Un piccolo Hogarth russo: P. A. Fedotov (1815-1852)

This paper looks at the works of Pavel Fedotov (1815-1852), one of the first genre painters in Russia and the first artist to attempt satire in painting, known as “the Russian Hogarth”. It investigates the meaning of this comparison from his time to this day, paying attention both to the esthetic appreciation of Fedotov’s art, and to the immage of Hogarth it implies. It focuses in particular on the chapter about Hogarth and Fedotov in Viktor Shklovsky’s book Story about the artist Fedotov (1936), which shows the two artists as champions of capitalism and proletariat.