Картина была с восторгом встречена публикой. Императорская Академия художеств в Санкт-Петербурге присудила автору звание профессора (1863), что было расценено критикой как победа новых тенденций: "Академия делает профессором человека, написавшего большую картину, но какую? Картину, где нет ни пожара, ни сражения, ни древней, ни новой истории…" Всех взволновала новая, современная тема, тема власти денег и авторская позиция, явно выраженная фигурой молодого человека, стоящего за спиной невесты. Позиция эта показана столь откровенно, что картина была воспринята как автобиографическая, а молодой человек – как автопортрет художника

　　这幅画受到了公众的热情欢迎。圣彼得堡帝国艺术学院授予作者“教授”的头衔（1863年），评论家认为这是对新趋势的胜利：“学院让一位画了一幅大画的人成为教授，是他的哪幅画？那画里没有火，也没有战争，也没有古老，也没有新的故事……站在新娘的背后，坦率地显示了这个位置，以至于画面被视为自传，而年轻人则被视为艺术家的自画像。

   Pukirev, the son of a peasant who had originally been trained to be an icon painter swept the art scene when he presented his very large canvas “The Unequal Marriage” in 1863. Pukirev had just finished studying at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow and this painting was an ambitious and successful attempt to portray a scene from an everyday life (well, a wedding may not be an everyday thing, but it’s not a theme from history or religion) in a serious, not sentimental manner.
   The scene looks like a very dramatic moment in a play; the light in the church is falling on the three main figures in the painting; the bride, illuminating her beautiful and sad figure of the bride, the wrinkled and dull looking old groom, and the hunched priest. The bride and the groom are both holding a lighted candle. The bride; beautiful, shy, and melancholy, is the picture of innocence. Her lovely pale oval face is framed with silky curls that touch her collar bones and her necklace. Jewels glimmers on her skin, blossoms on her wreath are blooming, but her heart is a poor withered flower, sad and cold. The crinoline is heavy on her slender frame, and her downward gaze reveals more than it hides. We cannot see the look in her eyes, but we can feel what she is feeling, we can imagine the soft tears blurring her visions, we can imagine the dryness in her throat when the moment to say “I do” comes.
   The idea for the painting came from this one particular real life story; Pukirev’s friend Serge Mikhailovich Varentsov, a young merchant, was hopelessly in love with a twenty-four year old girl Sofya Nikolaevna Rybnikova, but her parents decided it would be better for her to marry a man who was richer and more succesful, a thirty-seven year old Andre Aleksandrovish Karzinkin. The age different wasn’t as big as the painting presents it, but Pukirev wanted to emphasise the bride’s youth and beauty in contrast to the man’s old age and fading looks, so the artistic freedom is understandable and justifiable. Poor, lovelorn Sergei was nonetheless forced to attend the wedding and see his beloved marry someone else, due to family reasons; his brother Nikolai was married to Karzinkin’s younger sister.
   One man’s sadness was another man’s inspiration and when Sergei told this to his friend the artist, Pukirev instantly had the idea of a painting in mind. The man behind the bride is suppose to be portrait of Sergei but later Sergei was rather angry that Pukirev had painted him and so Pukirev added a beard to the face but the rest remained unchanged. Still, the artist’s friend S. I. Gribkov said for the bearded man that: “with crossed arms in the picture, it is V. V. Pukirev himself, as if alive”.

   The theme of the painting and the social problem it accentuates reminds me of something from Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”; the main character Raskolnikov’s intelligent and beautiful sister Dunya takes upon herself to better the family’s financial situation by marrying an old and wealthy, but not good-hearted lawyer Luzhkin. In the end, she doesn’t proceed and she ends up marrying Raskolnikov’s best friend Razumikhin who is intelligent and strong and, unlike Luzhkin, he loves her dearly.

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