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Merchant's Wife at Tea
Boris Kustodiev · Early Modern (Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism)
- Artist
- Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev (1878–1927)
- Date
- 1918
- Dimensions
- 120 x 120 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Merchant's Wife at Tea shows a plump, rosy-cheeked woman in a lilac dress drinking tea on a balcony in a provincial Russian town. The table before her is laden with a gleaming samovar, a watermelon, grapes, pastries and jam, and a cat rubs against her shoulder.
A closer look
Behind her, the town spreads out in the warm evening light, with churches, shops and a merchant's house where another couple also takes tea. Kustodiev celebrates the abundance and slow, comfortable life of the old merchant class with gentle humour and affection, in bright, decorative colours inspired by folk art and popular prints. The picture is all the more remarkable because it was painted in Petrograd in 1918, during the hunger and chaos after the Revolution, when the world it shows was disappearing.
More by Boris Kustodiev
Famous works elsewhere
- The Beauty 1915
- Portrait of Chaliapin 1921
- Russian Venus 1926
- Bolshevik 1920
- Shrovetide 1919
- Mir iskusstva group portrait 1920