The present portrait study of Ekaterina Petrovna Alexeeva is a superb example of Nicolai Fechin’s mastery of painting. The small canvas is saturated with the explosive energy of chaotic and spontaneous lines of charcoal, and broad rapidly applied brushstrokes. With a steady hand, Fechin assembles these brushstrokes into a portrait image which not only accurately represents the sitter’s likeness but also conveys the inner world of an intelligent woman and her mood at that moment, while her elegantly tilted head gives the portrait a sense of movement.

Ekaterina Petrovna Alexeeva (née Figurnova, later Trishevskaya; 1881-1969) was born in Kazan into a wealthy family. In 1904 she married Alexander Stepanovich Alexeev (1875-1913), the third son of a large merchant family. The marriage produced three children. In 1913, Alexander died, and a few years later, Ekaterina married Alexander Nikolaevich Trishevsky (1882-1930s), a designer of bookplates and collector. After the Revolution, Trishevsky was a member of the Kazan branch of the Department for Museum Affairs. They did not have any children together. According to documents, Ekaterina moved to Moscow in 1919, and her husband followed in 1921, where he worked under Natalia Sedova, the wife of Leon Trotsky, at the Department for Museum Affairs. In the 1930s, the whole department was purged, and Trishevsky’s date of death remains unknown. According to Alexeeva’s great-granddaughters, she and Trishevsky ‘became friends with Nicolai Fechin in Kazan. We do not know which of the two first met him and where. The Alexeev family had no professional links to painting, and it is possible that Fechin met them through Trishevsky, or possibly the other way round – it was Fechin who introduced Trishevsky to Ekaterina. After their relocation to Moscow, Fechin would often stay with them at their apartment on Chistye Prudy, or their dacha in Sokolniki. This was around 1921-23.’

Including the present work, Fechin painted two portraits of Ekaterina Alexeeva in 1920 (fig.1).

We would like to thank Galina Tuluzakova for providing this catalogue note.