must be pulled upstream against the current.[5] The men[note 1] are dressed in filthy rags and bound with leather harnesses. They are rendered as mostly stoical, although in obvious physical discomfort, with their heads and bodies bowed in toil.[6]

The lone exception is a fair-haired boy in the centre of the group; picked out brightly against the uniform muted tones of his companions, he has his head raised and looks into the distance, while he pulls against his straps as if determined to free himself from his task. The men in the foreground appear to be unsupervised and form the focus of the picture, with the barge relegated to a minor role at the rear of the frame. Further in the distance is a tiny steam-powered boat, perhaps a suggestion that the back-breaking labour of the barge haulers is no longer necessary in the industrial age.[7]

The scene is rendered in a white, silvery light[8] which has been described as "almost Venicien". In earlier studies, it was dominated by blue tones, while many of the figures were positioned differently. For example the second man in the row was shown wearing a cap with his head bowed into his chest.[8]

Background

The Stone Breakers, Gustave Courbet, 1850. Destroyed

Barge Haulers is based on scenes witnessed by Repin while holidaying on the Volga after graduating from the Academy in St Petersburg in 1863. The academy at the time was known for its deep conservatism, a fact that bred a sense of revolt in many of its students.[9] Repin had grown up in Chuguev in the Ukraine and was already aware of the poverty and hardship of most rural life at that time.

He spent two years travelling during which time he observed both the dachas of the rich and the toil of the common peasant. As such it can be considered a genre painting,[1] but treated on the heroic scale of history painting, as was often the case in 19th-century works, especially after A Burial At Ornans by Gustave Courbet (1850). Barge Haulers drew direct comparisons from critics with Courbet's The Stone Breakers (also 1850), which showed labourers at the side of a road.[10]

Repin made a number of preparatory studies, mostly in oil, during 1870 while staying in Shiriaev Buerak,[11] before he began on the final canvas.[9] The sketches include landscapes, views of the Volga, and barge haulers.[11]

A Burial at Ornans, Gustave Courbet, 1850. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The men depicted are based on actual characters whom the artist had come to know while preparing the work. (Repin had had difficulty finding subjects to pose for him, even for a fee, because of the folklorish belief that a subject's soul would leave his possession once his image was put down on paper.[12]) The men include a former soldier and a former priest, while a third was a painter.[6] That they had once held such positions dismayed the young artist, who had set out to produce a far more superficial work contrasting exuberant day-trippers with the careworn burlaks. Repin found a particular empathy with Kanin, the defrocked priest, who is portrayed as the lead hauler and looks outwards towards the viewer.[8] Repin was most impressed by Kanin, and wrote,

"There was something eastern about it, the face of a Scyth...and what eyes! What dept of vision!...And his brow, so large and wise...He seemed to me a colossal mystery, and for that reason I loved him. Kanan, with a rag around his head, his head in patches made by himself and then worn out, appeared none the less as a man of dignity; he was like a saint."[13]

Provenance and critical opinion

When first exhibited, the picture received enthusiastic reviews for its unsentimental depiction of lower-class labourers, which stood in stark contrast to the romanticised, classical or propagandist nature of most contemporary Russian art.[6] It painting paved the way for Repin to join the Peredvizhniki (the Wanderers or Itinerants), an anti-academic realist movement formed in 1870.[14]

The painting was widely discussed for its break with the traditions of the Academy. It earned Repin the respect of the Russian critic Vladimir Stasov[9] who believed that art shaped people's outlook and the way in which they viewed their political situation. Stasov encouraged Repin to focus on Russian subject matter and after Barge Haulers... became a close friend of the artist and enthusiastically praised each of Repin's paintings thereafter. Stasov wrote of Barge Haulers, "with a daring that is unprecedented amongst us [Repin] has abandoned all former conceptions of the ideal in art, and has plunged head first into the very heart of the people's life, the people's interests, and the people's oppressive reality... no one in Russia has ever dared take on such a subject".[15] In return, Repin said that Stasov's "cry all over Russia was the first and the mightiest and it was heard in Russia by everyone capable of hearing. It was thanks to him that my glory spread."[16]

Despite its progressive implications, Barge Haulers was bought by the Tsar's second son, and lent for exhibition at the 1873 International Exhibition in Venice, where it won a bronze medal. It was exhibited outside Russia again in 1878, when it was again widely praised by critics for marking a watershed in Russian art.[17] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, writer and essayist, read about Repin's painting in the newspapers and assumed it was another Russian work whose artistry was secondary to its social message: "Even the subject itself is terrible... I came expecting to see these barge-haulers all lined up in uniforms with the usual labels stuck to their foreheads... To my delight, all my fears turned out to be in vain... Not a single one of them shouts from the painting to the viewer, 'Look how unfortunate I am and how indebted you are to the people!'"[18] To Dostoyevsky, Repin had avoided a common fault of contemporary Russian art, and in doing so heightened the work's impact. Dostoyevsky concluded, "[I saw] barge haulers, real barge haulers, and nothing more... you can't help but think you are indebted, truly indebted, to the people."[1] Such a feeling of an "unpaid debt" owed by the aristocracy to the working class was a common socialist idea in Russia at the time.[19]

Today the painting is regarded as seminal in the formation of Russian realism.[17]

Notes

  1. ^ Repin depicted 11 men, however women also performed this work

References

  1. ^ a b c Frank, Joseph. "Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881". Princeton University Press, 2003. 111. ISBN 0-6911-1569-9
  2. ^ Gray, Rosalind Polly & Blakesley, Rosalind Polly. Russian genre painting in the nineteenth century. Alderley: Clarendon Press, 2000. ix. ISBN 0-1982-0875-8
  3. ^ Hilton, Alison. "The Exhibition of Experiments in St. Petersburg and the Independent Sketch". The Art Bulletin, Volume 70, No. 4, December, 1988. 677-698
  4. ^ "Ilya Repin, Barge-Haulers on the Volga (1870–73)". The Museum of Russian Art. Retrieved 18 January 2010.
  5. ^ Bolton, 138
  6. ^ a b c Amery, Colin. "St Petersburg". Frances Lincoln, 2006. 134. ISBN 0-7112-2492-7
  7. ^ Cohen, Aaron J. Imagining the unimaginable: World War, modern art, & the politics of public culture in Russia, 1914-1917. Studies in war, society, and the military. University of Nebraska Press, 2008. 25. ISBN 0803215479
  8. ^ a b c Parker, Fan & Parker, Stephen Jan. "Russia on canvas: Ilya Repin". Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981. 23. ISBN 0-2710-0252-2
  9. ^ a b c King, Averil. "Russia's soul in paint: Averil King welcomes a well-illustrated account of Ilya Repin's powerful, virtuoso art". Apollo, October 2007. Retrieved on 27 February 2010.
  10. ^ Valkenier (1993), 208
  11. ^ a b "Study of a Barge Hauler for the painting 'The Barge Haulers on the Volga' 1870-1873". Christie's, November 1997. Retrieved on 27 February, 2010.
  12. ^ Emerson, Caryl. The life of Musorgsky. Musical lives. Cambridge University Press, 1999. 127. ISBN 052148507X
  13. ^ Amery, Colin & Curran, Brian. "St Petersburg". Frances Lincoln, 2006. 134. ISBN 0-7112-2492-7
  14. ^ "Nineteenth-Century Russian Art: Ideological Realism". dartmouth.edu. Retrieved on 18 January 2010.
  15. ^ Bolton, 156
  16. ^ Chandler, Josh. "Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov and Soviet Socialist Realism". germslav.byu.edu. Retrieved on 27 February, 2010.
  17. ^ a b Valkenier (1993), 208
  18. ^ Miller, Robin Feuer. Dostoevsky's unfinished journey. Yale University Press, 2007. 11. ISBN 030012015X
  19. ^ Parker Fran. "Russia on canvas: Ilya Repin". Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980. 26. ISBN 0-2710-0252-2

Bibliography

  • Bolton, Roy. Russia & Europe in the Nineteenth Century. Sphinx Books, 1999. ISBN 1-9072-0002-9
  • Rice, Tamara Talbot. A Concise History of Russian Art. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963. ISBN 0-1952-0002-0
  • Sternin, Grigory. Ilya Efimovitch Repin: Painter of Russian History. USSR, 1995. ISBN 0-5690-8846-1
  • Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl. "The Writer as Artist's Model: Repin's Portrait of Garshin". Metropolitan Museum Journal, 28, 1993. 207–16
  • Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl. Ilya Repin and the World of Russian Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-2310-6964-2

See also

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