The present pencil drawing is closely related to a gouache from the same year, which is now in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The gouache was one of two works which Malevich exhibited under the general title Provincial Landscapes (cat. no. 161-162) at Donkey’s Tail, the seminal avant-garde exhibition organised by Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova in the spring of 1912 in Moscow. Malevich’s work of the period was influenced by the Neo-primitivism of Larionov and Goncharova, who advocated for a break from European art and the establishment of an independent school of contemporary Russian art rooted in icon painting and folk art found in the provinces.

The Stedelijk gouache is inscribed in Malevich’s hand Province, which today is its accepted title. The present drawing has also been exhibited as Der Spaziergang (Walk, Stroll), based on the Russian inscription Progulka in Anna Leporskaya’s hand on the reverse. The inscription in ink Bub(noviy) Val(et) 3 [Jack of Diamonds] is also in her hand and was added by her under Malevich’s guidance, who must have erroneously believed that he had exhibited the gouache at the 1912 Jack of Diamonds exhibition (rather than the Donkey’s Tail exhibition which showed works by artist who had recently ceded from the Jack of Diamonds group).

The present drawing comes from the collection of Anna Leporskaya (1900-1982), who was closely associated with Malevich in the 1920s and 30s, both studying under him and working for him as his secretary. The drawings in the collection were registered by Leporskaya and Malevich in 1926, and are today well documented thanks to Danish art historian Troels Andersen, who had access to the archive during Leporskaya’s lifetime.