Vityaz at a crossroads

The artist is Vasnetsov

1878, when the artist presented a picture at a mobile exhibition "Vityaz at a crossroads" turned out to be a turning point in the artist’s life. A recognized genre, he rushed to the themes of an epic-accelerable character unusual for Russian realistic art. Folklore images have long lived in the soul of an artist, back in the early 1870s, he performed the earliest sketch of the composition "Vityaz". In 1882, he increases and processes the picture of 1878. The image of a knight on a white horse, stopped in thought in front of a stone-"Vestun" In the middle of a swampy plain, as if resurrects the poetic spirit of folk traditions. As in them, the heroic-epic principle is merged in a picture with a lyrical intonation, which is brought by a sunset landscape with darkening, mysterious Dali. Raven, skull, bones, ancient boulders, which goes into the boundless distance of the road – all this enhances the anxious mood felt in the color scheme of the canvas. In the measured rhythm of plastic shapes, in the transmission of the latitude of space, even in the use of the coarse -format canvas of Vasnets, he sought to approach the epic system of the epic talus. At the same time, the artist carries the historical and everyday side. The picture was executed in the free, generalized picturesque manner inherent in Vasnetsov. An increased version of the 1878 picture of the same name, located in the Serpukhov historical and art museum.