The drawing shows the children of the Rostov’s from Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”: the doors are open, the children have run into the hall. Little Petya and Natasha in a white dress make up the front row, behind them are Nikolai, Sonya and Boris Drubetskoy. This is an illustration for Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”, created by the artist Dementiy Shmarinov.
In the novel “War and Peace”, Leo Tolstoy described the world of childhood in detail: the purity and sincerity of children’s feelings, their striving for goodness and justice. The writer portrayed the Rostov family with great sympathy, projecting many familiar features onto its members. The prototype of the old Count was Ilya Tolstoy, the grandfather of the writer, and the prototype of Nikolai Rostov was Nikolai Tolstoy, the writer’s father. There are five children in the Rostov family: brothers Nikolai and Pyotr; and sisters Natasha, Vera and Sonya.
Nikolai is the oldest child of the family, a kind and open young man, everyone’s favorite. A student at Moscow University, who quit his studies to become an officer and participate in the war with Napoleon. His sister Vera, on the contrary, is cold, reasonable and arrogant, although very pretty. The youngest of the bunch, Petya is a cheerful and playful snub-nosed boy with rosy cheeks. Sonya is the Rostovs’ adopted daughter and distant relative. She is in love with her second cousin Nikolai.
The image of Natasha Rostova is the most lively, bright and unpretentious. At the beginning of the novel, she is only 13, and, as the novel progresses, she grows up in front of the reader, learns to reason, finds interests and hobbies. The author describes her as “this black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life <…> with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms.” This nimble, brave teenager, energetic and quick to laugh gradually blossoms into an interesting and captivating young adult. If Leo Tolstoy had finished his novel about the Decembrists, Natasha would have probably been destined to follow her husband Pierre Bezukhov into exile.
The creator of this illustration, Dementiy Shmarinov is a Soviet and Russian graphic artist, illustrator, teacher and People’s Artist of the USSR. Shmarinov worked as an artist in the publishing houses “Goslitizdat”, “Detgiz”, “Young Guard”, and “Art”. During the Great Patriotic War, he made political posters with themes concerning the liberation of the Motherland and the fight against the invaders. Professor Shmarinov led the workshop of graphic art of the USSR Academy of the Arts and was a member of the Academy of Arts of the GDR and the Executive Committee of the International Association of Artists.
