Description of the painting by Ilya Mashkov “Still Life”

Description of the painting by Ilya Mashkov Still Life

Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov studied with famous artists of the time – Korovin and Serov. Possessing exceptional ability to color, the artist wrote magnificent, vivid and expressive still lifes. In his paintings, Mashkov actively used texture and color techniques, with which he conveyed the existence of specific objects in their own created environment.

His “Still Life” is made in the folk style, while the painter shows us the real, living, not fictional beauty of the objects of the painting, emphasizing the “physicality” of the gifts of nature that he depicts. He takes the natural ideality of a particular subject and brings it to perfection, seeking to reveal this beauty in its entirety. Fruits and vegetables on the canvas and shine health and naturalness.

The background for the still life is a luxurious fabric of golden color, painted with rather large figures of people in oriental costumes. True, these people have no faces, but, apparently, it is not so important for the artist. So, against this background in ceramic dishes and vases of glass lie a variety of ripe fruits – blue-black large grapes, ruddy red-yellow peaches, light pink quince fruits, blue and red ripe plums. A few peaches popped out of the dish on the table.

The brightness and saturation of the color of the fruit is somewhat exaggerated – this is how the artist wanted to display the ripeness and health of the fruit. Mashkov also used deliberately large strokes and an increase in the size of the fruit to achieve a feeling of their fullness and roundness. The color scale of the “Still Life” is bright and expressive.

Carefully written out the physicality of fruits, their healthy appearance and attractiveness vividly illustrate the artist’s attitude to the manifestations of nature, namely, the glorification of the diversity and richness of its forms.


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Description of the painting by Ilya Mashkov “Still Life”