Depicts: Artist’s children Kirill Borisovich Kustodiev (1903–1971) and Irina Borisovna Kustodieva (1905–1981).
Boris Kustodiev particularly enjoyed painting portraits of friends, relatives and fellow artists. He often depicted his children Kirill and Irina, portraying their outer appearances with special feeling. Irina writes in her memoirs about the time they dressed up at New Year. Their mother sewed them costumes worn by a marquis and marquise in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is how the artist depicts the children in the portrait. Kirill wears a wig made of cotton wool, while Irina’s head is powdered with potato flour.

Kustodiev Boris

Kustodiev, Boris Mikhailovich (1818, Astrakhan - 1927, Leningrad)
Painter. Studied under Vasily Savinsky and Ilya Repin at the Higher School of Art, Imperial Academy of Arts (1896-1903). Fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts in France and Spain (1903-1904). Academician of painting (1909). Founding member of the New Society of Artists (1904) and member of the Union of Russian Artists (1907), World of Art (1910) and the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (1923). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1900). Contributed to the periodical exhibitions of the Moscow Society of Lovers of the Arts (1900-1901), Spring Exhibitions of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1900-1903) and the exhibitions of the New Society of Artists (1904-1908), Union of Russian Artists (1907-1910), World of Art (1910-1924), Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (1923, 1925) and the International Exhibitions in Munich (1901, gold medal; 1909) and Malmo (1914, gold medal). Designed for theatres in Moscow and St Petersburg (from 1911).