“Everywhere is life”, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Yaroshenko – description of the painting

Description of the picture:

Everywhere life is Nikolai Aleksandrovich Yaroshenko. 1888. Oil on canvas. 106×212

The topic of social contradictions was one of the main in the work of N. A. Yaroshenko. Among the artist’s genre works, the painting “Everywhere Life” became the most famous.

The work was inspired by the story of Leo Tolstoy, “How are people alive?”, And its original title was “Where there is love – there is God.” The canvas depicts prisoners of a prison carriage watching pigeons. The author, choosing such a simple and straightforward plot, emphasizes the injustice of real life: how can people with such persons, filled with warmth and good nature, be criminals? They are much more humane than many, who remained on the other side of the carriage free. It is no coincidence that the central group of characters resembles the Holy Family, in it you can guess the gospel characters: the Madonna and Child, three wise men with gifts in the form of bread crumbs and the symbolic designation of God the Father – pigeons.

Yaroshenko seemed to stop the moment of the bitter life of a simple but oppressed people, imprisoned in a dirty, shabby green carriage, where it is dark and damp. Everywhere life, it is everywhere, it squeals in another window of the car through which the light of a summer day pours, but these poor ordinary people who have been imprisoned are deprived of it.

“How much she says to her heart,” said L. N. Tolstoy about the painting."

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