Black into the light

I have an app on my phone which features a different painting every day. This morning this painting by Nikolai Alexandrovich Yaroshenko (1846-1898) was featured. It's titled “The Prisoner” (in Russian: « Заключённый »), dated 1878.

It is available here. I was deeply moved by the subtle chiaroscuro, the position of the man with his back towards us, looking out this narrow window. The barely perceptible bed, the crumbling plaster, the scratches on the wall. All of this made a strong impression on me. The painting has a muted brutality. I imagined the longing, listening to muffled sounds from outside seeping through the basement window, the sole source of light in the squalid cell. I imagined the days, the hours, the loneliness. The efforts to prop himself up on an invisible sill for a few seconds to catch a glimpse of the life he's missing out on.

The problem with this app is that sometimes it doesn't give any information on the painting, and it was the case today. I didn't know who had painted it, when, where, why. I was working so I was frustrated not to be able to research it, but when I got home and after a bit of fumbling around I found a different version:

This one is available here. There is a stark difference, to say the least. The second one is much more colourful, yet it somehow doesn't make it any less brutal. The dreariness of the cell is more glaring, and less subtle. The table isn't paired with a chair, the book sitting on it might be a bible which could use some reading, and the tin pot has seen better days. The light from the basement window is warmer, more orange in tone, as of late afternoon. The posture of his legs reminded me of someone who has been standing up for too long and alternates his supporting leg. Somehow, this detail makes his situation seemingly worse: this is where he spends most of this days, looking out. Perhaps he has done this for longer than he cares to remember. He doesn't seem to be contemplating escape, he is a passive onlooker. This fraction of a window is all he has to remind him of the life outside, that life goes on for those on the other side.

I'm not certain how to explain the difference between the two versions. I believe only one painting was made, so the photograph of the painting must have become darker than the original because of poor lighting, or poor exposition, thereby altering the warmer colours of the original work. If anyone knows or has a better educated guess, feel free to enlighten me. It also provides a shining example of one-sided information: if I hadn't done my research I would have believed the first version to be the original one. We should always do a bit of research because really all it took me was less than a few minutes...and though I didn't become a Yaroshenko scholar (though the app previously featured some of his work, and that of other Russian painters), I feel less stupid (and it's I believe the goal of this type of apps ^_^).