Maria Matavtina was the last muse of the renowned painter Konstantin Makovsky. The genre of portraiture dominates his oeuvre and female portraits are among his most striking creations. In Russia there was no one among his contemporaries who could rival him when it came to portraits of high-society beauties, and there was a waiting list of those eager to be depicted by the artist. Makovsky was referred to as Karl Briullov’s successor and compared to Van Dyck. The critics noted that ‘his colours sing like those in the works of Rubens’.

Makovsky often painted women who were close to him. He married three times. His first wife Elena Timofeevna was his companion for just seven years, dying young from pulmonary tuberculosis in 1873. In 1875, Makovsky married Yulia Pavlovna Letkova, at the time considered the most beautiful woman in St Petersburg. There are several known portraits of her, the two most famous of which are now in the collection of the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg. In one of them she is depicted wearing a red dress with a book in her hands (1881), while in the other she is portrayed with her children Elena and Sergei (1882). Yulia’s features are recognisable in the depictions of Boyarinas in Makovsky’s historical canvases from the 1880s, as well as in the faces of mythological and allegorical figures in his large-scale paintings and murals. In the late 1880s, Yulia fell ill of pleurisy and was forced to receive prolonged treatment abroad. The couple lived separately and as a result grew apart.

In 1889, while in Paris, Makovsky met Maria Alekseevna Matavtina (1869-1919) and fell in love again. He got a divorce from Yulia in 1892, but following an order from the Holy Synod was condemned to ‘perpetual celibacy’. Only in 1898, after a personal intervention by Emperor Nicholas II were Konstantin and Maria allowed to marry. By that time they had three children together (Konstantin, Olga and Maria), who were legitimised after their marriage. In 1900 they had their last child, Nikolai. Makovsky lived with Maria, his junior by thirty years, until his death in 1915. She survived him by four years.

From the 1890s onwards Maria becomes the artist’s regular model. Her portraits were frequently on view at the exhibitions of the St Petersburg Society of Artists and she modelled as Juliet for his canvas Romeo and Juliet from 1895, now in the collection of the Odessa Fine Arts Museum. Her facial features are also recognisable in a later version of Ophelia, currently in a private collection (fig.2).

The present portrait of Maria Matavtina was created during a difficult period in the artist’s private life, when his relationship with his second wife was coming to an end. Maria’s striking portrayal underlines how important the new relationship was to the painter. It was this very portrait which Makovsky chose to include in the 25^th Itinerant Exhibition held in 1897. The painting was exhibited under the title Portrait of Madame M and is reproduced in the catalogue (fig.3). The portrait has remained in the artist’s family until now and forms a crucial part, not only of Makovsky’s artistic legacy, but equally of his personal biography.

We are grateful to Dr Elena Nesterova, author of a 2003 monograph on Konstantin Makovsky, for providing this note.