Filipp Andreevich Maliavin

Malmö, Exhibition of Russian Art, 1964

O.Zhivova, Filipp Andreevich Maliavin 1869-1940: Life and Works, Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1967, listed p.267

Original canvas, which is slightly discolured. Raised craquelure and minor areas of paint loss to the top left. There is a layer of light surface dirt and fine lines of craquelure. UV light reveals an opaque layer of discoloured varnish, and a thin line and small patch of retouching to the craquelure in the top left corner. Held in a bronze painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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This striking image of a peasant girl in the half-light, engaging the viewer in a mesmerising stare is one of the most important pre-Revolutionary works by Maliavin to come to auction in recent years. It is likely that the offered lot was amongst a select group of remarkable peasant portraits shown at the Union of Russian Artists in 1916, though no exhibition list exists to confirm this.

These larger than life-size portraits, almost Mannerist in their elongation of the sitters' torso, and executed in a heavy, saturated palette, stand out from his earlier light-filled celebrations of the joys of peasant life. This deeply psychological portraiture recalls that of Ilya Repin, his former teacher at the Academy of Arts. Rich backgrounds of thickly-applied dark brown, green and blue pigments bring the sitters' facial features into sharp relief and imbue these portraits with more ominous qualities. As Zhivova argues, these works point to a darker theme in Maliavin's oeuvre, exploring the superstition and sorcery endemic in Russian village life, influenced perhaps by the atmosphere of increasing unrest in provincial Russia in the years preceding the October Revolution.

The offered lot is one of the most beautiful in this cycle. Maliavin achieves a new level of sensitivity and emotion in his subject's expression, recalling his earlier Realist masterpiece Peasant Girl Covering her Mouth with a Jacket (1895, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), it encapsulates Mikhailovsky's words of praise to Maliavin that 'There is nobody who senses the elemental, authentic, earthy Russia like you' (cited in O.Zhivova, Filipp Andreevich Maliavin, Moscow, 1967, p.241).