Painted in 1883, the picture of Vladimir Makovsky “Date” is a typical work of the artists of the Wanderers, describing the hard life of ordinary Russian people.
The artist depicted in the picture the meeting of mother and son. The mother is a typical peasant woman who came from the village to the city to visit her son, who is apprentice. The sad look betrays her heavy feeling partly from the rare encounters with her son, partly from fatigue. It is evident that she broke up with her son and gave him as an apprentice because of the great need of the family.
The boy eagerly eats the roll that his mother brought him. It looks painful and not serious for years – it is clear that the working conditions are very bad – it is winter on the street, and he has no shoes, only a dirty shirt and trousers from his clothes, a similar dirty apron is thrown over them.
The meeting of mother and son is also held in a rather dirty room with a dirt floor. The artist purposely used dark colors when writing this picture in order to convey a special tragedy of the situation: it seems that the next meeting might not be. The plot of the tragedy of ordinary Russian people, often used by peredvizhniki artists, always finds an echo in the hearts of viewers, forcing them to sympathize with and empathize with the heroes of the paintings.
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