The artist is Shukhaev
The film “Regiment on Positions” with amazing distinctness reflected a complex, full of contradictions. This picture was launched by Vasily Shukhaev in 1916 on the Riga Front, during a lull in hostilities. Depicts a group of officers of the 4th Hussar Mariupol Regiment. The picture was not over, but was exhibited by the artist at the beginning of 1917 at the exhibition of the new society of artists. Shukhaev studied at the Academy of Arts with Kardovsky, was a pensioner of the academy, in 1912-1914 he was in Rome, where he studied the art of antiquity and the art of revival. Then he taught at the Academy of Arts. In 1932, the canvas was transferred to the Russian Museum in fairly good condition, it took a not very difficult restoration to see it after several decades.
The picture makes a very strange impression precisely with its incompleteness, incomplete, unclear idea and mood, vague history of origin. Most likely, it was some kind of official order. The collection of the Russian Museum stores several dozen magnificent preparatory portraits, sometimes indicating the name, name of the character, performed in the Sangina technique in the beloved master.
The canvas was not completed due to the beginning of the revolution. Separate figures are barely planned, two horses remained in the lining, some details were not completed. But the main thing in the picture was undoubtedly done: a composition of three groups, including about 60 people, was finally found; Portraits of senior officers in the central and right group are completed; A landscape with a spreading tree, with green hills and a bay in the distance, with a blue sky and heap clouds is carefully written. Festively sounding shades of green and terracotta transmit the atmosphere of a clear day of early autumn on the Baltic coast. Thanks to the solemnity of the general system and perfection of the performance, the monumental canvas is perceived simultaneously as a hymn and a requiem to old Russian officers and its traditions.