There’s a work painted by artist Grigory Vasilyevich Soroka in the collection of the Tver Regional Art Gallery. Vasilyev (Vasilyev’s son) was a real painter’s last name, Soroka was his nickname that in course of time replaced his real one. Grigory Soroka was a bondman at Nikolai Petrovich Milyukov’s estate ‘Ostrovki’ in Tver province.
Soroka was a self-taught artist, but a very gifted one. Landlord Milyukov even found it possible to let him get familiar with the collection of painting, graphic art and books he had at the estate. Later Soroka’s drawings were seen by Milyukov’s neighbor and a friend, a painter Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov. He highly appreciated the bondman’s talent and offered him to study painting under his own guidance. As a result, in 1842 Grigory Soroka became Venetsianov’s student. The painter’s album with the sketches depicting the peasants from the surrounding villages dates back to that year. The album survived to the day and is now in the collection of the Russian museum. It is an evidence of curiosity and talent of a young artist. In his estate Alexey Venetsianov organized a small art school later came to be known as “Venetsianov”s School”. Just like other students, Soroka mostly worked “en plain air”, painted portraits, landscapes and interiors.
The painter was best at landscapes. The work “View of the Estate “Ostrovki” from the Big Island’ was painted in 1846. By that moment the painter had already been studying at Venetsianov’s school for 3 years, and it can be seen by the craftiness needed to complete such work. Grigory Soroka mastered the basic principles of perspective drawing and light-and-shadow, became a subtle colorist. The artist was making a clear progress, and Venetsianov recommended him to enter the Imperial Academy of Arts and himself asked his lord for his liberation. But neither liberation, nor entering the Academy happened, the landlord didn’t approve it. The peasant gained his freedom only in 1861 as a result of the Emancipation Edict in Russia.
Grigory Soroka didn’t only inherit the secrets of art craft from Alexey Venestianov. Just like him, a dependent bondman founded his own school where he taught the local kids drawing.
For a long time the painting “View of the Estate “Ostrovki” from the Big Island’ was regarded lost and was only known by the description of Milyukov’s grandson, published in the magazine “Old Times” in 1916. In 1998 the painting was founded in one of the private collections in Tver and after the affirming attribution it was acquired for the gallery collection. It got there in the bad state and needed a complex renovation which took a few years before the canvas was represented to the audience.
