Nikolai Chekhov: biography, creativity, career, personal life
Video: Alexander Pushkin: Genius, Playboy, Father of Russian Literature 2024, July
Video: Alexander Pushkin: Genius, Playboy, Father of Russian Literature 2024, July
A large Chekhov family is, by today's standards, a large one. The usual average family of the late 19th century - five sons and one daughter. Nikolai Chekhov - one of five sons, a genre artist, brother of the same - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, a famous writer.
A family
Father - Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov (1825-1898) - a merchant of the third and then second guild., In 1854 he married Evgeniya Yakovlevna Morozova
Mother - Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova (Morozova, 1830-1919) - ran a farm and raised children - five sons and a daughter
All of Chekhov’s children were exceptionally gifted, highly educated people.
Biography
Nikolai Chekhov, the second son, was born on May 18, 1858. He was unusually talented, and in this, of course, the merit of his parents. Chekhov’s father, Pavel Yegorovich, was a worthless businessman, although he conscientiously tried to feed this with his large family. But he was apparently a creatively gifted person. He self-taught small paintings for the family and for sale, and played the violin and piano. In the evenings, the family decided to sing Russian songs and church psalms in chorus. He demanded to teach music the only daughter in the family, Masha. And with Nikolai Pavel Egorovich played violin duets. But music was not the main thing, in which Nikolay Chekhov was strong. From childhood, he drew a lot and successfully. And this despite the problems with vision - squint.
The character of Nikolai in childhood was unusually calm and phlegmatic, with some philosophical neglect of the opinions of others. The mischievous and mischievous younger brother Anton teased Nikolai with “Slant” and “Mordokrivenko” - Nikolai’s face was extremely asymmetrical. And Nicholas was completely cool about this. He very patiently demolished Anton’s more cruel pranks.
The youngest of the Chekhov brothers, Mikhail, tells in his memoirs such a story: somehow the Chekhovs took the whole family a long journey to their grandfather Yegor Mikhailovich, who lived 70 miles from Taganrog. The trip was long, under the scorching sun, and the brothers stocked up on their headgear in advance. Moreover, Nikolai got somewhere a folding cylinder, the so-called "hat".
This hat did not give Anton rest, he teased and lifted his brother endlessly, and finally knocked his hat off his head, right under the horses' feet. The hat was thoroughly dirty and wrinkled, springs jumped out of it, with the help of which it folded, but this did not upset Nikolai. He calmly put on his hat with protruding springs and rode in it all the way.
And another funny incident recalls Mikhail Chekhov. And also about this amazing patience with which Nikolai accepted the vicissitudes of fate.
Among the Chekhov brothers, Anton was a “little fox”, he was not interested in manual labor for a long time, although this was very welcomed in the family. The elder brother, Alexander, was fond of technology and made some kind of physical devices. Nikolai drew, Ivan bound books. And Anton composed scenes and whole plays and staged funny home-made performances with his brothers.
But once he found a craft to his liking. In 1874, free handicraft classes appeared at the Taganrog School: tailor and shoe. And Anton suddenly became interested in tailoring. Having learned something, he undertook to sew for Nikolai trousers for a gymnasium uniform - his brother grew out of old. At the same time, Nicholas recklessly asked Anton to tailor it narrower, more fashionably. It is difficult to say, out of mischief or out of zeal, but Anton sewed the pants so narrow that Nikolai’s legs hardly climbed into them. And now, despite the fact that the pants on him literally burst, Nikolai immediately went out for a walk in them.
Education
In 1875, Chekhov's eldest son, Alexander, graduated from high school with a silver medal and left for Moscow to enter the university at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. Nikolai left with him, not having completed the gymnasium course. He entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His class was led by the famous Russian genre painter Vasily Perov.
Together with Nikolai Chekhov, such classics of Russian painting as Isaac Levitan, Konstantin Korovin, Fedor Shekhtel studied.
A year later (1876), father arrived in Moscow, Pavel Yegorovich - literally escaped from Taganrog from a debt hole. Another financial adventure brought him complete ruin. A little later, my wife and younger children arrived, leaving Anton alone in Taganrog. Their house was taken away for debts.
Nikolai Chekhov left the School as a talented and original artist: a subtle landscape painter, a profound genre painter and portrait painter, and a witty cartoonist. The family, literally falling into poverty, had to be supported, and the brothers undertook any work. Nikolai Chekhov painted the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and painted cartoons for humorous magazines.
It was Nikolai’s connections with Moscow journalism that helped Anton Chekhov, who finally got out of Taganrog, build his first stories based on the recollections of those funny childhood home performances.
Creation
In 1881, a friend of the Chekhov brothers, Vsevolod Davydov, began publishing the comedy magazine "Spectator" - essentially the author’s journal of the Chekhov brothers. And the name is characteristic - "Spectator". In fact, the magazine was not readable. The stories of Alexander Chekhov, quite interesting, and Anton Chekhov, still a beginner comedian, are clumsy, rude, somewhat vulgar, aroused little interest. But the brilliant cartoons and sketches of Nikolai Chekhov were very popular. Among the works of A. Chekhov, published only in the full collected works, there is the "Wedding Season". This is not a story, but the signatures of Anton Chekhov to the drawings of Nikolai Chekhov. What is now called "comics." A few years later, on this material, Anton Chekhov will create his humorous masterpiece "Wedding with the General."
But Nikolai Chekhov was not destined to make his way to Olympus of Russian fine art and to contribute to the development of painting in Tsarist Russia. Absolutely indifferent to his living conditions and other benefits of civilization, he loves only his art, the process of his birth.
