This painting depicts an everyday subject and is done in the spirit of the European Biedermeier period, but endowed with details characteristic of Russian life of the middle classes. The cast of the bust from antiquity on the etagere and paintings on the wall establish the status of the subjects depicted as art connoisseurs.

Krendovsky Evgraf

KRENDOVSKY, Evgraf Fyodorovich
1810, Moscow (?) - after 1853, Manuilovka (Nizhny Novgorod Province) (?)
Painter, interior designer, genre artist. Son of an army man. Served in the chancellery of the Arzamas City Police. Studied at the Alexander Stupin School of Art in Arzamas. Lived in St Petersburg where he studied under Alexei Venetsianov (from 1830). Attended drawing classes at the Imperial Academy of Arts (from March 1830). Painted interiors of the Winter Palace (early 1830s). For family reasons, was forced to discontinue his studies and return to Moscow (1835). Taught drawing to the children of landowner V. N. Ostrogradova in Poltava Province. Awarded the rank of Free Artist of Portraiture and Miniature Painting from the Academy of Arts(1839). Spent the last years of his life at his brother''s estate in Nizhny Novgorod Province.