The painting depicts the hut in the village of Fili that belonged to the peasant Mikhail Frolov. In this very hut, a military council was held on September 1, 1812, which predetermined the outcome of the Patriotic War. By this time, the army of Alexander I was retreating from the borders of the Russian Empire under the onslaught of Napoleon’s army. Russian troops were positioned near Moscow, between the village of Fili and the Sparrow Hills.

The Commander-In-Chief of the Russian army, Mikhail Kutuzov, convened a military council in a peasant hut. Generals Barclay de Tolly, Leonty Bennigsen, Alexander Osterman-Tolstoy, Karl Tol, Nikolay Rayevsky, Dmitry Dokhturov, Alexey Yermolov, Pyotr Konovnitsyn and Paisiy Kaysarov were invited. They faced the main question: to take on the French army here or surrender Moscow without a fight? Most were in favor of the battle since it was considered shameful to give the capital to the enemy.

Mikhail Kutuzov made a different decision:

This turned out to be the right move: just a month and a half later, the reinforced army together with a powerful people’s militia turned the tide of war and made Napoleon’s army flee.

The painting was created by Alexey Kondratyevich Savrasov, a Russian painter and a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Savrasov is the founder and member of the Peredvizhniki group, which also included Vasily Surikov, Ivan Shishkin, Ilya Repin, Ivan Kramskoy, Vasily Polenov, Vladimir Makovsky. The artist was born in the family of a merchant of the third guild and began to draw against his father’s will.

Alexey Savrasov studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and four years later began teaching there. His students were Isaac Levitan, Konstantin Korovin, and Mikhail Nesterov. Savrasov is the founder of the Russian lyrical landscape, in his works, lyricism served as the basis for artistic depictions of nature. Starting from the 1860s, the artist’s reflections on the historical destiny of the Motherland and the events of 1812 become prominent motifs in his works. His most significant work of this period is the painting “Kutuzovskaya Hut in Fili”.