Draft:Tombstone of V. E. Borisov-Musatov

Tombstone of V. E. Borisov-Musatov
File:Матвеев. Надгробие Борисова-Мусатова.jpg Tombstone of V. E. Borisov-Musatov. In front of it is an Orthodox cross, behind it is the grave of the artist's wife
Year	1910
Type	Sculpture
Medium	Granite
Subject	Sleeping nude boy
Dimensions	53 cm × 143 cm

Tombstone of V. E. Borisov-Musatov is a monument made of brown granular granite, installed at the burial site of the Russian artist of the Silver Age on the high bank of the Oka on the outskirts of the city of Tarusa in June 1911. The author of the tombstone, created a year earlier, in 1910, is a contemporary and friend of Viktor Borisov-Musatov the sculptor-modernist Alexander Matveev. It depicts a sleeping nude boy, so among local residents, in artistic literature and in mass media, it is known as "The Sleeping Boy" (#Image on the tombstone and its location; #History of creation and fate of the tombstone). According to a legend that has spread among Tarusa residents, the tombstone depicts a teenager whom Borisov-Musatov tried to save from the water. The artist himself allegedly caught a cold in the process, which led to his imminent death (#Legend of the drowning boy).

The tombstone has repeatedly become the object of close interest from researchers of Alexander Matveev's work and Viktor Borisov-Musatov's biography. In particular, the Soviet art historian Alfred Bassekhes called the monument an "elegiac response" of the sculptor to the "quiet charm" of the artist's paintings and considered it one of the key works of the most significant period of Matveev's creativity, according to the researcher, which fell in the second half of the 1900s – early 1910s (#The tombstone in Russian art studies).

The monument on the bank of the Oka has found reflection in Russian culture. In particular, the plot of the story by the Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky "The Sleeping Boy" is built around it. The image of the "Sleeping Boy" plays a significant role in the novel by Vladimir Zheleznikov "Scarecrow". The tombstone was captured on their canvases by major Soviet and Russian artists. Among them is a member of the Moscow Union of Artists and employee of TASS Windows Lev Aronov and People's Artist of the Russian Federation Vladimir Korbakov (#The tombstone in culture).

Image on the tombstone and its location

In the catalog of Alexander Matveev's works, compiled by the Soviet art historian Alfred Bassekhes, the sculptor's work is designated as "Tombstone of V. E. Borisov-Musatov in Tarusa". Bassekhes determined its dimensions: 143 cm × 53 cm × 55 cm (56 in × 21 in × 22 in). The pedestal of the sculpture is 145 cm × 54 cm × 55 cm (57 in × 21 in × 22 in), and the plinth is 54 cm × 54 cm × 60 cm (21 in × 21 in × 24 in). Other data is provided in her monograph by Elena Murina. The size of the sculpture "Tombstone of V. E. Borisov-Musatov", according to her, is 143 cm × 53 cm × 65 cm (56 in × 21 in × 26 in). The pedestal and plinth have the same dimensions as indicated by Bassekhes.

Alfred Bassekhes described the tombstone in 1961 as follows: "...on the slab of a low sarcophagus lay the body of a boy. His legs are touchingly pressed together at the knees; his head is powerlessly thrown back—the boy is sleeping, dreaming and turning to stone, birch trees of the rural cemetery sway above him, and behind him the expanses of the landscape shine through". Employee of the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts Vladimir Obukhov in a monograph on the artist's work, published in 2011, and even earlier M. Tikhomirova in an article in the collection "Tarusa Pages" (1961), cited the description of Borisov-Musatov's grave by the Russian and Soviet artist Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, recorded in her diary published only partially on July 23, 1939 (State Public Library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin, Manuscript Department, fund of A. P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, 1015, file 55, sheets 1–3):

The cemetery where he is buried... is located not far from the former  Resurrection Church on the high bank of the Oka, which drops steeply to the river. The grave is in the right corner of the cemetery, almost at the very edge of the cliff... slightly to the left, near it, is a double, spreading birch. On Borisov-Musatov's grave lies a heavy and rather primitively processed pedestal, and on it, also made of granite, is a nude boy. He lies in some helpless pose. It seems that he has just died or is seriously ill. He lies on his back and his legs are slightly bent at the knees and shifted to the side. The head is tilted and also sharply turned to the shoulder. The features are unclear... When you approach the grave, it is framed against the background of the sky, a very open green horizon with forests, greening meadows, and, at the very foot of the hill, the beautiful, briskly flowing Oka. An amazingly good resting place has been chosen for him. I am so drawn there to sit.

The artist wondered whether the sculpture was originally executed so "lapidarly", or whether over time the contours had weathered and lost their outlines. On August 12 of the same year, returning from plein air studies in the vicinity of Tarusa, Ostroumova-Lebedeva decided to say goodbye to the artist's grave before leaving the city. She wrote in her diary: "For the last time I looked at the carved figure of the boy. Not badly executed by Matveev. Behind the monument—the water ripples, and waves, and sparkles of the Oka. A good place. I stood by the grave and thought, thought..." (sheet 37).

Tarusa. View of the Oka from the Musatov Hillside today

Viktor Borisov-Musatov. Autumn Song, 1905. Presumably, the view from the Musatov Hillside to the Oka is depicted

The grave with the tombstone is located on the high bank of the Oka River on the outskirts of the city of Tarusa—on the so-called Musatov Hillside—in a place where the artist often came to sit on his favorite bench and which (as his wife  Elena Musatova told) a few months before his death he himself indicated during a walk. Art historian Mikhail Nekrasov suggested that the reason for choosing the place for the grave was the desire of his wife, without mentioning the artist's own will. On the impression that the grave on the hillside makes, the Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky wrote: "In autumn, from this hillside, an endless Russian distance opens up in the hazy air, so that the heart stops from it. Old birches grow on the cliff. The distance is visible through the net of yellowing and thinning foliage from the wind. In the gaps between the leaves hang pink clouds over  pastures and woodlands".

A number of authors associated one of the artist's last paintings, "Autumn Song", precisely with this place. For example, poet Yury Mashkov claimed that he heard from the famous Kaluga local historian Ivan Bodrov that it was from the Musatov Hillside that Borisov-Musatov painted this view of the opposite bank of the Oka among the autumn foliage. However, Ivan Bodrov himself wrote in a book on the history of the city of Tarusa that at the beginning of the 20th century the hillside looked completely different compared to the present time. At that time, there was only an old weeping birch on it, near which the grave was placed. Later, the artist's wife planted four small oaks and two young birches here.

The artist's close friend and author of the first monograph on his life and work, published in 1906, Vladimir Stanyukovich, describes the painting "Autumn Song" in detail, but does not associate the image on it with any specific geographical location in Tarusa. Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Mikhail Dunaev wrote about this painting: "If only 'Autumn Song' had survived from everything created by Borisov-Musatov—we would have the right to say: that was a painter by the grace of God".

History of creation and fate of the tombstone

Death of the artist and growth of interest in his work

External videos
Last days of Borisov-Musatov in Tarusa
Fragment of excursion in the city on the Musatov Hillside

Viktor Borisov-Musatov died in the night from October 25 to 26, 1905 at the dacha of the corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and professor of Moscow University Ivan Tsvetaev "Pesochne" near Tarusa, where he was staying with his wife and daughter at the invitation of the hosts in their absence. About his stay there, the artist wrote: "...Now I am in Tarusa. In the wilderness. On the deserted bank of the Oka. And cut off from the whole world. I live in a world of dreams and fantasies among birch groves that have dozed off in the deep sleep of autumn mists".

By 1910, through the efforts of Borisov-Musatov's friends, the artist's first personal exhibition was held in Moscow on his native soil. In 1906, Sergei Diaghilev presented 62 paintings by Borisov-Musatov at the "World of Art" exhibition in Saint Petersburg, and 22 at the Russian exhibition in Paris. In 1910, a monograph on Borisov-Musatov by the employee of the Hermitage Museum Nikolai Wrangel appeared. Poet Nikolai Poyarkov published a book of poems "In Memory of Borisov-Musatov". Following this, fame came to the artist, who was little known to the general public during his lifetime.

Alexander Matveev and Viktor Borisov-Musatov

Alexander Matveev in his workshop in Kikerino in 1910. It was there and then that he worked on a plaster study for the "Tombstone of V. E. Borisov-Musatov"

Viktor Borisov-Musatov. Self-portrait, 1904–1905

By the mid-1900s, Matveev had stopped his studies, refusing to defend his diploma immediately after receiving a silver medal in the figure class. At the initiative of Vasily Polenov, he went on a creative assignment to Paris at the expense of the fund of the artist's younger sister Elena Polenova. At this time, the sculptor actively participated in exhibitions.

The second half of the 1900s – early 1910s—the period to which the creation of the Borisov-Musatov tombstone belongs—the Soviet art historian Alfred Bassekhes in a monograph on the sculptor, published in 1961, called the peak of Alexander Matveev's creativity. At this time, the sculptor had his own workshop at the factory of the famous Russian ceramist Pyotr Vaulin in the village of Kikerino near Saint Petersburg. Matveev's main genres during this period were portrait and study of the nude. The art historian considered the "Sleeping Boy" the most significant work among them.

Borisov-Musatov was a close friend of the sculptor. Even during his student years in 1900, Matveev made a plaster portrait of him ("Portrait of V. E. Borisov-Musatov", State Tretyakov Gallery, height 61 cm, signed and dated—"A. Matveev, 1900", inv.—SK-1861; in 1959 this work was cast in bronze). "Portrait of V. E. Borisov-Musatov" depicts a half-figure of the artist sitting in an armchair. Alfred Bassekhes characterized it as a completely independent work of a beginning sculptor and noted the depth of penetration into the personality of the model.

Matveev's work on the tombstone

Cellist-White émigré Mikhail Bukinnik in the article "Story about the artist V. E. Borisov-Musatov" wrote that the initiator of the installation of the monument was a group of friends and close associates of the deceased artist ("we still had the task of erecting a monument over Musatov's grave"), who commissioned the monument to Alexander Matveev. From the sculptor's own letter to the art historian and friend of the deceased Vladimir Stanyukovich dated October 31, 1910, the financial terms of the contract with the artist's wife are known, on which Matveev undertook the execution of the order (quoted with preservation of the original punctuation): "Dear Vladimir Konstantinovich! Not so long ago I received a letter from E. V. Musatova regarding the monument, from which I sent her photographs, a letter expressing pleasure, which I am very glad... I would like to receive 200  rb for the final settlement. — received 700 — remains for transportation and installation 100. Thus it amounts to 1000, as agreed with E. V."

The creation of the tombstone for the artist by the Russian art critic Andrei Levinson was called a "mournful and honorable task". Alexander Matveev conceived the sculpture in the form of a sarcophagus, on the lid of which, as he reported to his friend Vladimir Stanyukovich, there should be a lying figure. According to the Soviet and Russian art historian Konstantin Shilov, Matveev conceived the monument as a truly monumental one: simple, poetic and "proportional to the inner structure of Musatov's canvases and the nature in which it will stand...". Matveev had seen the artist's burial place many times—"the high hillside above the Oka, from which a breathtaking distance opens up". The sculptor chose light- speckled and "giving forms a soft outline" granite for the monument. Shilov wrote that later some art historians would evaluate the monument as roughly processed, but he himself believed that the sculptor's intention was to leave the tombstone "alive", "breathing", "as if natural".

From the point of view of Konstantin Shilov, Matveev, creating the sculpture, imagined a small courtyard in Samara, drowning in grasses and foliage, illuminated by the sun at its zenith. The boy posing for Matveev with narrow eyes lay down on his back in the grass and closed his eyes "in the pose of a sleeping patient or a child who has run enough: arms thrown along the body, legs slightly bent, touching at the knees. He is touchingly defenseless, and even under the lightest breath of the breeze, one worries that he is cold". In his sleep, as Matveev worked on the pedestal, the teenager rose slightly above the grass, and "in his face with slightly slanted closed eyelids, in the swollen lower lip and the fold above the chin, not only helplessness appears, but also as if resentment",—the left hand moves away from the body, the rib cage rises, "the bend of the boy's body pierces with pity and sorrow...".

Alexander Matveev working on the tombstone for Borisov-Musatov, 1910

Two suitable stones of gray coarse-grained granite Alexander Terentyevich found in Kikerino, where his workshop was located, as early as June 1910. Matveev wanted Stanyukovich, who wrote the first book about Borisov-Musatov, to see the study for the monument already created by the sculptor. He informed his friend about the completion of the study in a letter dated July 17, 1910. According to Bassekhes, work on the final (granite) version of the tombstone was carried out by the sculptor in Crimea, where he periodically traveled from Kikerino. In Crimea, Matveev worked on creating sculptures for the park ensemble of Kuchuk-Koy. To prove this, the art historian refers to a letter from the sculptor from there, in which Matveev wrote to Vladimir Stanyukovich (with preservation of the original punctuation): "Today, glory to the Almighty—I finished the stone, swallowed dust again and got tired. And it's a boring business to carve and repeat the backs. But still, although the stone is bad—it turned out very well. The thing has truly entered the law even more". Bassekhes dated the translation into granite of the plaster study based on this letter to October 1910. Elena Murina, however, established the dating of the final version in stone as a broad time interval between 1910 and 1912. Moscow writer and local historian Aleksey Mitrofanov dated it to 1911.

A photograph has been preserved that captured Alexander Matveev working on the final granite version of the tombstone, taken in 1910–1911 in the village of Kikerino. Its size is 5.7 by 8.3 centimetres (2.2 in × 3.3 in). It entered the Radishchev Museum of Art in 1978 as a gift from the sculptor's niece M. S. Bocharova-Matveeva and is currently in the collection of the Personal Fund of A. T. Matveev in this museum.

Installation of the tombstone on the artist's grave

When the monument already executed in granite arrived in Tarusa, the initiators of the creation of the tombstone unexpectedly encountered sharp resistance from the local clergy. The clergymen declared it pagan. The following arguments were cited as evidence:

• the tombstone represents the nude body of a youth;
• it does not provide for the presence of a cross on the grave of the deceased artist.

Borisov-Musatov's wife spent a significant amount of time obtaining the necessary permissions for the installation of the tombstone executed by Matveev. Thanks to her numerous petitions, the monument was still installed, but supplemented with a cross.

On May 11, 1911, Alexander Matveev inquired about the fate of the tombstone he had made in an unpublished letter (Russian Museum, archive, f. 27, d. 102, ll. 1, 4, 5, 13). Nevertheless, the modern Russian art historian Mikhail Nekrasov wrote that this event occurred in 1910. The head of the department of museumification of the "Estate of V. E. Borisov-Musatov" at the Radishchev Art Museum in Saratov Eleonora Belonovich wrote that the opening of the tombstone took place on July 6, 1911". This information was published in the magazine "Russian Art Chronicle" for 1911. She wrote: "A small group of relatives and friends gathered then under the shade of weeping birches on the bank of the Oka, where the master rests. The photographer captured this moment—the trees were hung with garlands of wreaths, repeating the composition of the conceived painting, for which Musatov managed to paint beautiful decorative studies".

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