The exhibition of the Engels Museum of Local Lore presents one of the early student works of Yakov Yakovlevich Weber “Monk by the Fire”, which dates back to the artist’s Penza period.

The young artist Yakov Weber, after failing to enter the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, in 1898, decided to study at the newly opened Penza Art School named after Nikolay Seliverstov. The director of the school, Konstantin Apollonovich Savitsky, a Peredvizhniki artist and professor of landscape painting, later became a teacher of Weber. Konstantin Savitsky headed the school until his death on January 31 (February 13), 1905.

At the school, a lot of painting was done from life, for which the sitters were invited. This was the case with the portrait of a monk by the fire. On the vertical canvas is a pensive figure of a monk in black vestments and headdress, sitting by the fire against the background of a red brick wall in a three-quarter turn. The work was executed in the traditions of realistic Peredvizhniki portraiture. It was not finished, some details were not painted, but the figure was correctly fitted to the size of the canvas, and the proportions of the body were accurately calibrated. Weber tried to convey the overtones and light reflected from the fire on the face and clothes of the figure by decomposing the red and black colors into tones. The detailed nature of his earlier works was no longer a feature of this work. The artist develops the ability to generalize, to use tone and color in the interpretation of the form. Weber’s early works are characterized by an appeal to the traditions of portrait and landscape painting of the Peredvizhniki artists, namely Konstantin Savitsky, Weber’s teacher. Savitsky deliberately promoted the realistic method in art, that is why in the educational practice of the school a lot of attention was paid to the work in the open air, and the main priority was given to painting. Savitsky developed his own study program, which proved itself so successful that the best graduates of the school were admitted without examinations to the Imperial Academy of Arts. Weber developed a good friendship with Savitsky, and he recalled his life and studies in Penza in great detail and with great warmth.