| Summary: | Hopes to restore the independent state of Lithuania lasted throughout the 19th century and promoted ideas of civil resistance in Poland and Lithuania. The struggle for independence erupted through the uprisings of 1794, 1830-31, and 1863. While these attempts at armed resistance did not lead to the liberation of Lithuania nor Poland, they demonstrated the undying willingness to regain freedom. The role of artists grew up with the increasing repressions of the tsarist government. Paintings and poems became weapons in the fight against the tsarist policy of Russification. The paper focuses on the works that the painters, Vincentas Smakauskas (1797–1876) and Kanutas Ruseckas (1800–1860), done after the suppressed uprising of 1831. A research hypothesis is a statement that paintings produced in this dramatic period of history embodied secret symbolic meanings and represented ideas of civil resistance.
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