Painstakingly painted, with an emphasis on faces, hunting trophies and hunting paraphernalia, the painting "Hunters at Rest" was painted in 1871 by the Russian itinerant artist Vasily Grigorievich Perov.
The plot of the picture
The composition contains many small details and three large ones: three hunters camped after a successful hunt and are talking, and hunting attributes and prey (hare, partridges) flaunt in the foreground. The most lively character in the picture is an elderly experienced hunter who tells a story to his friends. From the facial expressions of the younger hunter in the background, it is clear that he doesn’t really believe the story, but the third one listens with the attention of a beginner who is ready to trust his age and experience.
Also noteworthy is the combination in the canvas of a genre painting of everyday life with a landscape and a still life. The latter is presented in the form of hunting items.
The general mood of the picture, despite the evening twilight, the gloomy sky and the swamp surrounding the hunters, conveys the lightness and swagger of a simple Russian peasant, who loves to lie and show off in front of friends.
History of creation
By the time of writing the picture, Perov had already moved away from the sad pictures of folk life that was familiar to his work (this was influenced by the general disappointed mood of the intelligentsia and the tragedy in the family), and "The Hunters …" turned out to be simply anecdotal in comparison with his previous works. Being a passionate lover of hunting, the artist has seen similar scenes more than once in his life, he himself was a participant in all kinds of funny tales, gossip and unprecedented stories about hunting, so it is not surprising that the picture came out very lively.
The original is at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. In 1877 Perov created a copy, which is kept in the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Criticism
Contemporaries reacted differently to work. Saltykov-Shchedrin criticized her for her excessive pretense of faces, and Stasov praised the picture and even compared it with Turgenev's hunting stories. Dostoevsky in his diary mentioned the painting in the following terms: “The painting has long been known to everyone:“The hunters at a halt”; one ardently and arrogantly lies, the other listens and believes with all his might, and the third does not believe anything, lay down right there and laughs … What a charm!.. We almost hear and know what he is talking about, we know the whole turn of his lies, his syllable, his feelings."
