“Father”, Konstantin Apollovich Savitsky – overview of the painting 
- Posted by Konstantin Apollonovich Savitsky
- Museum: Taganrog Art Museum
- Year: 1896
Overview of the painting :
Father – Konstantin Apollonovich Savitsky. 1896. Oil on canvas.
& nbp; One of the most soulful works of Konstantin Savitsky is the painting “Father”, which was completed by the master in 1896. More often we see a suffering mother next to a sick child, and here the father becomes the main character. Excited, desperate, with the stubborn intention of begging the sick child from the Lord.
& nbp; The second name of the canvas is “With a sick child in front of a miraculous icon”. Both names, both laconic monologous and expanded, are very deep in content.
& nbp; In a simple blanket, assembled from colorful shreds, a child who sleeps is wrapped around. His face is calm, but with traces of fatigue – the baby is fighting the disease. This is no longer a monthly baby, so the parents have already managed to see his first smile, hear the first sounds, and become attached with all their hearts. On the hands of a sick child is held by the father. This is a poor, simple man, most likely a peasant or a master. Perhaps he went to the miracle icon for more than one kilometer to ask the holy image to heal his blood.
& nbp; The semantic and climax center of the canvas is not the child himself, but the eyes of the father. How many different emotions Savitsky was able to convey in this view. There is an frenzied pain of despair, and a tragic premonition, and a sincere prayer, striving for an invisible audience of the icon, and perseverance in half with stubbornness, not to give the baby dead, and barely tangible hope, and huge inexhaustible fatigue. These eyes make a huge impression! The audience involuntarily mourns with an inconsolable parent and hopes that despite the high infant mortality and limited medical care in those days, this baby will cope with the disease.
& nbp; Six years after writing, Savitsky gave a picture to his native Taganrog, the city of his serene childhood, where he was so happy until death one after another took his parents, leaving him an orphan.