In this picture, Nikolai Sysoev captures an episode from harvesting season on a collective farm. Living the rural life himself, the artist could not but admire the labour of people working in the fields. Hay harvesting is one of the hottest, most tense and exciting parts of rural life. It has been captured in many works of literature and art.
The artist always felt an affinity for the theme of the demanding peasant life, as he had grown up in a village himself. Sysoev was born and raised in the village of Slanskoye, Lipetsk Region. At the age of 13, he and his mother moved to Moscow, where he studied art. The young man was not exactly enamoured by his life in the capital. After his viva voce examinations at university, he moved to Kalinin Region, where, as he admitted in his autobiography, he lived most of the time. ‘Everything that I created during my life was done in Kalinin Region, where I found my second homeland, ” he wrote. Therefore, the theme of peasant life with all its smallest details was familiar to the artist first-hand.
In his canvases, the artist praised the spring sowing season, the summer harvesting season, village holidays and various festivals on sunny winter days. Sysoev can rightfully be called a person who glorified the Russian village and peasant labour. In genre multi-figure canvases, he depicts the hard work of farmers in an honest and truthful fashion. All this is manifested in the painting Midday.
The painting depicts a typical landscape of Tver Region: a picturesque area with forest glades and small woods, which captivates with the expressive beauty of Russian nature. The traditions of the deeply realistic art of such Russian masters as Ivan Kramskoi, Valentin Serov, Vasily Surikov, Fyodor Vasilyev, Isaac Levitan and Alexei Savrasov can be traced in Sysoev’s work. The artist depicted a simple and familiar scene – peasants resting in the field in the middle of a hard working day set against the majestic Russian landscape. Everyone is resting in their own way. The women in the foreground are dozing in a reclining posture, the man on the left wearing the work cap and boots is deep in thought. In the background, a group of young people is discussing something. The calmness and serenity of the midday break in a hard working day, when everything stands still only to be set in motion soon again, emanates from the canvas.
The artist always felt an affinity for the theme of the demanding peasant life, as he had grown up in a village himself. Sysoev was born and raised in the village of Slanskoye, Lipetsk Region. At the age of 13, he and his mother moved to Moscow, where he studied art. The young man was not exactly enamoured by his life in the capital. After his viva voce examinations at university, he moved to Kalinin Region, where, as he admitted in his autobiography, he lived most of the time. ‘Everything that I created during my life was done in Kalinin Region, where I found my second homeland, ” he wrote. Therefore, the theme of peasant life with all its smallest details was familiar to the artist first-hand.
In his canvases, the artist praised the spring sowing season, the summer harvesting season, village holidays and various festivals on sunny winter days. Sysoev can rightfully be called a person who glorified the Russian village and peasant labour. In genre multi-figure canvases, he depicts the hard work of farmers in an honest and truthful fashion. All this is manifested in the painting Midday.
The painting depicts a typical landscape of Tver Region: a picturesque area with forest glades and small woods, which captivates with the expressive beauty of Russian nature. The traditions of the deeply realistic art of such Russian masters as Ivan Kramskoi, Valentin Serov, Vasily Surikov, Fyodor Vasilyev, Isaac Levitan and Alexei Savrasov can be traced in Sysoev’s work. The artist depicted a simple and familiar scene – peasants resting in the field in the middle of a hard working day set against the majestic Russian landscape. Everyone is resting in their own way. The women in the foreground are dozing in a reclining posture, the man on the left wearing the work cap and boots is deep in thought. In the background, a group of young people is discussing something. The calmness and serenity of the midday break in a hard working day, when everything stands still only to be set in motion soon again, emanates from the canvas.
