The artists Alexey and Sergey Tkachyov worked on the painting Sons for five years — from 1985 to 1990. The canvas captures a dramatic moment: a mother sees off her three sons to the front. She makes the sign of the cross over one of them at parting, the other two stand nearby, with their faces sad and stern. The mother herself covers her mouth with the corner of a black shawl, trying to hold back her tears.

For this picture, the artist brothers were inspired by events that occurred in their own family. Sergey Tkachyov and his two older brothers — Serafim and Vasily — went to the front. Serafim Tkachyov died, and the future artist Sergey Tkachyov was seriously injured, and by mistake there came a ‘killed in action’ notice about him. For more than 60 years, the documents of the Ministry of Defense had read: ‘Private Tkachyov died a heroic death’. Only in 2007 the misunderstanding was finally cleared up — Sergey Tkachyov was invited to the Kremlin, where the president personally handed him the awards ‘For Courage’ and ‘For Military Merit’.

In the composition of the painting Sons, the artists conveyed the gloomy atmosphere of wartime: the room is painted with dark colours, its corners are lost in the dusk. The black mourning shawl on the mother’s head reinforces the alarming impression: she seems to say goodbye to her sons forever and does not hope to see them alive.

The only bright spot on the picture is the open door, behind which you can see a courtyard flooded with sunlight. As envisioned by the artist, this light personifies the joy of the victory and the peaceful life that awaits people in the future.

The Belgorod State Art Museum acquired the painting Sons from the authors in 1990. Also, its collection contains sketches for this canvas.

Most often, on their canvases the Tkachyovs painted real people — friends, relatives, neighbours, colleagues. The manner of their work was close to Impressionism: the artists used saturated colours, wide free brushstrokes, the play of light and shadow.

Since 1995, in Bryansk works the Museum of Sergey and Alexey Tkachyov. The artists donated more than 200 of their works to its collection. Their paintings are also kept in the collections of the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the art museums of Belgorod, Irkutsk, Penza and Kherson.