[2][3] The painting depicts an episode of a peasant wedding feast, the joyful course of which is disturbed by the sudden appearance of a snow-covered village sorcerer.

[12] Ethnographer Sergey Tokarev noted that in this work the artist "managed to convey extremely expressively and aptly those mixed feelings of superstitious fear, anxiety in the face of some out-of-place power, but at the same time and reverence, which causes all the personality of the old sorcerer who suddenly appeared in the midst of the wedding festivities..."[13] The art historian Dmitry Sarabianov considered the painting A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding to be Maximov's best work and wrote that this canvas brought its author universal fame and placed him "in the first ranks of Russian artists-realists".

[14] From 1862, Vassily Maximov studied at the Academy of Arts, first as a free student, then in 1863-1866 in the class of history painting, where his mentors were Fyodor Bruni, Timofei Neff, Alexei Markov and Pyotr Shamshin.

[15][16] In the same year, 1866, the artist moved to the village of Shubino, located in Korchevsky uyezd, Tver province, where he worked as an art teacher at the estate of the Counts Golenishchev-Kutuzovs.

[15][17][18] In January 1868, Maximov married Lydia Alexandrovna Izmailova,[19][20] and in June of the same year, he and his wife settled in the village of Chernavino, which was part of Novoladozhsky uyezd, St. Petersburg province.

On the doctor's advice, Maximov went south to Kyiv in the spring of 1871 to improve his health; his companion on this trip was the artist Viktor Vasnetsov.

[26] During the trip Maximov drew a lot, he was interested in "folk types" that he found in the surrounding villages and towns, as well as among the worshippers in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.

The artist wrote: "The bad thing is that I often have to spend a whole day with a tow in my hands near the walls — the wind is blowing everywhere, the cold is merciless in my hornitsa.

The artist Ilya Repin wrote that Vasily Maximovich did not consider his painting finished "until it was completely approved" by the peasants.

[35] There were periods when Maximov liked the state of the canvas — for example, in a letter to his wife on February 28, 1873, he wrote that "the current picture of my find from the technical side of the best of all now written" and "it may come out of it in fact a thing not good".

[35] At times, the artist was dissatisfied with the result of his work: in particular, in a letter to his wife on October 28, 1874, he wrote: "In the last week, my case goes particularly bad, forward not a step, what did not write, today all cleaned off with a knife, I want to do better ...", "... confidence with each failure is lost, ahead is almost the greatest difficulty, to manage the light is easier than with the shadow — now it is their turn".

[36] Be that as it may, in a letter to his wife dated December 11, 1874, written shortly before his return to St. Petersburg, Maximov was more optimistic: "If the character of the sorcerer and another, the middle one, with which I do not get along, I will arrive even earlier.

[4][9][39] In a letter to Pavel Tretyakov dated March 12, 1875, the artist Ivan Kramskoi wrote about the paintings presented at the exhibition: "Maximov has decided to sprinkle his sorcerer with snow in abundance, and this has only improved the matter considerably.

In a letter to Pavel Tretyakov of April 11, 1875, the artist wrote that he had "made the necessary corrections" at the end of the exhibition and described his actions in detail: "The albumen with which the painting was covered has been washed.

[10] In the catalog of the Paris exhibition it appeared under the French title "Arrivée d'un devin à une noce villageoise" (V. M.

[43] The American sculptor William Story wrote in his report on the Paris exhibition that there was "great power and naturalness" in that painting.

[44] On November 4, 1878,[45] the Academy of Arts awarded Maximov the title of Academician for his paintings A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding and Family Separation.

[46] The painting A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding and Family Separation was also included in the exposition of the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition of 1882, held in Moscow.

[4] The figures are arranged in such a way that the main characters are not overshadowed by the secondary ones, but are clearly visible (also with the help of suitable lighting) in a scene skillfully constructed by the artist.

[49] Critic Adrian Prakhov wrote in 1875: "The bride, purely Russian and not even a beauty, so chaste, so virginal imbued and solemnity of the event, and a momentary anxiety that, looking at her, it is impossible not to love her".

[38] The old, experienced farmers were not particularly worried about the sorcerer's arrival, which did not come as a surprise to them: they know that they can buy him off with gifts, "bread and salt, money and wine are ready for him".

The father of the bride —a grey-bearded peasant on the right of the young people— continues to sit quietly at the table, and the old man and the old woman opposite him do not even turn towards the uninvited guest.

[38] According to Adrian Prakhov, "even if you do not know that the new guest is a sorcerer, just from his face and clothes, from the general alarm accompanied by involuntary respect, you immediately feel that something important, mystical, supernatural has entered".

[9] The owners of the house, the groom's parents, meet the sorcerer: his mother brings him a korovai on a plate with a towel, and his father stands beside her.

In particular, one of the episodes told by Shabara included a description of how he unexpectedly appeared at the wedding and how the groom's parents presented him with "honorable gifts: bread and salt on a sewn towel, a neckerchief, and, above all, a rublevka".

[65] In addition, the Tretyakov Gallery has a graphic sketch of the painting A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding (paper, sepia, graphite pencil, 21×33.5 cm, inv.

Commenting on the artist's later works, Stasov wrote that "after this wonderful picture (unfortunately, a little black in color), Maximov has not written anything else equal to it in breadth and richness of truthfulness and humor".

[51] Zamoshkin noted that "in the exceptional understanding of peasant life and types" "A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding" is close to Mikhail Shibanov's canvas "Celebration of the Marriage Contract" (1777, State Tretyakov Gallery) painted a century earlier — in both works "true Great Russian types are marked by originality, character and expressiveness".

[38] The ethnographer Sergei Tokarev, researching the beliefs of East Slavic peoples associated with creatures and objects of the real world, noted that in a remarkable Maximov's painting "A Sorcerer Comes to a Village Wedding" the artist "managed to convey extremely expressively and aptly those mixed feelings of superstitious fear, anxiety in the face of some alien power, but at the same time and reverence, which causes the whole personality of the old sorcerer, suddenly appeared among the wedding festivities..."[13] Art historian Dmitry Sarabianov considered the painting "A Sorcerer Comes to Peasant Wedding" to be Maximov's best work, noting that this canvas brought its author universal fame and placed him "in the first ranks of Russian realist painters".