Executed in 1928 during Grigoriev’s first trip to Chile, the present work echoes an earlier composition from his celebrated Breton cycle, also known under the title La Misère (fig.1). It was most probably this earlier work that was exhibited alongside other paintings from the Breton series in his retrospective exhibition held at the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts in 1928.

Fig.1 Photograph of La Misère, 1925 from the artist's archive, private collection

Encompassing different genres, the Breton cycle is bound together by Grigoriev’s faithfulness to capturing the essence of national types and the emotional individuality of each of the sitters in his portraits. It demonstrates stylistic affinities with realist movements of the 1920s and draws some parallels to the hardship of the Russian peasantry. Like the Breton composition, the present lot takes a mother and child as its subject. The child sits on her mother’s lap, curiously looking at the viewer, while the mother looks somewhat vacantly into the distance. The background of the work suggests the interior of a building, although the precise nature of its layout remains blurred by Grigoriev’s abstract handling of it, suggesting that he was more concerned with capturing the individuality of his sitters.

Grigoriev showed La Misère at the exhibition of the Scythian Society, which took place at the French Institute in Prague in March and April 1932 (fig.2). Artists from Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and the Czech Republic participated in the exhibitions of this international association (1931, 1932, 1933), proclaiming Eurasianism in art as a form of Slavic unity and a way of preserving national identity. Grigoriev was the only one of the eleven participants who could show twenty works, most likely because he was the honorary chairman of the society in 1932.

Fig.1 The present lot listed in the 1932 Prague exhibition catalogue
Fig.2 The present lot listed in the 1932 Prague exhibition catalogue
Fig.3 Photograph of the present lot from the artist's archive, Private Collection