Any attempt to pigeonhole the artistic style of Nikolai Ge is pointless. The painter has always stood apart as a unique figure in Russian and European art. During his lifetime, the artist’s expressive manner, especially when applied to scenes from the Gospels, was considered provocative and unkempt. Nowadays, however, he is seen as an innovative genius. The dramatic color palette of the late works by Nikolai Ge foreshadowed the works by Mikhail Vrubel and Sergey Romanovich.

Nikolai Ge was a descendant of a French aristocratic family and the son of a Voronezh merchant. His great-grandfather Mathieu de Gay immigrated to Russia in the late 18th century escaping from the French Revolution. Nikolai’s mother died of cholera when the boy had just turned three months old. He was brought up by his grandmother and a serf nurse. The house where the future painter was born and spent the first six years of his life can still be seen on the Osvobozhdeniye Truda Street in Voronezh.

Nikolai Ge reminisced,

For the first exhibition of the Peredvizhniki artists, Nikolai Ge created one of his most famous paintings “Peter the Great Interrogating the Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich at Peterhof”. Pavel Tretyakov bought the painting for his gallery, but Alexander II took such a liking to it that Ge created a copy specifically for him. Nowadays, the copy is displayed at the State Russian Museum.

Nikolai Ge portrayed many of his famous contemporaries, including Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Herzen, and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. “Portrait of a Peasant” from the collection of the Voronezh Art Museum presents an equally vivid and powerful image of the spirit of the times. The painter emphasizes the courage of an ill-fated and rejected person who has found the strength to live. The look in his eyes is powerful and meaningful.

According to the artist himself,