Ilya Repin is considered the most mystical of Russian artists. One painting "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan" is worth a lot, not to mention the famous portraits, after which almost all the people who posed for the great artist soon died.
However, Ilya Repin himself considered his first teacher to be the equally famous and talented Russian artist Ivan Kramskoy, whose paintings, especially "Mermaids", are also, to put it mildly, not devoid of mysticism.
Kramskoy's painting "Mermaids"
The itinerant artist Ivan Kramskoy was simply fascinated by the work of Nikolai Gogol, he was especially struck by the story "May Night, or the Drowned Woman". Of course, such a work simply could not but attract artists, and many of them illustrated this work, trying to convey in pictures that amazing and mysterious Ukrainian life, which the greatest Russian mystic writer described in his book.
However, the artist Kramskoy in his painting "Mermaids" decided to compete with Gogol in conveying the fantastic beauty and mystery of a moonlit night, when underwater beauties come to the shore of a mysterious pond. However, for a long time he did not manage to catch this mesmerizing, almost mystical attraction of the Gogol May night. The artist rereads the work many times, trying with all his heart to plunge into that atmosphere, but he constantly laments how difficult this thing is - the mysterious moonlight. Later, he will write in his diaries that he almost broke his neck in this picture, but still "caught" the moon - and, in the end, a really fantastic canvas came out.
The painting "Mermaids" by Kramskoy turned out to be not only fantastically attractive, but also mystically mysterious. Critics praised her, but soon even the most enthusiastic of them fell silent. The fact is that at the first exhibition of the Itinerants this painting was hung next to the Savrasov landscape "The Rooks Have Arrived". At night, the landscape crashed to the floor. Someone even joked that mermaids did not approve of such a neighborhood. But soon the jokes were gone. The picture "Mermaids" caused a kind of mystical chill and horror among the visitors of the exhibition.
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After the exhibition, Pavel Tretyakov acquired both paintings, that is, Rooks and Mermaids, for his gallery. And then he was faced with the fact that it was difficult to find a place for Kramskoy's painting. At first they hung her in the hall, but from there, according to the servants, at night it began to breathe damp and cool, and even singing was heard. The cleaning ladies refused to enter the room for this reason, they were afraid.
Tretyakov himself did not suffer from mysticism, the poet at first did not attach much importance to this. However, he soon began to notice that as soon as he was in this room, next to Kramskoy's "Mermaids," as if all his vitality was pumped out of him, he felt tired, lethargic, drowsy. In addition, visitors to the gallery began to complain about the picture, saying that one cannot look at the "Mermaids" for a long time without some inner shudder, and sensitive young ladies - they did faint from it.
And although there was no evidence of the relationship of such fainting spells with the painting, Tretyakov, on the advice of his old nanny, moved the Mermaids to a far corner, where sunlight did not fall on her. Since then, visitors stopped complaining about the painting, and she herself (or her mermaids, suffering from sunlight) calmed down and did not cause anyone any more trouble.
Kramskoy's painting "Stranger"
Ivan Kramskoy wrote another mystical picture - "Unknown", or "Stranger". At first glance, there is nothing unusual about this portrait. Unless the artist's contemporaries could not in any way determine from whom this beauty was painted. The portrait painter himself only grinned, but refused to name the woman, joking that she might not be there at all.
Tretyakov refused to buy Kramskoy's "Stranger", no one knows why. There are different versions, but given that the patron did not suffer from mysticism, it is difficult to believe that he listened to the opinion widespread at that time that portraits of beauties can have a destructive effect on men. Most likely, Tretyakov simply had a fantastic intuition, which prompted him that “Unknown” was not yet “ripe” for his gallery.
And the picture began its mystical journey through private collections, more and more overgrown with ill fame. The first owner was immediately abandoned by his wife, the second - the mansion burned down, the third somehow quickly and strangely went bankrupt. Soon they began to say that all the troubles were to blame for Kramskoy's "fatal" painting.
By the way, the artist himself also suffered from it. After the completion of this mystical portrait, his two sons die in a strange way …
Soon, the "Stranger" went abroad, however, even here she continued to bring only troubles and misfortunes to her owners. It was only in 1925 that she returned to Russia and, having taken her proper place in the Tretyakov Gallery, finally calmed down. Here, it turns out, where was her to stick …