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Female Reaper
Makovsky Konstantin,
Oil on canvas
78,5 × 65
State Russian Museum
Annotation click to expand contents
In his earlier period the artist frequently turned to peasant themes. Unlike the genre paintings of his contemporaries, however, Konstantin Makovsky s peasant works are free of socially denunciatory features. Makovsky continued the tradition of po¬eticising peasant life begun in Russian painting by Alexei Venetsianov. Many facets typical of Kon-stantin Makovsky s oeuvre are concentrated in this small canvas interest in the ethnography of the Russian Empire, love of depicting genre details and reverence for the themes of motherhood and childhood.
Author's Biography click to expand contents
Makovsky Konstantin
Makovsky, Konstantin Egórovich
1839, Moscow — 1915, Petrograd
Painter, draughtsman, watercolourist; portraitist, genre artist, author of painting on historical themes. Studied under Mikhail Scotti, Sergei Zaryanko at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1851–1858), under Alexei Markov at the Imperial Academy of Arts
(1858–1863). Minor gold medal (1862) for Agents of the False Dmitry Kill the Son of Boris Godunov. Contributed to exhibitions (from 1860). One of “the rebellious fourteen” (1863). Academician (1867), professor (1869). Member of the St Petersburg Artel of Artists (1863). Founding member of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions (1870) and the St Petersburg Society of Artists (1898).