Vasily Perov was the first in Russian Art to give a true picture of the sorrow, the dire poverty and the oppression of the peasant’s life.

His wrath, his penetrating paint, compassion and scathing sarcasm cannot leave the spectator unmoved. Perov is a keen observer of the people’s life, a thoughtful collector of types. His compositions are simple and clear, his drawings are expressive and precise. Perov’s palette is restricted: he is a master of tonal painting, at times virtually monochromatic. In the Last Journey “drawing with paints” conforms to the piercing sensation of bereavement.

A woman taking the family’s breadwinner to his last abode in an unpainted, hastily knocked-together coffin, the two orphans left without support are part of the colourless, gloomy world, a world of indignity, injustice and sorrow. We are not shown the widow’s face but her sad shoulders speak eloquently of her tragedy.

The woman’s posture seems to be repeated in the contours of the slowly plodding horse, that devoted friend of the peasant, as if it senses all the depth of the tragedy.