Grandma's Fairy Tales | |
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Artist | Vassily Maximov |
Year | 1867 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 67 cm × 92 cm (26 in × 36 in) |
Location | Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow |
Grandma's Fairy Tales is a painting by Russian artist Vassily Maximov, completed in 1867. It is held in the State Tretyakov Gallery (Inventory No. 584). The dimensions of the canvas are 67 × 92 cm[1] (68 × 92.6 cm according to other sources).[2][3] The painting depicts a large peasant family gathered in a village hut on a winter's evening, illuminated by the glow of a luchina, as adults and children listen with rapt attention to a fairy tale being told by their grandmother.[4]
Maximov worked on the painting Grandma's Fairy Tales in 1866-1867 and finished it on 27 November 1867.[Note 1][5] Between the end of 1867 and the beginning of 1868, the painting, under the title Old Woman Telling Fairy Tales on a Winter's Evening, was presented at the exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, held in St. Petersburg.[6][7] Maximov's work was well received and awarded its first prize.[8] In December 1867, the artist Apolinary Horawski noted in his critique that Grandma's Fairy Tales was "something that really deserved special attention" and had "special authority."[9] The canvas was purchased by Pavel Tretyakov directly from the exhibition.[6] In 1870, Maximov was awarded the title of class artist of the 1st degree for his paintings Grandma's Fairy Tales, Dream of the Future (1868), Gathering for a Walk (1869) and Old Woman (1869).[6][10]
Art historian Alexander Zamoshkin wrote that in the painting Grandma's Fairy Tales Maximov "created, avoiding any sentimentality, deeply vital images," and that his pictures of peasant children were particularly heartfelt.[11] The art historian Dmitri Sarabianov noted that in this work "for the first time that poetic note sounded," which "will be particularly audible" in Maximov's later canvas A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding (1875), while in Grandma's Fairy Tales "the whole scene as a whole focuses on the traditional, patriarchal and therefore beautiful motif."[12]
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