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Pavel Andreyevich Fedotov, 1815-1852,
before becoming a painter, was a career officer, a captain of the Imperial
Guard in St. Petersburg. He liked painting and often spent his free time
studying paintings of foreign masters in the Hermitage Museum, particularly
those which appeared to him most realistic; and he developed the wish to paint
the same way they did. His talents as an artist were noticed when Fedotov
reached the rank of captain and, it appears, the Emperor Nicholas himself
recommended to him to leave the army and dedicate his life to painting,
granting him a monthly pension of a hundred Rubles. He received similar advice
from the famous author of fables, Krilov, and some other literary figures. It
was at this time that Belinskii advocated a larger new role for literature to
play, not simply to register the vices of the society, but strike at them and
expose those who perpetrated them. Writers and artists were no longer in the
service of the powerful and rich. Something just the opposite had begun to
happen, and artists who distinguished themselves were now those who were
acclaimed. Literature became militant and came out openly against the cheating,
falseness, banality, bigotry etc., with which the new administrative society
became increasingly contaminated. Fedotov wanted to do the same in painting as
Gogol had done in literature, to draw or put on canvas fine satires of people
and make others laugh at them. He was quite successful despite his short life
as a painter.
Most of Fedotov's paintings were received with great interest, particularly
those depicting humorous scenes from the middle class. Fedotov's style differed
from Venetsianov's naive and in a way idealistic realism. Fedotov was mildly
mocking but not scornful; in fact he very realistically portrayed the society
in which he lived and he fully merited his reputation as the founder of the
realistic school of painting in Russia. It is of interest to note that he was
more often in the company of literary men than of his fellow painters. To go
with some of his paintings he made sensitive poems, that were not without
sarcastic ingredients. As a matter of fact it was a long poem on the same
subject that preceded his best painting "The Major's Courtship,"
("Svyatovstvo Mayora," more literally as "The Major's
March-making.") This picture was shown to the public at the exhibition of
the Academy in 1849 and was enthusiastically received by most of the people
despite some critical remarks by certain academicians, who also showed their
displeasure when his name was put forward for election as an academician. He
was elected, only because Fedotov enjoyed the Emperor's special favour. Two
years later the Academy refused to exhibit his "Little Widow"
("Vdovushka,") showing only a rather sentimental understanding for
the little bereaved young woman. Other well known paintings by Fedotov are
"The Discriminating Bride" and "The Morning of an Official"
both exhibited by the Academy in 1847 or 1849, together with "The Major's
Courtship." "Walking in Moscow under the Rain " is one of the
first that pictured contemporary crowd scenes; "The Card Players,"
"Domestic Thief," and his last picture "Encore, again
Encore" depicting an officer, wiping the slate clean, in a small
provincial town, who, tired of doing nothing, decides to amuse himself by
training a poodle to leap over a stick and, "encore," leap. At the
end Fedotov became increasingly haunted by the human drama in which he himself
was deeply entangled. A proposed marriage to a girl whom he loved very much did
not take place, and most of the time he was lonely. In 1852 he was taken to a
hospital for the mentally ill, where he died of pleurisy a few months later.
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