“Stoker”

Date of creation: 1878

Dimensions: 124 x 89 centimeters

Location: State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia)

“Stoker” by Yaroshenko became one of the very first paintings that tells about the difficult fate of the Russian people. It, along with other similar canvases dedicated to the same theme, created the image of a proletarian – a worker who does not enjoy his work, who works like cattle, in cattle-like conditions, and whom no one ever remembers when thinking about a hot bath or about the fact that it is time to bathe a child. The stove is not visible in the painting, but its presence is felt very close. Scarlet reflections of the flame play on the figure of a man, on an uneven brick wall, reminding of hellish torments and sinners who will be thrown into the fiery Gehenna. However, the stoker is not a sinner. If we use this terminology, he is more like a devil who runs the boiler room in the hellish heat. But this image is also inaccurate – devils should enjoy their work.

Something made the stoker pause. He stands, shifting the poker from his right hand to his left, in a relaxed pose, betraying extreme fatigue and an attempt to at least take a short rest. He is wearing rough, coal-stained clothes, his hands are intertwined with veins and bulging from burns. The blackness in his palms seems to have eaten into it so much that it can no longer be washed off. The stoker’s beard is combed, his face is also lumpy, with visible scars. He looks at the viewer not accusingly and without much interest, but rather with bewilderment.

In some way, this bewilderment is akin to the confusion of a cow being led to the butcher. But there is not even a fleeting pleasure from a break in his face, only extreme fatigue. You can’t be happy in such work. When you work like an ox, you can’t enjoy life. Behind the stoker is a family – it is not in the painting, it is only guessed – and a difficult life, full of hard work. One of the artists who saw this painting said very accurately: “All my life I never knew that I owed someone. But it turns out that I do, and what’s worse is that I will never pay off this debt.”