Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky, 1839-1915

Purchased in St. Petersburg in 1909 by Louis Grommé (1877-1967);
Gifted by the above to his daughter, Dorothea in 1926;
Thence by descent

The board is sound. The paint surface is quite dirty and there is a layer of discoloured varnish. There are some scratches to the inner frame edge and a few spots of retouching t.l. and t.r. visible to the naked eye. UV light confirms these retouchings. Held in a simple modern painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Konstantin Makovsky painted a whole gallery of "heads" - female portraits never linked to a definite model, but possessing typically characteristic features. Like Pietro Rotari, the artist created a huge quantity of works in this unique genre, contributing to his blossoming popularity in Russia at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Makovsky's creative fantasies ranged from brunettes, blondes, redheads to gypsies, Italian or French girls, noblewomen and coquettes and these became the artist's visiting card. So popular were these portraits that, according to contemporaries, it was possible to find copies of these heads "in any portraitist's, patisserie or wigmaker's shop."

The Boyarina type occupied a special place in this gallery. This national theme in Makovsky's work provoked his contemporaries to feel pride in their beautiful ancestry, the contextual expression of which was the luxurious decorations of pearl headdresses, diamond earrings and patterned sarafans. Similar works were always in demand and were regularly shown at exhibitions of the St Petersburg Society of Artists. In its catalogues there are frequent references to works entitled "Noblewoman", "Russian portrait" and other similar soubriquets. The portrait offered here illustrates wonderfully this aspect of the artist's work, and could very possibly be one of those shown at the Society's exhibitions.