Country Boys

In the 19th century Gustave Courbet was the first to turn to portrayals of reality which included those unsightly details previously discreetly ignored. His provocative works caused a storm of criticism. In Russia a similar situation occurred with the itinerant artists, including Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky’s teachers. Since the 19th century Russian art has vividly expressed an interest in the peasantry - from Alexey Venetsianov’s idealized representation of the peasants up to critical realism of the Peredvizhniki (itinerant artists) who scrupulously represented every detail of the everyday life of the village. Village life also interested Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky, as seen in works like “Country Boys”.
The main characters of the picture are two boys. One of them is sitting on a wattle-fence - rickety but sturdy enough to bear him. He has a peaked cap on his head, typical of the 19th and early 20th centuries, worn by people in town and country alike. Dressed in a patched shirt and ill-fitting trousers with a hole at the knee, he turns to the side. The viewer cannot see what has caught his attention - the artist leaves this outside the picture, thus expanding its borders.
His friend is another barefoot boy, also wearing ragged hand-me-down clothes. He peers anxiously into the distance. In the picture there is no rhetorical attempt to denounce social inequality, the images are not idealized but still poetic because of the lyrical representation of nature - behind the fence we see a chamomile field, forest and an overcast sky.

Paintings featured in this exhibition:

"New Arrivals. Exhibition of recent acquisitions" - The Institute of Russian Realist Art - Moscow, Russia (18.10.2013 - 26.01.2014).