Vasili Pukirev
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Vasily Vladimirovich Pukirev (Russian: Василий Владимирович Пукирев; 1832-1890) was a Russian painter and illustrator. He is primarily known as the author of the painting "The Unequal Marriage" [1]
He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He first worked as a portraitist but later turned to historical painting. His best painting "The Unequal Marriage" (1862) depicts the wedding ceremony of an elderly, high-ranking official and a young, visibly unhappy girl. This was one of the celebrated denunciatory pictures of the 1860s, revealing the the unequal position of women and the corruption of bureaucracy. This critical mode, reflecting the general striving for reform in Russia after the Emancipation reform of 1861, was intended to arouse the dormant social conscience and change society[citation needed]. His other socially conscious works include Collection of Arrears (1869) and Damaged Field (1870).