Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky, 1839-1915

Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 1-17 June 1887;
St. Petersburg, The Exhibition Halls of the Society for Patronage of the Arts, December 1889;

Niva, 1889, No.21, p.537 (illustrated)
G.B.Romanov and A.M.Muratov, Russian Salon Painting (1850-1917): An Encyclopaedia, Zolotoi vek: St. Petersburg, 2004, p.392 (illustrated)

Original canvas. There is a layer of light surface dirt and dust and would benefit from a light surface clean. There is one scratch 14cm. long along the lower middle edge. UV light reveals no apparent reotuching. Held in a modern gold painted plaster and wood frame.
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Konstantin Makovsky, the eminent portraitist, landscape artist, genre painter and master of historical scenes enjoyed renown amongst his contemporaries. He was repeatedly commissioned to produce compositions on a grand scale. It was once remarked that "a lordly residence without a Makovsky... is not worthy of the name." The artist's most monumental work was the decoration for Sergei von Dervis' residence in St Petersburg. This building on Angliiskaya Naberezhnaya is preserved to this day. Allegory of Painting is one of sixteen canvases on allegorical and mythological subjects completed for the residence's concert hall. Its subject refers to the legendary beginning of this art form: a young shepherd draws his lover's silhouette on a rock, immortalising her features.

Makovsky painted all the panels in Paris between October 1886 and February 1887 and then exhibited them in Paris and St. Petersburg.

 

In 1907 the house's new occupant took down the works and exhibited them once more in St Petersburg, following which a number of colour postcards were printed depicting Allegory of Painting and other Von Dervis panels. The complex foreshortening, boldness of composition and sense of joyful abandon amidst a wealth of detail such as the beautiful faces of the youth and the girl, the magnificent bouquet, the luxuriant foliage, and the hint of female flesh through a translucent tunic, all create a skilful decorative effect and are a delight to behold. The panel was created for a well-defined, richly stuccoed and gilded interior, and the artist would have therefore calculated the general effect this combination would have on the observer. This explains the overall colour scheme: "In painting pictures, consideration is wholly given to beauty, to creating them in unity with the luxurious surroundings of grand halls, and so that they are wondrous, eye-caressing islands among a sea of glittering marble, bronze, flowers and gold the palette must be light and sparkling. In this K. Makovsky has no near competitor to date," wrote Novoe Vremya's reporter.

The panel Allegory of Painting, together with the allegorical compositions  Poetry, Music and Sculpture, formed a mini-series within the scheme of panels for the Von Dervis residence.