Pavel Bryullovs genre painting Working Afternoon from 1890 represents a little field in western Ukraine at the time of the harvest season. The picture is like an open book, revealing the destinies of the heroes, revealing their past and predicting the future. This is a canvas, majestic in its size, grandiose, like life itself. A picturesque group of reapers rest in the shade of a haystack during half a working day. The entire spectrum of peasant life, womens destinies and shares, are open to the viewer. The picture covers the whole cycle of life: from girls already helping in the field to old women who have spent their whole lives in this field. It shows childhood, adolescence, youth, the birth of children, meeting old age and caring for grandchildren. Contrasting and multidirectional figures in the foreground symbolize the eternal ring of life. We see a boy, bleached by the sun, playing, and next to him is a tired old woman in a plaid skirt who is sleeping. Behind them, the girl reaches for her sisters jug. Nearby, a mother feeds her baby. Another young woman stretched out in her sleep, maintaining her strength. On the right, at the edge of the canvas, a young peasant woman braids her hair and directs her gaze to the girl in the center, who is the agent of the viewer, impressionistic contemplation and pleasure. Their gazes intersect on a compositional diagonal, which, alternating red and blue spots on the skirts, leads to the threshing scene. Where the girls, under the leadership of the headman, probably whose comma zipun was thrown on the front haystack, had already begun threshing. The circle of time closes, personifying the eternal and unchanging cyclical nature of life, in which the artist glorifies and romanticizes the atmosphere and people for whom harvesting is a true holiday and the meaning of life. Where, under the protection of God, whose churches can be seen in the depths of the picture, the villagers collect bread. Canvas, oil. 89 x 144 cm.
