The painting Allhallows Bridge. Moscow of Late 18th Century is one of historical city landscapes of Apollinariy Vasnetsov. The artist created it in 1901. In the painting, he depicted the Kremlin panorama and the first stone bridge in Moscow with eight spans. By the time of the painting creation the bridge was demolished, and the artist used various archive documents to reconstruct its exterior view.
Apollinariy Vasnetsov animated the Moscow architecture by a genre scene: he depicted a frolic crowd with a group of wandering comic minstrels during the Butter Week (Russian carnival before Lent). The author emphasized the carnival spirit by a bright picturesque array. His historical city landscape is not reserved, but looks more like an illustration to a fairytale: colorful architecture and ‘gingerbread houses’, painted fences and hoods of snow covering the roofs.
Diligent research of a true historian underpinned this theme. The author spent long hours in archives and libraries to find out what the city looked like in previous centuries. Allhallows Bridge just like other paintings of Apollinariy Vasnetsov from the old Moscow series is an alloy of exact sciences and artistic talent. While working on this piece, he developed authentic drawings: sketched a layout marking the exact location of various landmarks at a certain historic moment. He used black lines to draw the disappeared buildings and red lines for the preserved ones. Currently, many of his drawings are stored together with his paintings and watercolors in Moscow Museum.
Apollinariy Vasnetsov animated the Moscow architecture by a genre scene: he depicted a frolic crowd with a group of wandering comic minstrels during the Butter Week (Russian carnival before Lent). The author emphasized the carnival spirit by a bright picturesque array. His historical city landscape is not reserved, but looks more like an illustration to a fairytale: colorful architecture and ‘gingerbread houses’, painted fences and hoods of snow covering the roofs.
Diligent research of a true historian underpinned this theme. The author spent long hours in archives and libraries to find out what the city looked like in previous centuries. Allhallows Bridge just like other paintings of Apollinariy Vasnetsov from the old Moscow series is an alloy of exact sciences and artistic talent. While working on this piece, he developed authentic drawings: sketched a layout marking the exact location of various landmarks at a certain historic moment. He used black lines to draw the disappeared buildings and red lines for the preserved ones. Currently, many of his drawings are stored together with his paintings and watercolors in Moscow Museum.
