Mikhail Vrubel1856–1910Гензель и Гретель
Can I see it?
Unknown
Where is “Гензель и Гретель” now? Collection: Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Unknown.
Moscow, Russia
The owner is known; whether it is on view today is not.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the work
Museum text in Russian
Перед нами портрет артисток Татьяны Любатович и Надежды Забелы в ролях Гензеля и Гретель в одноименной опере Энгельберта Хумпердинка «Гензель и Гретель». Варианты портрета хранятся в Государственном Русском музее и в Государственном художественном музее Республики Беларусь. С этим портретом связана трогательная история из личной жизни Михаила Александровича, рассказанная в воспоминаниях его сестрой Анной: «В 1896 году наступает неожиданная перемена в жизни брата – он встречает свою мечту художника в лице тоже жрицы искусства певицы Надежды Ивановны Забелы, ставшей затем его спутницей жизни и вдохновительницей целого ряда произведений художника, служа ему неизменно натурой, которую он особенно ценил как таковую, между прочим, потому, как он говорил, что, позируя, «она умеет молчать».
Read on
Свое уважение, преклонение перед ее талантом как певицы он выражал словами: «Другие певицы поют как птицы, а Надя поет как человек». Встреча этих двух влюбленных в искусство произошла при следующих обстоятельствах. Антреприза Московской Частной оперы С.И. Мамонтова гастролировала в Петербурге в театре Панаева. Декоратор ее – художник Коровин заболел, и брат был выписан из Москвы, чтобы заменить его… и здесь, на спектакле оперы Гумпердинка «Гензель и Грета» брат был очарован исполнением Н.И. Забелы роли Греты, и тут же, со всею горячностью, выразил свой восторг. Затем, с возвращением оперы в Москву, последовало быстрое сближение на почве искусства и личной, завершившаяся свадьбой 28 июля 1896 года в Швейцарии, где жила мать невесты ради больной младшей дочери». Надежда Ивановна поставила условием замужества ее удачный портрет в роли Гретель, сказав, что даст согласие художнику только в том случае, если портрет ей понравится.
Tretyakov Gallery
Details
- Accession number
- Р-877
In the catalog
Sources
- Tretyakov Gallery
- Image: Tretyakov Gallery — © State Tretyakov Gallery
In the life of Mikhail Vrubel
The whole lifeearly 1896
Meeting Nadezhda Zabela
In St Petersburg Vrubel stepped in for the ailing Korovin as designer of Humperdinck’s opera “Hansel and Gretel”, which Mamontov was financing, and at a rehearsal he first heard, then saw, the singer of Gretel — Nadezhda Zabela. Rushing up to her in the interval with the cry “What a lovely voice!”, he proposed almost on the day they met, and later told his sister that had she refused, he would have killed himself on the spot.
22 May 1896
The Academy rejects his Nizhny Novgorod panels
Mamontov secured Vrubel a commission for two huge panels for the art section of the All-Russian Exhibition — “Mikula Selyaninovich” and “The Princess of the Dream”, a hundred square metres in three months. But the academician Albert Benois, in charge of the pavilion, demanded sketches, a telegram went to St Petersburg — “Vrubel’s panels are monstrous, they must be removed” — the Academy’s commission ruled them unfit to show, and on 22 May the works were carried out of the pavilion.
July 1896
Mamontov’s pavilion for the “rejected” panels
Mamontov bought both panels for 5,000 roubles: Polenov and Korovin finished “Mikula”, Vrubel completed “The Princess of the Dream” in a shed at the Abramtsevo pottery, and in time for the imperial couple’s visit on 15–17 July the canvases were shown in a specially built pavilion signposted “Exhibition of decorative panels by the artist M. A. Vrubel, rejected by the jury of the Imperial Academy of Arts” — the words naming the Academy’s jury soon had to be painted over. A newspaper battle followed: Nikolai Garin-Mikhailovsky offered the first balanced analysis of Vrubel’s art, while Maxim Gorky mocked his panels in five articles.
28 July 1896
Marries Nadezhda Zabela in Geneva
Meeting Zabela’s family went badly — the age gap troubled them (he was 40, she 28), and the bride herself knew that Vrubel drank and squandered money — but on 28 July the couple were married in the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Geneva. They spent their honeymoon in a guesthouse in Lucerne, where Vrubel went on working on panels for A. V. Morozov’s Gothic study: by the wedding he was literally penniless and had walked from the station to his bride’s.
summer 1898
First symptoms of illness
During a summer stay in Ukraine the first symptoms of his future illness appeared: his migraines grew so severe that he took phenacetin in huge quantities — up to 25 grains or more, according to his sister-in-law. A previously unknown irritability set in too, especially when someone disagreed with his opinion of a work of art.
January 1898
“Morning” at Diaghilev’s exhibition
In St Petersburg Ilya Repin advised Vrubel not to destroy his panel “Morning”, which a client had turned down, but to show it at an exhibition. So the canvas went into Sergei Diaghilev’s exhibition of Russian and Finnish artists at the museum of the Stieglitz School.
