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The first who ventured to take his subjects
directly from scenes of everyday life was Mikhail Shibanov, who also came from
a peasant-serf family. He painted portraits too, but the history of Russian art
has remembered him as the first genre-painter, who depicted scenes from the
peasant life that he himself had lived for many years. His "Peasant
Supper," painted in 1774, shows without any pretensions the faces of real
Russians and a scene from their life. Similarly and even better is his
"Celebration of the Marital Agreement," painted in 1777. Members of
both families are inside an izba with the bride in the middle dressed in her
wedding gown but looking rather bewildered being the center of attention with
so many people around her. On the backs of both paintings Shibanov wrote that
the scenes were of peasants living in the village of Tatarovo in the Suzdal
area. The interior of the izba and particularly the dresses of the bride and
other women show colorful, well-dressed people and their modest living
conditions, usually presented as miserable by Soviet politicians.
Here we show his "Peasant Supper".
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