Moscow Courtyard is considered by many to be Vasily Polenov's most famous painting. Polenov was thirty three when he painted this scene. After having graduated from the Academy as an historical painter, he started looking for a future path. So, could all these criss crossed paths in the painting have personal meaning for him?
Vasily's mother encouraged him not to waste time on "trifles" but to do a big painting. She might have had in mind memorable historical moments and battle scenes. Instead, Vasily went off to Moscow where he sketched churches and cathedrals. He found a small apartment there where he did a sketch (painted draft) of the courtyard he saw outside the apartment window, but with a different angle and less light. The painting incomplete, he went off to the Russian Turkish War as a military artist. Returning a year later, everyone expected to see Vasily's ribbons and medals and paintings of military achievements and weapons. But he had produced very little, and nothing of warfare, only sketches of soldiers shaving and washing up. Even his friend Ilya Repin scolded him for not bringing back a painted war record.
May I offer an opinion? Vasily Polenov was too soulful to produce that kind of painted war report. Soulful people, people of genuine spirit, aren't interested in military displays—then or now. By contrast, isn't it interesting that Polenov's greatest interest turned out to be his painting the Life of Christ Cycle.
Anyway, when Vasily returned from the fields of blood and smoke, he also returned to the Moscow apartment where he had previously worked on the courtyard sketch. Setting up his easel at the same window, he now expanded the scene with people—saturating everything with light. We could do with more of that — light saturate-rs, these dark days of coup attempt, covid disregard, pepper spray and record breaking gun sales. While we increasingly make short shrift of art in school, I'm wondering what might happen to us inwardly if we introduced into school curricula a study of the great 19th century landscape painters. Soul work is not the same as religious indoctrination. The artist wrote:
"History shows what a strong influence art has on persons, on their morals, on their softening, on morals and mental development. Usually where freedom penetrated, there art appeared, or when art penetrated, the spirit of freedom developed there, expelling the spirit of submission. In relation to the influence of the masses, art acts more strongly than science."
Indeed, in Polenov's courtyard, everything exists in an atmosphere of light. Is the artist, consciously or unconsciously making a theological statement—the world bathed in divine light? A tall tent-shaped bell tower stands near a rickety barn and an old two story mansion with a metal roof and drain pipes. Notice the mansion's roof is a green-tinted blue, serving as a transition from ground to sky! There is a spring green lawn with flowers. Paths crisscross the yard and a horse waits to begin the workday. A woman with a heavy bucket (she balances herself with left arm outstretched) has begun her day. There is a small flock of chickens with chicks. There's no tended garden but "weeds" grow near the fence. The trees are wild. Notice the clothes line to the rear of the yard. The golden hair of the little children playing is reflected in the brilliance of the church cupolas. A seated baby cries for attention. There are a couple of birds over the weeping white birch and a few traveling clouds. Light infused, Vasily Polenov captures a precise moment of the world in a good mood.
Let us pay close attention and look way down the road. As in Brooklyn, Boston or Rome, in Polenov's painting we sense there is a church on every corner. "What good is a road if it doesn't lead to a church." The church with the big tent-shaped bell tower is The Church of the Saviour on the Sands, now called, The Church of the Saviour of the Transfiguration of our Lord. This church is a survivor. In the Soviet years it was turned into a film studio, but today it is once again a functioning church. What a world we live in that destroys churches; rounds up people deemed undesirable, imprisons and kills them; lets children die, bombs medieval buildings; tears up the ground for minerals to make batteries and chops down forests for toilet paper; despoils the waters and beaches with oil spill after oil spill.
But here is a current photograph of the church Vasily loved in 1878. Notice a copy of Vasily's Moscow Courtyard has been cleverly posted on the outside wall, so passersby can see the church memorialized for its beauty on a similarly sunny day. "Let us rejoice and be glad," Psalm 118:4.
