Vasily Perov (1833/1834–1882) felt deep compassion for ordinary people and chose scenes from Russian peasant life as the main subject of his paintings. His contemporaries called him ‘singer of sorrow’. He condemned ignorant noblemen who had forgotten what hard work is, and showed the deplorable situation of peasants and workers. The largest and most famous painting of that series is Troika (1866) for which he was granted the title of academician. In that painting one can see three freezing children dragging a heavy sleigh loaded with barrels of water. 

The painting Little Orphans that you can see in the exhibition of Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts is also dedicated to suffering peasant children. The artist painted them against the background of a turbulent sunset sky. Everything in their look speaks about their tragedy. Even the scarce color palette conveys the idea of injustice towards ordinary people. Perov wanted the noble public interested in art to pay attention to the tragedy of small people abandoned by fortune. His famous paintings A Governess Arriving…, Rural Funeral and Boy Workman.

The artist himself, during his whole life, suffered from his social situation: he was an illegitimate son of Baron von Krüdener who belonged to a noble family. His father could not give him his name as the child was born before the baron married his mother.

Later, the artist became one of the organizers of the Peredvizhniki, the first artists’ society in Russia that supported democratization of art and paid attention to social problems. The Peredvizhniki condemned serfdom and believed that art had to reflect the real situation of common people. Perov empathized with those ideas and followed them during all his life.