“Funeral of the Firstborn”

Date of creation: 1893

Dimensions: 66 x 88 centimeters

Location: Kharkiv Art Museum (Kharkov, Ukraine/Russia)

The painting “Funeral of the Firstborn” was painted in 1893. It is known that in the 1880s, a significant change in the subject matter was outlined in the artist’s work: if previously he paid attention to the feat of man, now human destiny came to the fore. In his canvases, the painter often tries to solve the question of what force makes a person who has all the same inclinations as those who have reached the top of the social ladder suffer and work tens of times more than others. At the same time, there was an abyss between the depicted realities and the viewers. The paintings helped to understand that the life of a simple worker is full of hardships that wealthy people do not have, and to be filled with compassion for him.

At the end of the 19th century, the main medical problem was high infant mortality. Everyone, regardless of social status, could face the death of a beloved child. The painting builds a bridge between people from wealthy families, who, it would seem, have nothing in common with common people, and the people. It becomes clear that humanity is united in the fact that it feels love for children and grief from their loss. The canvas depicts a couple burying their first child. The faces of the husband and wife are gloomy. The death of a child, especially the first and especially a newborn, is an incomparable suffering. I recall the words of William Makepeace-Thackeray, who reasoned that most of all we suffer from the death of a newly born creature, who has not yet had time to recognize us, in whose heart we have not had time to take a worthy place.

Next comes the undertaker, smoking a pipe as if nothing had happened. He has seen many deaths in his lifetime and now takes them for granted. He understands that dying befalls everyone born, years of work have made his outlook on life philosophical. A moral basis can be traced in all of Yaroshenko’s works. Beauty for its own sake was alien to him – he always tried to put lofty ideals and feelings into his creations.