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Troika (Apprentices Carrying Water)
Vasily Perov · Realism & Academic
- Artist
- Vasily Grigoryevich Perov (1834–1882)
- Date
- 1866
- Dimensions
- 123.5 x 167.5 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
Troika shows three poor children, two boys and a girl, harnessed like horses to a sledge carrying a huge barrel of water, struggling up a snowy street in Moscow against a freezing wind. A man pushes the barrel from behind, and a dog runs beside them.
A closer look
The title is bitterly ironic: a troika is normally a festive sledge pulled by three horses. Here the 'horses' are exhausted child apprentices, a common sight in 19th-century Russian towns, where poor children were sent to work for craftsmen and merchants. Perov paints their tired faces and ragged clothes with sympathy, against the grey wall of a monastery and a wintry sky. Like the other Peredvizhniki, he used art to draw attention to social injustice, and this painting moved many viewers deeply.