Troika

Perov painted this in 1866, five years after Russia freed its serfs, when crowds of newly landless peasants were drifting into the cities and putting their children to work. Three of them haul a huge barrel of water on a sled through a freezing wind, harnessed like animals, their faces pinched and worn. A grown man pushes from behind. Perov searched a long time for the face of the middle boy and finally painted a peasant child named Vasya. Years later, the story goes, the boy's mother recognized her son in the picture at the gallery after he had died, and Perov gave her a small study of his head. The frozen wall behind the children is the edge of a Moscow monastery, the warm inside world they are hauling their water toward but not into.