Serov and 1905

Born on January 19, 1865, Valentin Serov was one of the greatest artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He started his career exhibiting with artists from the Itinerant movement, but later struck out on his own and was branded a traitor to realism. He was certainly no traitor, but he was an exceptionally original artist who did not share the mindset that predominated among his fellow artists. For them, painting was primarily a means of exposing the truth and representing the suffering of the common folk. Serov’s contributions to Russian art included a renewed focus on beauty, a subtle sense of form, and an innovative approach to the portrait. Had he not met an untimely death in 1911, he no doubt would have left us many more striking images of his contemporaries. The Girl with Peaches (1887), his best known work, epitomized for many the joie de vivre and delight in beauty that his paintings reflected.

Bloody Sunday

On January 22, 1905, a large crowd of St. Petersburg factory workers marched on the Winter Palace to deliver a petition to the tsar in the hope that he would do something to ease their hardships. The tsar was not in St. Petersburg that day and the peaceful demonstrators came under attack by soldiers of the Imperial Guard. How many died on Bloody Sunday was never precisely calculated, but clearly casualties reached into the hundreds. January 22 is considered the start of the Revolution of 1905. Despite his preference for capturing the play of golden rays of sunlight on the faces of beautiful women, the painter Valentin Serov, who witnessed the carnage, was inspired by the event to commit an uncharacteristic act of social conscience, producing a depiction (below) titled Soldiers, Gallant Fellows, Where is Your Glory?

Soldiers, Gallant Fellows, Where is Your Glory? (Valentin Serov)