"Barge Haulers on the Volga" is one of the most famous paintings the great Russian artist Ilya Repin (1844-1930). The painting was created in the period 1870-1873. Art critics define the genre of this painting as naturalism with elements of critical realism.
Burlak is a hired worker in Russia of the 16th - early 20th centuries, who, walking along the shore (along the so-called towpath), pulled a river vessel against the current with the help of a towline. In the 18th-19th centuries, the main type of vessel driven by barge haulers was the bark. Burlatsky labor was seasonal. The boats were pulled along the “big water”: in spring and autumn. To fulfill the order, barge haulers united in artels. The work of a barge hauler was extremely hard and monotonous. The speed of movement depended on the strength of the tailwind or headwind. When there was a fair wind, a sail was raised on the ship (bark), which significantly accelerated movement. Songs helped the barge haulers maintain the pace of movement. One of the well-known barge haulers’ songs is “Eh, dubinushka, whoosh,” which was usually sung to coordinate the forces of the artel at one of the most difficult moments: moving the bark from its place after raising the anchor.
When Dostoevsky saw this painting by Ilya Repin “Barge Haulers on the Volga,” he was very happy that the artist did not put any social protest into it. In “The Diary of a Writer” Fyodor Mikhailovich noted: “... barge haulers, real barge haulers and nothing more. Not one of them shouts from the picture to the viewer: “Look how unhappy I am and to what extent you are in debt to the people!”
The first impression of the canvas is a group of exhausted people under the hot sun pulling a barge, overcoming the force of the flow of the great Russian river. There are eleven people in the gang, and each of them pulls a strap that cuts into the chest and shoulders. From the torn clothes it becomes clear that only extreme poverty can push a person into such work. Some barge haulers' shirts are so shabby that the strap simply rubbed right through them. However, people stubbornly continue to pull the ship by the rope.
If you take a closer look at the characters individually, you can see that each has its own character. Some have completely resigned themselves to their difficult fate, others are philosophically calm, because they understand that the season will end, and with it the hard work. But after this the family will no longer be in need.
The composition of the picture is built as if the barge haulers are walking towards the viewer. However, the people pulling the burden do not cover each other, so you can see that one of the characters lights a cigarette while the rest take on the entire load. However, all the gang members are calm, apparently due to great fatigue. They will treat their friend with the understanding that he now needs a little rest.
The central character walks with skill. This is an elderly barge hauler, apparently the leader of the gang. He already knows exactly how to calculate his forces, so he steps evenly. Despite the heat, he is wearing thick clothes, since he knows that a light shirt will quickly wear out during such work. His gaze reflected fatigue, and even some hopelessness, but at the same time, the awareness that the person walking would still be able to overcome the road.
The then publicist Alexei Suvorin responded with numerous criticism of Repin’s work. Despite this, many colleagues and people of that time accepted the picture enthusiastically, for example Kramskoy and Stasov. However, at the world exhibition, the painting was awarded only a bronze medal. Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich really liked the painting, who bought it for three thousand rubles.
The main canvas measures 131.5 cm by 281 cm, the painting is located in the Russian Museum in the city Saint Petersburg, the smaller canvas “Barge Haulers Wading,” 1872, size 62 cm by 97 cm, is in the Tretyakov Gallery.
1. Towpath
A trampled coastal strip along which barge haulers walked. Emperor Paul forbade the construction of fences and buildings here, but that was all. Neither bushes, nor stones, nor swampy places were removed from the barge haulers’ path, so the place written by Repin can be considered an ideal section of the road.
2. Shishka - barge hauler foreman
He became a dexterous, strong and experienced person who knew many songs. In the artel that Repin captured, the big shot was the pop figure Kanin (sketches have been preserved, where the artist indicated the names of some of the characters). The foreman stood, that is, fastened his strap, in front of everyone and set the rhythm of the movement. The barge haulers took each step synchronously with their right leg, then pulling up with their left. This caused the whole artel to sway as it moved. If someone lost their step, people collided with their shoulders, and the cone gave the command “hay - straw,” resuming movement in step. Maintaining rhythm on the narrow paths over the cliffs required great skill from the foreman.
3. Podshishelnye - the closest assistants of the cones, hanging to the right and left of him. On Kanin’s left hand is Ilka the Sailor, the artel foreman who purchased provisions and gave the barge haulers their salaries. In Repin’s time it was 30 kopecks a day. For example, this is how much it cost to cross the whole of Moscow in a cab, driving from Znamenka to Lefortovo (not so little - all of Moscow in a cab, that is, a taxi). Behind the backs of the underdogs were those in need of special control.
4. “The bonded ones,” like a man with a pipe, managed to squander their wages for the entire voyage even at the beginning of the journey. Being indebted to the artel, they worked for grub and did not try very hard.
5. The cook and falcon headman (that is, responsible for the cleanliness of the latrine on the ship) was the youngest of the barge haulers - the village guy Larka. Considering his duties more than sufficient, Larka sometimes made a row and defiantly refused to pull the strap.
6. “Hack workers”
In every artel there were also simply careless people. On occasion, they were not averse to shifting someburdens on the shoulders of others
.
7. "Overseer"
The most conscientious barge haulers walked behind, urging the hacks on.
8. Inert or inflexible
Inert or inert - this was the name of the barge hauler, who brought up the rear. He made sure that the line did not catch on the rocks and bushes on the shore. The inert one usually looked at his feet and rested to himself so that he could walk at his own rhythm. Those who were experienced but sick or weak were chosen for the inert ones.
9-10. Bark and flag
Type of barge. These were used to transport Elton salt, Caspian fish and seal oil, Ural iron and Persian goods (cotton, silk, rice, dried fruits) up the Volga. The artel was based on the weight of the loaded ship at the rate of approximately 250 poods per person. A load that is pulled up the river 11 barge haulers, weighing at least 40 tons. The order of the stripes on the flag was not taken too seriously, and was sometimes raised upside down, as here.
11 and 13. Pilot and water tanker
The pilot is the man at the helm, in fact the captain of the ship. He earns more than the entire artel combined, gives instructions to the barge haulers and maneuvers both the steering wheel and the blocks that regulate the length of the towline. Now the bark is making a turn, going around the shoal.
Vodoliv is a carpenter who caulks and repairs the ship, monitors the safety of the goods, and bears financial responsibility for them during loading and unloading. According to the contract, he does not have the right to leave the bark during the voyage and replaces the owner, leading on his behalf.
12. Becheva - a cable to which barge haulers lean. While the barge was being led along the steep yar, that is, right next to the shore, the line was pulled out about 30 meters. But the pilot loosened it, and the bark moved away from the shore. In a minute, the line will stretch like a string and the barge haulers will have to first restrain the inertia of the vessel, and then pull with all their might. At this moment, the big shot will begin to chant: “Here we go and lead, / Right and left they intercede. / Oh once again, once again, / Once again, once again...” and so on, until the artel gets into a rhythm and moves forward.
14. The sail rose with a fair wind, then the ship sailed much easier and faster. Now the sail is removed, and the wind is headwind, so it’s harder for the barge haulers to walk and they can’t take a long step.
15. Carving on bark
Since the 16th century, it was customary to decorate Volga barks with intricate carvings. It was believed that it helps the ship rise against the current. The country's best specialists in ax work were engaged in barking. When steamships displaced wooden barges from the river in the 1870s, craftsmen scattered in search of work, and wooden architecture A thirty-year era of magnificent carved platbands has begun in Central Russia. Later, carving, which required high skill, gave way to more primitive stencil cutting. 
IN Western Europe(for example, in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, as well as in Italy), the movement of river vessels with the help of manpower and draft animals continued until the thirties of the 20th century. But in Germany, the use of manpower ceased in the second half of the 19th century. There were also women's artels.
The first one is completely independent big picture Repina.
Its idea obviously dates back to 1868, when the first watercolor sketch was made, from which the artist subsequently completely abandoned it. In the summer of 1870, Repin made a trip to the Volga, where he lived, observing the life of barge haulers, drawing sketches of figures and landscapes.
In the same year, sketches of the composition were made, representing two variants of the solution, mainly differing in the direction of movement of the barge crew. Repin stops at the second of them, in which the movement is located along a slight diagonal, almost parallel to the canvas, and he develops it both in relation to the group itself and the landscape background. Based on the final sketch in oil (Tretyakov Gallery), the first version of the painting was painted in 1870-1871. In the summer of 1872, Repin again travels to the Volga and then rewrites the painting, preserving its composition.
This method of working on a painting for many years, copying and refining a finished work will be characteristic in the future for the artist’s work on large compositions.
Much later, Repin himself assessed his first-born this way: “You know, only now, drawing and repeating this favorite theme of mine, I see that it is really not bad, there is a lot of artistic, and most importantly, human in it” (letter to Stasov).
What Repin called “human” was really that new thing that put the painting on the next stage in the development of realism in comparison with the painting of the sixties. Their criticism of reality was here freed from educational rationalism and deliberateness. It was no longer the personification of an idea, but a characteristic and typical scene taken directly from life, multifaceted in its content.
The richness and diversity of the type, its complete naturalness, made it possible to show in a picture depicting the cruel exploitation of the people, not only its victims, but also images of people from the people, full of strength, spiritual wealth and beauty. This is how the versatility of the image was born folk life in its contradictions, which fully unfolded in the film “Religious Procession in the Kursk Province.” .
Life scene and human images are conveyed in all their natural completeness and versatility, and not only in those features that are directly needed to express a given idea. The artist starts from the idea, but does not subordinate reality to it, but, on the contrary, finds the solution to the idea in it itself.
Repin's memoirs have preserved for us documentary evidence of his passion for nature, his passion for studying and reproducing it. In it itself he looks for content, which appears as the beauty of plastic expressiveness. He sees her through the eyes of a painter: “...this one, with whom I have caught up and keep pace - this is a story, this is a novel! Why all the novels and all the stories in front of this figure!... God, how wonderfully his head is tied with a rag, how his hair is curled towards his neck, and, most importantly: the color of his face!... But I walk next to Kanin, not lowering my out of his sight. And I like him more and more: I fall passionately in love with every trait of his character and with every shade of his skin and tailored shirt. What warmth there is in this coloring"
(Repin I.E. Barge Haulers on the Volga // Repin I.E. Far Close. - M., 1944. P. 247-248.).
This artistic perception of nature, in which it all seems beautiful, was reflected in the interpretation of figures and landscape.
The depiction of both was very bold for its time, striking with its picturesqueness, materiality, and sensuality of perception, thanks to which even ugly nature, like the rags of barge haulers, acquired picturesque beauty.
The gang of barge haulers in the picture is located along a slight diagonal from right to left, moving from the depths, but in such a way that the figures are almost all on the same plane, as if to a certain extent in bas-relief. With this arrangement of the figures, which reflects the traditions of classicism and academic teaching, the difficulty of their movement and the severity of the work were well conveyed, at the same time, each of them was clearly “readable,” and they all formed a kind of complex unity.
The eleven figures that make up the barge hauler are compositionally united into three clearly visible groups, into which the entire mass of figures is divided. The first group consists of four figures with Kanin at the head, the second also of four figures, among which the image of the young barge hauler Larka stands out and dominates, and, finally, the last group of three, less significant and expressive figures.
Turning to the first group, we see how tightly and skillfully it is composed. It is a compact unity, but with great complexity in its outer contour, which gives it vitality. It is typical to place the heads in such a way that each of them is clearly visible against a clear background. Depicting the figures in a strong tilt, Repin raises their heads so that their faces are visible. This reflects the artist’s interest in conveying the psychology and spiritual world of barge haulers. The “humanity” of the characters’ interpretation, Repin’s humanism allowed him to see and show in enslaved people their bright personalities, their human dignity, their individuality not erased by slave existence. Repin's humanism and psychologism is manifested with particular force in the image of Kanin, this sage and philosopher, as Repin portrayed him. The heads of barge haulers are both portrait and to a large extent generalized and typified. Depicting the faces of the barge haulers of the first group frontally, Repin makes only the one on the far right (Ilka Moryak) look directly at the audience. Kanin looks somewhere into the distance, and the red-haired man’s gaze is turned to Kanin. This achieves freedom of expression. Main characters They don’t pose, they live their lives. Their focus on the audience would make them reasoners, which was especially dangerous in positive image sage Kanin.
In the reproduced fragments, the painting style of the young Repin is clearly visible: already quite broad writing, in the application of strokes, however, entirely subordinated to the three-dimensional form of the subject. The painter’s interest in the colorful rags of clothes is also clearly visible.
The group with Larka is built on sharp contrasts of images. Larka's youth, his impatience and irritation of youth are contrasted, on the one hand, with the exhaustion of a consumptive, and on the other, with the phlegmatic calm of a seasoned old man who knows how to adapt to any situation. Leaning against his neighbor's shoulder as he walks, he calmly fills his pipe. Larka is the most captivating image in its lyricism and youthful charm. Repin was very keen on him, and this was reflected in his poetic interpretation. The stall, as it were, concentrates and personifies the idea of the nobility of the human personality and all the disgustingness of its suppression in primitive animal exploitation. In the ability to see the rough and ordinary as internally ennobled and therefore beautiful and poetic, the democratism of his aesthetics is especially revealed in the young Repin.
The rhythm of the figures within the gang as a whole is characteristic. They gradually bend more and more in each subsequent group, which emphasizes the movement of the entire gang forward. But in order to avoid monotony, Repin gives one tall and straightened figure in each of the three groups. These are the tall barge hauler with a pipe in the first group, Larka in the second, and the barge hauler in a round hat in the third. These figures introduce breaks into the repeating rhythm of bent backs, forming a kind of caesura in the general rhythm of the gang. The caesura formed by the figure of Larka leaning back, in the opposite direction to the general movement, is especially strong, thereby strengthening its central position. The stall, the second most powerful image in the painting after Kanin, represents the center of the entire figurative part of the composition. To the right and left of him there are an equal number of figures of barge haulers. It is also highlighted in color. His pink youthful body, rags of a red falling shirt and trousers form a bright colorful spot among the dark figures of barge haulers. In its color scheme, the figure of Larka, more than others, is connected with the landscape, with its yellow sand, the play of light on the water, yellow tones barges and sails in the distance to the left.
The figure of the consumptive, placed next to Larka, with its strong tilt, connects the second group with the first and at the same time frees up the necessary space in front of Larka. The last figure in the third group, depicted frontally, with his head down, corresponds with the outermost figure of the first group, as if closing the entire mass of the gang. The result is a peculiar rhythm of wave-like movement. This reveals its difficulty: the barge haulers have difficulty pulling the line and moving along the shifting sand. The gang is depicted simultaneously compactly, as a single mass against a landscape background, and at the same time differentiated, in accordance with the diversity of its constituent types. It all seems to “pulsate” thanks to the contrast of the rhythmically repeating curved lines of bent backs and the verticals of individual figures rising above them.
The wide open landscape of the painting reflects the impression that the Volga open spaces and distances made on Repin. “What is most striking on the Volga is the space,” Repin later recalled (Repin I.E. Far Close. - M., 1944. P. 235.). The artist depicts the far-extending water surface of a river with a sailboat. This open landscape painting was for its time a great achievement in terms of the sense of space, the color scheme based on a combination of yellow and blue colors, as well as the already relatively free writing. The design of the landscape was influenced by the fruitful influence on Repin by F. A. Vasiliev, with whom the artist lived on the Volga on his first trip. This landscape created the large and free space the painting needed; the Volga expanses gave it an epic breath and emphasized the inner, psychological content of the canvas. It is not for nothing that Repin’s Volga landscapes evoked Glinka’s “Kamarinskaya” (Repin I.E. Far Close. - M., 1944. P. 231.). If warm red-pink colors in the Larka figure are associated with warm yellow paints landscape, then blue sky and water find echoes in the colors of the clothes of some other barge haulers, for example, the one on the far left. But Repin failed to completely connect the figures with the landscape, and the latter still looks to a large extent like a background, against which it stands out sharply dark group figures.
This problem of connecting figures with space, with the landscape, was solved by Repin in another version of the painting, known as “Barge Haulers Wading.”
Fedorov-Davydov A.A. I.E. Repin. M.: Art, 1989. pp. 14-16.
Painting by Russian artists
Painting by Ilya Efimovich Repin “Barge Haulers on the Volga”, oil on canvas. Since 1870, the painter had been working on a new work, which he willingly showed to friends, but had not yet decided to present at an academic exhibition, considering it unfinished and periodically making amendments. Because of this, the artist asked to postpone his retirement trip, despite the fact that he was invited by Vasily Polenov, who graduated from the Academy of Arts that same year with a large gold medal and was going abroad. This idea arose within the walls of the Academy of Arts. Repin's talent and the seriousness of his attitude to life were so great that they allowed the Academy student to paint a picture that not only glorified him, but also became a landmark work of the Russian school of painting. In the film “Barge Haulers on the Volga” Repin revealed his penchant for large generalizations and for posing deep life problems.
Having gone together with the artists F. A. Vasilyev and E. K. Makarov on a trip along the Volga in the summer of 1870, Repin plunged into the very thick of people's life. Barge haulers ceased to be an abstract concept for him, but became living, close people, with their own inner world, their own worries and aspirations. Life itself entered the artist’s painting, filling with flesh and blood the thought that lay at the heart of Repin’s plan. Until the end of his days, he could not forget many barge haulers, devoting a significant place to them on the pages of his memoirs in the book “Distant Close”. And first of all, I will cut off Kanin’s ass. This is the same barge hauler whom Repin placed at the head of the barge hauler gang - a man with an enlightened, wise and meek face. When he saw him, Repin remembered the Greek philosophers who were bought by the patricians of Rome in the slave markets to raise their children. And many years later, the image of Kanin again emerges in Repin’s memory when looking at Tolstoy walking behind a plow across the arable land. Such comparisons can only arise in the mind of a true democrat.
The canvas “Barge Haulers on the Volga” was presented at the Academy’s annual exhibition and immediately received mixed reviews. A crowd of people gathered in the hall near the painting every day - they discussed it, scolded it, and admired it. Newspapers wrote passionately about this work of young Repin; Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vasily Perov were very interested in it. However, the professors of the Academy of Arts received her coldly, and the rector Fyodor Bruni even declared that “Barge Haulers on the Volga” was “the greatest profanation of art.” The composition of the work is reminiscent of the plot of “Troika” by Perov. It similarly depicts the movement of a group of people from the depths of the canvas towards the viewer. But if Perov’s work is built solely on a feeling of empathy for unbearable overstrain and hopelessness, which can be read in the images of beggar children, then with Repin everything is different. Along the sandbank of the Volga bank against the backdrop of the vast blue expanses of the river, a gang of ragged and exhausted people is moving slowly and heavily towards the viewer.
At the head of the gang of barge haulers walks Kanin - a short, broad-shouldered, stocky hero with a rag on his head, which, hiding his hair, reveals the high forehead of a thinker who has changed his mind and suffered a lot in his life. On the face and in the eyes there is an expression of innocence, kindness, sadness. By right hand from Kanin, chuckling good-naturedly and grumblingly encouraging his neighbors, the Nizhny Novgorod fighter, the indigenous hero, pulls the strap with enormous bearish strength; on the left hand - in a frenzy, Ilka the sailor leans on the strap with the entire weight of his body, fiercely and ironically looking from under his brows point-blank at the viewer. Following them, melancholy smoking a pipe and not bothering himself with excessive efforts, a long barge hauler in a hat, like a pole, calmly walks.
A few steps away from him, an exhausted and sick old man barely wanders, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a gesture of painful despair. In a fit of pain, resentment and indignation, the young boy Larka straightens up for a short moment, trying to adjust the strap, to which he cannot adapt. Behind him, an experienced, calm old barge hauler, as he walks, without loosening his straps, takes out a pouch of tobacco and busily fills his pipe with it. A soldier in boots and a cap walks behind the old man, somehow annoyed and uncertainly, with small steps. And next to him is the “Greek”, who proudly and gloomily carries out his work, looking longingly into the distance. The procession is closed by a dejected and dejected barge hauler weaving, with difficulty moving his unruly legs.
There is no intonation of denunciation in the picture, but there is a certain philosophical enlightenment. Therefore, apparently, even the aristocratic part of society perceived the canvas favorably. For some time the painting decorated the billiard room of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, and then it was sent to the World Exhibition in Vienna.
The famous painting by Ilya Efimovich Repin Barge Haulers on the Volga, the artist painted it during 1870-1873. Ilya Efimovich was inspired to paint the painting Barge Haulers on the Volga by his trip to sketches along the Neva, in the vicinity of Ust-Izhora back in 1869.
Having enjoyed the beauty of nature, the artist was very touched by life ordinary people, barge haulers pulling a heavy barge. Tired, dirty barge haulers in tattered clothes contrasted greatly with the rich and magnificently dressed public usually standing not far away on the shore. This whole scene really struck the painter, evoking sympathy and pity for these people in his soul. Why not bring this story to life on canvas?
thought Ilya Efimovich, realizing in advance that this picture would have many critics, especially since the idea of the picture could evoke in the viewer sympathy and pity for these disadvantaged people. And so it happened, creating the first sketch of barge haulers, painted in watercolor according to the planned plan, exhausted and dirty barge haulers pulling the strap, opposite a well-dressed rich audience having fun.
Such a plot was immediately criticized by Fyodor Vasiliev as an artificially faked and meaningless work. Of course, Repin was aware that the composition of the painting was contrary to the worldview of both academic and secular circles.
Therefore, in the future, Repin abandoned direct denunciation, focusing specifically on barge haulers, trying to show the difficult life of these people in his future film Barge Haulers on the Volga, thereby showing the characters of these people and nothing more.
At the same time, Repin had some problems at the Academy of Arts; not wanting to take exams in general education subjects that were not interesting in his opinion, the artist decided to submit a letter of resignation, which he was politely refused. Apparently the academy understood that dismissing such a master could lead to a lot of trouble for the academy itself.
At these times, the new movement, the partnership of the Itinerants, was just gaining strength; their ideology ran counter to academic foundations. Instead of dismissal, Repin was offered an internship abroad, also paying for a tour along the Volga from the city of Tver to Saratov. While traveling along the Volga with his colleagues, including Fyodor Vasiliev.
In 1870, in the village of Shiryaevo, which is a dozen kilometers from Samara, he creates a small pencil sketch, with the help of which Repin also painted the first version of the painting in oil, small in size about 23 by 50 cm. The first exhibition of Repin’s painting with barge haulers was demonstrated in St. Petersburg , which was awarded a prize.
While working with the painting, the Artist often reworked the plot, returning to the sketches; being among the barge haulers, Repin became closely acquainted with them. One of the characters in the film Kanin is a former priest, bright personality, a man with a difficult fate.
In the painting Barge Haulers on the Volga, the infinitely wide Volga River opens before the viewer, along which merchant ships float; in the foreground is a winding sandy shore, along which a team of barge haulers are pulling a merchant ship by the straps; the merchant woman on the ship is closely watching the work of the barge haulers. Our main character pictures of the barge hauler Kanin, as the leader of the pack, leads the entire artel uncontrollably forward.
Among the characters in the picture, the character of a young boy stands out noticeably; his name is Larka. He differs significantly from his older comrades, who are full of spirit, with his youthfully impatient character and lack of experience, in contrast to the hardy, wise Kanin and the curly bearded man, who to Kanin’s right is patiently pulling his straps. An old man, exhausted from unbearable work, who can barely drag his feet next to Larka.
In a gang of barge haulers, Repin collected characters different types people, dividing them into different groups characters from the most strong in spirit and wise in age to the emaciated and weak, who seem not quite capable of performing such hard work, this, of course, is the whole color and contrast of the characters of the barge haulers, for example, Ilka the sailor with a noticeably embittered look looking directly at the viewer, very diligently pulls the strap, character Ilka is not simple; he can swear loudly, hating everything and everyone in the life around him.
Following Kanin, a tall man with a smoking pipe stands out, pulling his strap half-heartedly, and an old man, exhausted from work, wiping sweat from his forehead. Of the entire gang of barge haulers, the first three characters are significantly different, on whom hangs the most significant traction force relative to the others who reluctantly pull their straps. In the images of barge haulers, Repin tried to show different characters people in whom there is also humility to their difficult fate, life protest, embitterment and simplicity of ordinary people with a difficult fate.
After many sketches and sketches, the painting Barge Haulers on the Volga was finally completed by Repin in 1873, and was exhibited at an exhibition of paintings, with the next sending of works for exhibition at the World Exhibition in Vienna. As expected, the painting had many fans and those who did not like the work, there were those who very harshly criticized the master, among them was the ardent academician Fyodor Bruni, he responded negatively to the painting as a great profanation in the fine arts.
The then publicist Alexei Suvorin responded with numerous criticism of Repin’s work. Despite this, many colleagues and progressive-minded people of that time accepted the picture enthusiastically, for example Kramskoy and Stasov. The writer Fyodor Dostoevsky spoke positively about it as a complete, authentic and truthful work. Nevertheless, at the world exhibition the painting was awarded a bronze medal; Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich really liked the painting, who bought it for three thousand rubles.
The main canvas measures 131.5 cm by 281 cm, the painting is in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the smaller canvas Barge Haulers wading, 1872, size 62 cm by 97 cm is in the Tretyakov Gallery
Plot
On the river bank, barge haulers are harnessed and pulling the ship. Based on Repin’s painting, which seems to be even in school history textbooks, the image of a beggar, a ragamuffin, who has no other way to earn a living except through hellish labor, has been replicated. Repin also throws wood on the social fire: on the horizon one can see a symbol of progress - a tugboat that could replace the barge hauler, ease his lot, but for some reason is not used.
The gang is led by three “roots”: in the center is the barge hauler Kanin, reminiscent of the philosopher Repin, a bearded man personifying primitive strength, and the embittered “Ilka the Sailor”. Behind them are the rest, among whom stand out a tall, phlegmatic old man filling his pipe, the young man Larka, as if trying to free himself from the strap, the black-haired “Greek”, who seems to be calling out to a barge hauler ready to collapse on the sand.
The characters are portrayed so emotionally and vividly that one readily believes this story. However, do not rush to judge the whole phenomenon in the economy of Tsarist Russia based on one picture. The fact is that the barge hauler’s work process was different.
On the barges there was a large drum on which a cable was wound with three anchors attached to it. The movement began with people getting into a boat, taking a rope with anchors with them, and sailing upstream. Along the way they dropped anchors. The haulers on the barge clung to the cable with their jowls and walked from the bow to the stern, selecting the rope, and there, at the stern, it was wound onto a drum. It turned out that they were walking backwards, and the deck under their feet was moving forward. Then they again ran to the bow of the barge, and all this was repeated. This is how the barge floated upstream to the first anchor, which was then raised, then to the second and third. What Repin described happened if a pilot ran a barge aground. Such work was paid separately.
As for money and grub, the barge hauler was far from being as poor as the artist showed. They worked in artels and before the start of the shipping season they agreed on grub. They were given bread, meat, butter, sugar, salt, tea, tobacco, and cereals per day. After lunch we always slept. And a good barge hauler earned so much money during the summer season that in the winter he could do nothing. Hundreds of thousands of people were employed in the barge fishing industry. In the overwhelming majority of cases they went there voluntarily, as if they were going to waste work.
Context
"Barge Haulers on the Volga" - early work Repina. He was not yet 30 years old when the canvas was completed. At that time, the artist was a student at the Academy and mainly painted on biblical subjects. Repin turned to realism, it seems, unexpectedly for himself. And it was like this. At the end of the 1860s, he and his fellow students went to sketch in Ust-Izhora (a village near St. Petersburg). The embankment, the gentlemen are strolling, everything is decorous and noble. And suddenly the impressionable Repin noticed a gang of barge haulers.
“Oh God, why are they so dirty and ragged! - exclaimed the artist. -...The faces are gloomy, sometimes only a heavy glance flashes from under a strand of tangled hanging hair, the faces are sweaty and shiny, and the shirts are completely dark. This is the contrast with this clean, fragrant flower garden of the gentlemen.”
During that trip, Repin made a sketch of a painting, the plot of which was based on the contrast between barge haulers and summer residents. The composition was criticized by the artist’s friend Fyodor Vasiliev, calling it artificial and rational. It was he who advised Repin to go to the Volga and finalize the plot, and at the same time helped with money - the painter himself was extremely strapped for money.
Repin settled in Samara region for the whole summer, got to know the locals, asked about life. “I must admit frankly that I was not at all interested in the question of everyday life and the social structure of the contracts between barge haulers and their owners; I questioned them only to give some seriousness to my case. To tell the truth, I even absentmindedly listened to some story or detail about their relationship with the owners and these bloodsucking boys.”
The artist was much more fascinated by the image of the barge hauler: “This one, with whom I caught up and keep pace - this is a story, this is a novel! What about all the novels and all the stories before this figure! God, how wonderfully his head is tied with a rag, how his hair is curled towards his neck, and most importantly, the color of his face!” This is how Repin described Kanin, a barge hauler, a low-haired priest whom he met on the Volga. The artist considered it “the pinnacle of the Burlatsky epic.”
The public saw the painting in 1873 in St. Petersburg at an art exhibition of works of painting and sculpture intended to be sent to Vienna for the World Exhibition. Reviews were mixed.
Dostoevsky, for example, wrote: “It is impossible not to love them, these defenseless ones, you cannot leave without loving them. One cannot help but think that he should, really owes it to the people... After all, this burlatsky “party” will be seen in dreams later, in fifteen years it will be remembered! If they weren’t so natural, innocent and simple, they wouldn’t make an impression and wouldn’t create such a picture.” Repin was praised by Kramskoy, Stasov, and all those who would later become Wanderers.
Academic circles called the painting “the greatest profanation of art,” “the sober truth of miserable reality.” One of the journalists saw on the canvas “various civic motives and thin ideas, transferred to the canvas from newspaper articles... from which realists draw their inspiration.”
After St. Petersburg, the picture went to Vienna. There she was also greeted by some with delight, others with bewilderment. “Well, tell me, for God’s sake, what difficult reason compelled you to paint this picture? You must be a Pole?.. Well, what a shame - Russian! But I have already reduced this antediluvian method of transport to zero, and soon there will be no mention of it. And you paint a picture, take it to the World Exhibition in Vienna and, I think, dream of finding some stupid rich man who will buy these gorillas, our bast shoes,” said one of the ministers.
And yet the painting found a buyer. It was Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, which is why the painting was closed to the general public, who could only see it at exhibitions.
