The Mikhailovsky Palace

Genre paintings created by the artists of the second part of the 19^th century who formed the nucleusof The Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions are displayed in the room. The Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions was created in 1870, existing in Russia for more than four decades. Peredvizhniki was the name given in Russia to the Realist artists who joined the society. Their works were firmly in keeping with the democratic mood of society in those years and the wave of criticism swamping every aspect of life.

The atmosphere of a post-reform village, decay of patriarchal everyday life was shown by Vasily Maksimov (1844–1911) in his work Dividing the Family Property (1876).

The range of genres and themes in the oeuvres of the Peredvizhniki was extremely wide and diverse. The 1860s and 1870s were the years of the activities of the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) group, a middle-class organization that sought to fight on behalf of the Russian people. Their attempts to “go to the people”, meetings and acts of terrorism ended in prison, exile and death for many revolutionaries. Not surprisingly, the image of the revolutionary was popular in the democratic art of those years — Convicted Man (1879) by Vladimir Makovsky (1846–1920).