The brightest moments in the life of the artist were connected with Odessa, where he lived after finishing his studies, and with countryside pleasures at a summer house of Y. Zhukhavitsky not far from Minsk and near Astrashytsky Garadok. As far as the dating of the composition Woman by the Sea (1905) and stylistically close to it works {Fisherman, Seated Man, Steamer at the Bank, Road Repair) goes, it was the happiest and the last visit of Alpyarovich to Odessa4. These sketches are pierced with detached and blissful joy of life, when a person sees everything as if in a haze softening outlines of events and objects and the world around seems benevolent. The painting Woman by the Sea was 4 Pogroms started in Odessa on October 18, 1905. The martial law was imposed on the city and it lasted to the end of 1909. 29 shown at several exhibitions, which is a sure sign of the artists attitude to it. The painting full of pale light and air depicts a serene lady playing with a cane with waves. Supposedly, the painting shows the artists wife. General romanticism of the painting paradoxically coexists with common precision of details. Landscape, Autumn, Riverbank are first known to us landscape attempts of Alpyarovich. All of them were created in the first Minsk period, in the middle of the 1900s. They are characterized by contemplation, a rather narrative manner of painting, the blurred coloration and perception of Nature as the window to the soul. A full, fascinating and mysterious image is traced only in the landscape Riverbank. The author even marked it with an elaborated monogram which he used to mark his most precious works at a certain period. Sketches At a Bench and At a Moonlit Night belong to early “countryside” genre compositions. The first one is similar to a naive photography and the second one impresses with a precisely depicted moonlight in spite of its “banal romanticism” in the plot. Portrait of a Girl in a Red Dress stands out from three early portraits of women. The painting also marked with a monogram in all probability shows a wife or a fiancee of the artist. She unites simplicity and sophistication, hope and anxiety in her look. The complexity of the image is revealed through contrasts of dark and light parts of the painting and combination of a deep wine-red dress and a wonderful lace pelerine collar as if illustrating purity and reverence of a girl frozen in an uneasy anticipation. Portrait of a Woman (Portrait of the Artist’s Wife) (the late 1900-early 1910s) is a peculiar continuation of that portrait. Now the model looks a bit tired and calm, but this calmness means stoicism — tragic knowledge of life and defiance. And if white lace as a symbol of fragility is a key to the first portrait, the second portrait is explained by a scarlet scarf as a symbol of drama. Only Berlin in Evening. Above the Spree and Portrait ofY.Y. Klever are known among the works from the journey to Berlin at the 2nd half of the 1900s. The first painting bravely brings together a city view, an embankment with an obelisk, the river with boats as they could look a hundred years ago and a train speeding over the bridge as a symbol of progress. The artist managed to create 30 an absolutely reliable and at the same time phantasmagoric image with a radiant ribbon of windows of a moving train, lamplight and its reflection in the water, shimmering waves, warm light of windows and creeping smokes. The second portrait shows one of the most famous and popular Russian artists. Alpyarovich depicted Klever with an astonishing accuracy. Scintillating mood and hedonism in the work step back in front of a dramatic comparison of an energetic though not a young man and almost chaotic background. Probably, this formless twilight highlights active and energetic personality of Klever but it also reflects painfull collisions of his not always happy life. It is the first work of Alpyarovich in a fully formed mature style. The ar-tist seemed not to have any technical difficulties and expressed his impressions and feelings freely without thinking about artistic methods. The methods are certainly subjected to his worldview. The portrait was acquired from a grandson of the landscape artist in Leningrad in 1972. Among his works Alpyarovich presented Portrait of Artist N. Asmalousky at Minsk Art and Industry Exhibition in 1910. In 1931, the painting was given to the Belarusian State Museum by the artist’s wife as Portrait of an Unknown in a Chair. During the war the portrait was taken to Germany and later returned. It was returned to the Art Museum in Minsk only at the beginning of the 1960s, unfortunately even without an authors name. The portrait was identified as a work of Alpyarovich only few years ago. The name of a model was also defined at that time. The painting is unusual for Alpyarovich: wistful melancholy, dandyism of the model, thoroughly painted accessories and background were dictated by the looks and mood of Bonch-Asmalousky who was going through the death of his father and a complicated financial situation at the time. It is possible that the portrait was painted by Alpyarovich in Minsk soon after his return from abroad with Nikalay Bonch-Asmalousky returning some time earlier. There are several modest sketches among works of Alpyarovich, which could be called “minute masterpieces”. According to a specific mature independence of the artistic language, they were created shortly after the return from Europe or during the journey. A majority of works are full of joy of “the sunny side of life”: Landscape with a Fence, Cottage in a Country, Drying Cloths, Nanny, 31 Washerwoman, Girl in White. With minimal means Alpyarovich expressed his impressions of a landscape, a man in a landscape and a genre motif. It was the right proportion of artistic means that let the artist depict a happy moment of being, its harmony and evanescence. Cottage differs from those works. It is similar to the earlier Landscape showing the same house, probably the summer house of Y. Zhukhovitsky. The painting shows Nature in storm and to express it the artist should have experienced the same condition of tragic stress and whirl. A clearance between dark clouds is seen at the right part of the sky. But whether the sky is being cleared from the clouds or other way round we do not know. The sketch Friends makes an impression of an amazing naturalness and freedom. Unfortunately, it is unfinished, though may be it is the reason of the easiness of the composition. There is a version that a man to the right of a guitar player is Leu Alpyarovich himself. His late works (.Portrait of a Woman in White, Funeral of a Schoolgirl, Flock of Geese) are full of drama and dissonance with external integrity and completeness. Houses at the painting Funeral of a Schoolgirl let us assume that an event took place near the Starazhouskaye cemetery in Minsk, not far from the house where the artist lived at Aleksandrauskaya Street, 36 (now, Bagdanovich Street, 24). It is possible that a plot is relevant to the tragedy which happened in Minsk in March, 1908. Schoolgirl Vera Kholmskaya jumped out of the window when policemen came to her because she had been “a messenger” between Yerokhin, a member of the Social-Revolutionary Party, who had been in prison and organizers of his escape5. A depicted scene could have been made with civic pathos or realistic dramatic effect. However, the artist created a symbolic composition: girls in white and blue school uniform on a narrow path slowly walk with candles in their hands to the cemetery gate, a school-dame in a black mourning dress as a symbol of doom accompanies or hastens them. At the end of the way a white church and a cemetery fence shine in a lavender and rosy sunset. Ideo 5 Шибеко 3. В., Шибеко С. Ф. Минск : страницы жизни дореволюционного города. — Минск, 1990. — С. 330. 32 logical and artistic effect of the painting is magnified by an impressionistic and sharp composition and colour contrasts. Graphic works, which are of the same quality as the paintings, make up a significant part of the creative legacy of the artist. The majority of graphic works is kept in the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus. Graphic art is often seen as an additional area for painters. In reality, it sometimes lets an artist express himself with the most freedom and spontaneity. Being a more chamber art than the painting, it has less distance between an author and a work and consequently between an author and an audience. Besides, a graphic nature of the talent was characteristic of Alpyarovich — even his most successful paintings were based on a limited number of colours (up to four colours in a painting). In his graphic works the artist depicted the same as in the paintings circle of relatives and friends. There are also compositions with “common types”. The collection includes miraculously preserved academic sketches6, which demonstrate not only skills but also an attempt of an imaginative solution. Thanks to the graphic works we have an opportunity to see the Alpyarovich’s greatest gift to depict children accurately and delicately. Generally, the graphic legacy of Alpyarovich demonstrates “perfection and irrelevance of the artistic level. Drawings of Alpyarovich in Belarusian graphic arts could be compared in their artistic execution only to works of Serov in Russia”7. Today five paintings of Alpyarovich together with works of other artists of the early 20th century meet visitors of the National Art Museum at the beginning of the Belarusian art exposition of the late 19th — early 21th centuries. Biographers of the 1930s wrote about an uncompromising character of the master, his artistic pride and unwillingness to serve to the bad taste, to please and oblige “owners of life”. It explains some life difficulties of Alpyarovich and the charm of his creative work — talented and sincere, open in emotions and dignified in restrain. Valyantsina Vaitsakhouskaya