- 38
Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev
Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 GBP
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Description
- Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev
- Merchant's Wife
- signed in Cyrillic, inscribed with a dedication to Alexei Kravchenko and dated 1925 l.r.
- watercolour over pencil on paper
- image size: 39 by 34cm, 15 1/4 by 13 1/2 in.
Provenance
A gift from the artist to Alexei Kravchenko
Thence by descent
Thence by descent
Catalogue Note
Boris Kustodiev was born into a middle-class family in Astrakhan, the city on the Volga famed for both its sturgeon and its merchants. After the untimely death of his father before the artist was yet two, his mother moved the family into the wing of a well-to-do merchant’s house and this early exposure to the life of the merchant class in the Russian provinces was to inspire his future career as their chronicler.
For Kustodiev, merchant life was one of comfort and plenty. His kupchikhi are the very embodiment of these qualities with their rosy cheeks and their gentle corpulence, with their air of contentment and self-satisfaction. Although the present lot was almost certainly painted after the Revolution, it is a timeless depiction of a world untroubled by such things. From 1916 Kustodiev was largely confined to a wheelchair and as his health deteriorated, he looked back to the world of his childhood with increasing frequency. The verdant landscape in this charming watercolour is suggestive of his native Astrakhan and the distinctive white and green towers of the city’s Cathedral of the Assumption are visible on the hill in the background.
One of the finest of the artist's watercolours to come on to the market in recent years, the present lot bears a fond inscription from Kustodiev to Alexei Kravchenko, to whom he presented the work as a gift and in whose family’s collection it has remained ever since.
For Kustodiev, merchant life was one of comfort and plenty. His kupchikhi are the very embodiment of these qualities with their rosy cheeks and their gentle corpulence, with their air of contentment and self-satisfaction. Although the present lot was almost certainly painted after the Revolution, it is a timeless depiction of a world untroubled by such things. From 1916 Kustodiev was largely confined to a wheelchair and as his health deteriorated, he looked back to the world of his childhood with increasing frequency. The verdant landscape in this charming watercolour is suggestive of his native Astrakhan and the distinctive white and green towers of the city’s Cathedral of the Assumption are visible on the hill in the background.
One of the finest of the artist's watercolours to come on to the market in recent years, the present lot bears a fond inscription from Kustodiev to Alexei Kravchenko, to whom he presented the work as a gift and in whose family’s collection it has remained ever since.