The Student

Yaroshenko's The Student from 1881 forms a natural pendant to his Student Girl of two years later, together constituting his fullest statement on Russia's emerging educated class. The young male student is depicted without the props of academic success — no medals, no elegant dress — but with the visible marks of intellectual engagement and probable poverty: an earnest face, modest clothing, the bearing of someone whose energy goes entirely into ideas rather than social performance. The Tretyakov Gallery's acquisition placed the painting within the definitive collection of Russian realist art, where it speaks to the generation of raznochinets (men of mixed social origins) who increasingly dominated Russian intellectual life, displacing the hereditary nobility in the professions and the revolutionary movements alike.

Yaroshenko employs his customary spare portraiture approach: figure against a neutral or simply described ground, with concentrated light on the face. The paint handling gives the face an almost documentary precision while the clothing is rendered broadly, keeping attention on the psychological subject rather than the material situation.