Mikhail Vrubel

The Moscow period (1890–1902)

The Demon

The Demon Seated, 1890. Stored at the Tretyakov Gallery

A return to the theme of the Demon coincided with the project initiated by the Kushnerev brothers and the editor Petr Konchalovsky who aimed to publish the two-volume book dedicated to the jubilee of Mikhail Lermontov with illustrations of "our best artistic forces". Altogether, there were 18 painters, including Ilya Repin, Ivan Shishkin, Ivan Aivazovsky, Leonid Pasternak, Apollinary Vasnetsov. Of these, Vrubel was the only one who was completely unknown to the public. It is not known who drew the publishers' attention to Vrubel. According to different versions, Vrubel was introduced to Konchalovsky by Mamontov, Korovin and even Pasternak who was responsible for editing. The salary for the work was quite small (800 rubles for 5 big and 13 small illustrations). Due to their complexity, his paintings were hard to reproduce and Vrubel had to amend them. The main difficulty, however, was that his colleagues did not understand Vrubel's art. In spite of this, the illustrated publication was approved by the censorship authorities on April 10, 1891. Immediately thereafter the publication was widely discussed in the press who harshly criticized illustrations for their "rudeness, ugliness, caricature, and absurdity".[64] Even people who were well-disposed to Vrubel did not understand him. So the painter changed his views on aesthetics suggesting that the "true art" is incomprehensible to almost anyone, and "comprehensibility" was as suspicious for him as "incomprehensibility" was for others.

Vrubel made all his illustrations in black watercolour; monochromaticity made it possible to emphasize the dramatic nature of the subject and made it possible to show the range of textured pursuits explored by the artist. The Demon was an archetypal "fallen angel" who simultaneously bridged men and female figures. Tamara was differently depicted on every image, and that emphasized her unavoidable choice between earthly and heavenly. According to Dmitrieva, Vrubel's illustrations show the painter to be at the peak of his ability as a graphic artist.

The Demon Seated, 1890. Stored at the Tretyakov Gallery

While working on the illustrations, Vrubel painted his first large painting on the same topic – "The Demon Seated". This painting is a representation of the Demon at the beginning of Lermontov’s poem and the emptiness and despair he then feels.[68] According to Klimov, it was both the most famous of the Vrubel's Demons and the freest from any literary associations.[66] On May 22, 1890, in the letter to his sister, Vrubel mentioned:

... I am painting the Demon, meaning not that fundamental "Demon" that I will create later, but a "demonic" – a half-naked, winged, young sadly thoughtful figure who sits embracing her knees against the sunset and looks at a flowering clearing with which branches stretching under the flowers that stretch to her.

The multi-color picture turned out to be more ascetic than the monochrome illustrations. The colours Vrubel uses have a brittle, crystal-like quality which emphasises the livelesness, sterility and coldness of the Demon reflected in the surrounding nature. In the painting Vrubel has used his typical color palette of blues and purples, which reminds of Byzantine mosaics. One of the characteristics of Vrubel’s art is the glowing sparkling effect many of his paintings possess. This fits within the Byzantine tradition where such glowy and shiny effects of the mosaics were meant to express God’s miraculous incarnation. Vrubel’s goals may not have been to express this particular thing, but it was to give his paintings a spiritual, otherworldly sensation. The painting's texture and colour emphasize the melancholic character of the Demon's nature that yearns for a living world. It is characteristic that the flowers surrounding it are cold crystals that reproduce fractures of rocks. Alienation of the Demon to the world is emphasized by "stone" clouds. The opposition between the Demon’s aliveness and strength and his inability/lack of desire to do something is represented by an emphasis on the Demon’s muscular body and his interlocked fingers. These elements contrast with the helpless sentiments that are conveyed by his slumping body and the sadness in the Demon’s face. The figure may be strong and muscular on the outside, but it is passive and introverted in its posture. The figure of the Demon is not depicted as an incarnation of the Devil, but as a human being that is torn apart by suffering. ‘The Demon’ can be seen as a manifestation of Vrubel’s long search for spiritual freedom. Despite Vrubel's own description, the Demon does not have wings, but there is their mirage formed by the contour of large inflorescences behind his shoulder and folded hair. The painter returned to his image only in 8 years.