Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev

St Petersburg, Mir Iskusstva, 1916, No.113

V.Voinov, B.Kustodiev, Leningrad, 1925, p.83
M.G.Atkind, Boris Kustodiev, Moscow, 1982, p.154

Structural Condition The canvas has been strip-lined and this is ensuring an even and secure structural support. Paint Surface The paint surface has an even varnish layer and only a few very small scattered retouchings are visible under ultra-violet light. There are scattered touches around the framing edges, in the sky and one area (approximately 1 cm in diameter) in the centre of the sky. There are other very minor scattered spots and lines. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in good and stable condition and no further work is required.
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The Flower Harvest is an unusual depiction of a non-Russian landscape and dates from a pivotal point in Kustodiev's career. Having enjoyed a successful early career primarily as a portrait painter and a devoted pupil and follower of Repin, by the early 1910's he had already begun to revise the creative principles of his predecessors and was also becoming increasingly interested in stage design. Illness in 1911 and 1912 necessitated long intervals of enforced inactivity, but although these were Kustodiev's least productive years the few works that date from this period represent significant steps in his creative development. In the summer of 1913 he was sent by doctors to Juan-les-Pins near Cannes and his recovery abroad marked the beginning of a new creative surge.

The offered work combines a motif more commonly associated with the Barbizon school (fig.1) together with the features of theatrical design: the trees act as wings, while the mountains and characteristically streaked sky provide the backdrop for the anonymous yet expressive figures centre stage. A colourful kaleidoscope of time, this painting attempts to show several moments from one story on one canvas. Kustodiev does not aim for an effect of depth or volume, but finds structural integrity in the flatness of pictorial space and although he does not fully give way to the riotous, luxurious colours that define his later, almost Fauvist works, the rich palette that saturates this canvas as though it has absorbed sunlight over the day, hints at the celebratory, rural genre scenes that would feature prominently in his future work.