Konstantin Yegorovich Makovsky (born 20.06.1839 — died 17.09.1915, Moscow) — a major salon painter of imperial Russia, academician of painting. He is remembered in national history chiefly as the creator of the grandiose canvas "Minin's Appeal": the largest patriotic painting in Russia by area (6.98 x 5.94 meters).
Brief biography
Konstantin Makovsky was the son of Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky (1800-86), a well-known art lover and one of the founders of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
At the age of 12, influenced by his father, he entered this school (1851-58). His mentors were M. Scotti, V. Tropinin and S. Zaryanko.
In 1858-62 he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Founding member of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions (until 1883).
He experienced a strong influence of salon art, and from the mid-1870s turned to academicism. He painted portraits ("Portrait of O. A. Petrov", 1870, Tretyakov Gallery), genre paintings ("Children Fleeing a Thunderstorm", 1872, Tretyakov Gallery), colorful genre-historical scenes ("Prince Repnin at a Feast with Ivan the Terrible", Irkutsk Regional Art Museum), and scenes from folk life ("Fairground Booths on Admiralteyskaya Square", 1869, Russian Museum).
Historical context of K. Makovsky's work
Russian reality in the second half of the 19th century offered the artist's eye anything but touching scenes. Russian painting took up the same accursed questions as literature. Its democratic spirit showed not only in artistic contact with reality but also in the assessment, by artistic means, of life in its broad reading. New content demanded the search for new methods and techniques of depiction. It was on this path that genuine artistic revelations were created.
Having failed with a complex historical folk drama, Makovsky found himself in a distinctive historical genre: he sought to play up the exoticism of old Russian customs, rituals, and rites. Devising his own conflicts and original plot twists was difficult for Makovsky. His imagination fed on literary reminiscences. His paintings became enormous painted illustrations to the historical novels of A. K. Tolstoy, the dramas of L. A. Mey, and others. His first paintings — A Boyar Wedding Feast, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Choosing a Bride, The Death of Ivan the Terrible, fresh, spontaneous, painted with a certain dash and decorative sweep, with a subtle penetration into the specifics of Russian life of the 16th-17th centuries, evoke a sense of historical authenticity. They brought the artist well-deserved recognition in Russia and abroad. At world exhibitions he was honored with numerous prizes.
Having quickly mastered boyar-themed genres in the style russe, Makovsky began exploiting this subject intensively. Richly appointed interiors, sumptuous old-fashioned garments, precious tableware — as the main characters — abundantly fill his countless canvases. Into them he poured all his talent as a painter and decorator, rendering the whole material setting with a texture and illusionistic reproduction of intricate old accessories like no other artist. His paintings were executed with a special painterly brilliance.
Interesting facts
- In 1863 he took part in the so-called "Revolt of the Fourteen" — together with fellow students dissatisfied at being denied the right to choose their own competition subjects, he left the Academy and took part in founding the Artel of Artists, though he remained a member for only a short time.
- "Konstantin Makovsky carried himself like a great lord, dressed almost in a boyar's costume, and kept up the tone of a great, distinguished artist. He earned large sums of money and knew how to spend them." (Minchenkov Ya. D. Memories of the Peredvizhniki. Leningrad, 1959. P. 60.)
- Makovsky's name is linked to one of the few Nizhny Novgorod memes of federal significance: "Gun of Fate". An urban legend, circulating among the The City of Gorky nomenklatura, holds that a Belgian shotgun with vertically arranged barrels and a buffalo-leather case was presented "by the merchants of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia" (as stated on a plate fixed near the forestock) to Konstantin Makovsky at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair during the ceremony of donating the painting "Minin's Appeal" to the city municipality. Later, the gun came into the possession of three NEP-era profiteers, who drank away the original gold plate and had a new brass one made at the Sormovo plant. To the uninitiated the gun was known as the "Flagship of Russia". In the late Soviet period it was fired by the one-eyed GITO professor Kolokoltsev and many other worthy people. "Whoever holds the Gun of Fate in his hands controls the fate of Nizhny Novgorod, and through it the fate of the whole Federation". The Gun of Fate really does exist and is held by the "last poet of the village" Ts., who is trying to sell it to patriotic forces.