Sleeping Shepherd Boy
Between 1823 and 1826
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Location in museum
The Mikhailovsky Palace,
Room 13
Open the panorama of the hall in the virtual tour
- Period Early 19th century
- Genre Painting
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The landscape background to this picture is a view onto the River Vorozhba from the windows of Alexei Venetsianov’s house in Safonkovo in Tver Province. The painting was first exhibited at the Society for the Encouragement of Artists in 1826. The heartfelt interpretation of this portrait of a peasant boy is typical of the Russian school of painting. Rejecting any attempts at ethnographic accuracy, it is both concrete and poetically uplifting. The device of tearing the foreground away from the background conjures up the sensation of the endless breadth and depth of the landscape. The subtle transitions of light and colour create an almost tangible feeling of the passage of life — slow in the summer heat, yet inexorable and endlessly diverse. Full of calm and tranquillity, Venetsianov’s painting introduces us to the private world of the Russian village, where the appearance of a stranger is an important event.