Grigory Kaganov. Harvard: Trehsotletie St. Petersburg-3

The most unvisited departments of American museums are the departments of old American painting. The Italian Renaissance or French impressionism are incomparably more popular than domestic art of the 18th and 19th centuries. Apparently, the old complex of cultural inferiority that Americans for some reason experienced for a long time in front of Europe is making itself felt. But in vain. After all, their old art itself is remarkably healthy and does not reveal any complexes. Just look at the strings of portraits of the second half of the 18th century, at this triumphal procession of a new man who created a new country. Sometimes it seems that you are in the Tretyakov Gallery - these portraits, at least, are so similar - many of them, at first glance, look like their Russian counterparts. And in time, this coincides with the reign of Catherine the Great in Russia , who in the old country tried to build a new society and bring out a new breed of people for it.

The empress’s philanthropic idea, as is known, was to create a country of free citizens. She was disgusted that the majority of her subjects (peasants) were in serfdom to a minority (the nobles). Having first granted freedom (from forced government service) to this minority, she took the next step, which was completely natural for her - the liberation of the serf majority from forced service to the nobles. Not so. The liberated nobility stood up as a wall against her idea, preferring not to deal with free tenants (just think, civil equals to them, noble, “gentry”!), but to live out of habit at the expense of free slave labor. The United States will then also face the problem of abolishing slavery, but half the country will be in favor of abolition. And in Russia there is only one empress. She lost. Only in 1861 would her great-grandson Alexander II free the peasants. In 1865, Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in the United States.

By the way, it is not very clear what would have happened to the abolition of slavery in the States if the Russian emperor, who carried out liberal reforms, had not provided the most decisive assistance to the American president, who carried out liberal reforms, at that critical moment when two other empires, British and French, were preparing a naval blockade USA, a death similar to the Americans. It was a brilliant operation: prepared in the summer of 1863 with remarkable speed and in absolute secrecy, two squadrons, Atlantic and Pacific, had already been patrolling both coasts of the States since the fall. One of the sons of Alexander II, Grand Duke Alexei, served in the Atlantic squadron with the rank of lieutenant. His presence, of course, had a symbolic meaning, as did the presence of these very few Russian frigates, clippers and corvettes themselves (only six ships on each coast). By spring, the fate of the blockade was decided: it did not take place, and the northern states won the civil war against the southern ones. Slavery was abolished throughout the United States. But then the best of American presidents was assassinated by a terrorist. 16 years later, the best of Russian emperors was killed by a terrorist.

However, if we talk about the regicides, then both the grandfather and great- grandfather of Alexander II were beaten to death not by rootless terrorists, but by some of those noble and gentry gentlemen whom his beautiful-hearted great-grandmother tried to remake into new people.

As for old American portraits , many of them, like their Russian counterparts, convey clothing and accessories much more accurately than faces or hands. These are portraits of things rather than people. Why be surprised? The customer did not have to pose for a long time, for many days. In one or two sessions, the artist drew a face and hairstyle (sometimes the general appearance of a costume) from life, and then in the studio he transferred everything “personal ” to canvas and painted it with paints in several layers. That’s why the faces in old portraits are traditionally handsome. All ladies, without exception, are entitled to big eyes, rosy cheeks and a small mouth with an amiable half-smile.

An experienced portrait painter did not need to be told what to add or remove. He already understood everything, although the customer, of course, always had his right and could demand a more beautiful nose, more stateliness, and fewer wrinkles, cheeks or belly. If the portrait is full-length, then the feet must be small, narrow, preferably smaller than the hands. The customers' feet are simply miniature (but ladies' hands can be disproportionately large, this does not spoil it, on the contrary). It was considered good form for the face and hands to be shown slightly out of focus, with slightly blurred outlines. It's as if the air around them is too dense. Or as if they were filmed by a camera with too long an exposure, and they could not remain absolutely motionless for so long, they slowly lived, breathed, moved barely noticeably, so they didn’t turn out very sharp. The face on the canvas looked like some kind of averaging of all its real states. In essence, it could not have turned out similar precisely because of its averageness. After all, in a living face, we first of all follow all its movements and changes, and without them the face would be creepy, as in special police photographs of the dead: their eyelids are massaged and opened and photographed in this form for identification. It is not for nothing that an actor who knew how to hold his face for a long time without the slightest movement was called a “death’s head” in the old days.

The suit is another matter. The customer gave it to the artist, who put it on a mannequin and painted as much as necessary from life with photographic precision. Unlike faces, costumes, and even in a very dark tone, usual for portraits, are shown as if in an airless space, all their details are visible with a sharpness that is simply unnatural, with which we never see them in life. Every tooth of lace, a petal in a boutonniere, a highlight on a satin ribbon, every fold on a sleeve, the finest wires of gold embroidery, the fine filigree of saber hilts, the curls of painting on fans and expensive buttons - all of them cry out with the piercing voices of night birds: here I am, here I am. A slightly blurry light face in such an environment looks like a negative of an icon’s face, darkening in the cut of a polished silver frame.

In fact, such portraits were, so to speak, worldly icons. Nothing fleeting, momentary, one-time and purely individual had the right to seep into this solemn hieratic “appearance” of the clan portrayed to all subsequent generations. And of course, carefully selected accessories were more important than minor accidents of personal facial features. It was no coincidence that family portrait galleries resembled iconostases.

The customer, accordingly, was not concerned with the exact transfer of the shape of the nostrils or fingers, but with the exact transfer of the uniform and orders. The customer is given the dress and jewelry. Allegories appropriate to the occasion were no less important, sometimes significantly “editing” a living person. Here is a very interesting example: the popular portrait painter John Singleton Copley, somewhere around 1763, depicted Mrs. James Warren (most likely commissioned by her husband Mr. James Warren) in a modest dress, without the then fashionable crinoline and next to a nasturtium bush, an allegory of marital and maternal care. Meanwhile, the real Mercy Otis Warren, born Mercy Otis, was widely known primarily as a playwright , an active politician and the author of the first history of the American Revolution. However, Presbyterian ethics confined female virtues to a purely family circle, and preferred not to notice the true influence of women on the cultural and political life of the country.

This did not make the real influence any less. The best proof of this hangs two steps from the mentioned canvas and represents the most famous portrait of George Washington . We are talking about a study of the head of the famous general and US President. Although Gilbert Stuart wrote it around 1790, that is, not even 30 years had passed after John Copley fulfilled the Warrens’ order, artistic tastes had changed so much that Copley’s diligent, with a taste of provincial “naïve” product is separated by an entire era from Stuart’s painting, complete metropolitan splendor and artistic freedom. However, something did not please Mrs. George Washington, and the sketch remained unfinished, and the large portrait for which it served as a preparation was never painted. The merits of the sketch she rejected are evidenced by its subsequent fate: Stuart conveyed with such skill the external resemblance and spiritual structure of his model that from his sketch various artists later painted countless portraits of Washington, ceremonial, equestrian, etc. It was this small image of his noble head that became one one of the main symbols of the new nation and as such was engraved for printing on the new monetary units, dollars.