Kramskoy – “Kramskoy, painting a portrait of his daughter”

In the last years of his life, Kramskoy was remembered by his contemporaries surrounded by young people (their grown-up children and their friends). The striving for “gratifying” (Valentin Serov’s expression), for light, air, pure colors, which took possession of the young generation of Russian artists, was not alien to Kramskoy, the patriarch of the Itinerants. Thin, lyrical, warmed by a personal fatherly feeling, the double portrait-painting “Kramskoy, painting a portrait of his daughter” can be a kind of epigraph to the last period of his work. This small, light, joyful work was written in Menton, where in the spring of 1884 Kramskoy went to receive treatment, accompanied by his daughter Sophia. A portrait in a portrait – a portrait of a daughter – was painted very delicately and carefully, this is a real miniature.

The field of chamber art during the life of Kramskoy remained unknown to a wide range of spectators and was made public only at the death exhibition in 1887.

Year of painting: 1884.

Dimensions of the painting: 16.5 x 24 cm.

Material: canvas.

Writing technique: oil.

Genre: genre painting.

Style: realism.

Gallery: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.