Moscow School, 19th Century

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is unlined. There are two patches on the reverse, one in the upper left and one in the lower left. The paint layer is stable and although very slightly cracked, lining does not seem to be necessary. Under ultraviolet light there are some very broad and clumsy restorations of the figures in the background and a vertical strip of retouches running down the right side. These very broad and clumsy restorations seem to address minor losses and will improve if reexamined. There may be a few strokes of restoration in the side of the tablecloth in the lower right however, the figures, the faces and the bulk of the picture seems to be in healthy state, despite the fact that the restoration is a extremely broad and exaggerated.
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Fortune telling, a traditional topic in painting in the western tradition, also became an important subject for Russian genre painters when the use of playing cards to divine the future became popular in the early nineteenth century.  Fortune telling was one of the traditional amusements of Russian Yuletide (Svyatki), the period between Christmas Eve and Epiphany.  In this painting, the depiction of contemporary everyday life seems to be interwoven with the classical vanitas image.  The wealthy woman in a fur-lined jacket seated at a large table covered with an ornately embroidered shawl and set with a tazza with silver mounts appears to have cast aside the cards, which appear to have foretold some sort of loss or demonstrated the errors of her past. Perhaps in atonement, the woman casts aside what appears to be a handful of jewels, giving them to her serf maid.

Dr. Grigory Goldovsky suggests the present composition dates to 1850s, for it is typical of the Moscow school of that time period. It is quite possible that the author of Fortune Telling studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.