The exhibition of the Irbit State Museum of Fine Arts features a lithograph by Alexander Orlovsky titled “Battle Between Georgians and Highlanders”.
Alexander Orlovsky was praised by his contemporaries as a talented and brilliant draughtsman. They appreciated his everyday sketches, which were witty, funny, and occasionally sharply critical. In his work, Orlovsky mainly focused on battle and military scenes. He was always interested in the heroic past and present. Scenes of battles, attacks, and chases feature famous Russian generals and unknown warriors such as Cossacks, Bashkirs, Circassians, Persians, Turks, and Highlanders who appear at crucial moments in their lives, in times of war and peace. As a backdrop for his scenes of battle and robbery, Alexander Orlovsky often chose gloomy landscapes filled with scary moonlight, trees bent in the wind, and a stormy sky.
One of the technically compelling artworks is the 1826 lithograph “Battle Between Georgians and Highlanders” by Alexander Orlovsky from the museum collection. In this lithograph, the artist focused on the foreground where the horsemen and horses are larger than elsewhere in the image. The artist depicted one of many bloody battles for Caucasian territories, without specifying which one it is. The scene features Georgian warriors, Persian troops, and even Turkish Janissaries. As a connoisseur of Eastern and Cossack weapons and a brilliant animalier painter, Alexander Orlovsky managed to imbue the intense battle with his fiery temper.
