“Clean Monday”, Vasily Grigoryevich Perov – overview of the painting 
- Author: Vasily Grigoryevich Perov
- Museum: Tretyakov Gallery
- Year: 1866
Overview of the painting :
Pure Monday – Vasily Grigoryevich Perov. Wood, butter. 22.8 x 17.5 cm
Vasily Grigoryevich Perov is often called the founder of the genre of critical realism. His picture of a married couple coming from the bath on pure Monday is realistic, but without social criticism. It is saturated with kindness, peace and love.
On a clean Monday, an elderly married couple leisurely and chinno walks down the street. Bath procedures behind, their faces are rosy, unpaired, contented, pleasantly tired.
Clothing on spouses worn, seeing species. A gazed food and a bunch of sheep, apparently bought along the way, indicate that at home the old people will sit behind an pot-bellied samovar and drink fragrant tea.
A couple of unremarkable old people, slowly wandering around the street, leading some ordinary conversations, but why did this work of Perov gain such fame all over the world and keep it in the famous Tretyakov Gallery?
Most likely, because the author is brilliantly able to convey human emotions and feelings. And the main feeling of the viewer is how good and warm these people are together. Having lived together a whole life, which was clearly not easy, this pair fascinates with its affection for each other, the spiritual proximity that is felt in their gestures and in the expression of faces. They are simply happy that they are nearby and together.