I always loved this panting and was fascinated with it my whole life,never knowing one day I would have chance to see it in real life,completely unexpected.The story behind this painting is historical of course - Turkish Sultan had sent a long,pretentious letter to Russian Cossacks commanding them to submit without any resistance and stop troubling him with attacks.They replied with stream of vulgarity,parodied his writting style and called him :'crick on our dick,mare's arse,pig's snout and idiot" amongst other things - clearly they had great fun while thinking what else can be written down and the story was already a part of Russian folklore for centuries when painter Ilya Repin (whom I absolutely love and admire) painted this monumental masterpiece.Russian Tzar Nicholas III fell in love with painting and bought it for 35 000 rubles,at that time largest sum paid for russian painting ever.The painting is pure delight and has pure genius in study of Cossack's faces & laughter,one can easily spend the whole day admiring this beauty and it always made me very happy.
While travelling to St.Petersburg regulary on a cruise ship,I had chance to visit Hermitage and was troubled with thousands of tourists there so prefered Russian State Museum where only Russian art through centuries was displayed.Roaming through this beautiful Museum I was delighted to discover lots of Ilya Repin works and - voila! - my Cossacks were there as well!
I was happy as a child to see it there and even took a picture standing next to it.If you search for this painting on Wikpedia you can see it enlarged and althought guys look tough & rough,I find them adorable and love them all.Who wouldn't?
No comments:
Post a Comment