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Alexey Venetsianov
Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov was born in 1780 into a merchant not to wealthy family in Moscow.
He became known as the founder of the country genre art in the Russian painting. After the presentation of K.I. Golovachevsky Portrait and the Self-portrait created by him, the artist got the academic rank in 1811. His best art works were created in the 1820s.
Alexey Venetsianov was an acknowledged master of pastel and pencil drawings, oil portraits, as well as caricatures. His style of painting reveals his being a follower of Borovikovsky.
His paintings depict the most common and simple scenes from rural life: peasants in their hard daily work, simple serf girls engaged in harvesting or men while in haymaking or land plowing. His well-known portraits The Reaper Girl, The Reapers, Girl Wearing a Shawl, Spring on Arable Land, A Peasant Girl with Cornflowers, Zakharka, etc. The artist was fond of common folks and found lyricism in their hard country life. Thus his paintings convey this beauty. This is especially expressive in Venetsianov’s The Barn, which attracted attention of the Emperor Alexander, who was touched by the vivid veracious images of peasants. The painting was bought by the emperor for 3000 rubles. The value of Venetsianov’s creativity in Russian fine arts is of especially great importance, since he was one of the first to support and consolidate the folk peasant genre art.
