Robert Rafaelovich Falk

A gift of the artist's widow to her niece in 1968
Thence by descent

D.Sarabyanov and Yu.Didenko, Zhivopis' Roberta Fal'ka: Pol'nyi katalog proizvedenii, Moscow, 2006, pp.790, 8598, No.1191 (illustrated)

Original canvas which is very fine in places and slightly loose on the stretcher. There is a patch to the reverse. There is a layer of light surface dirt. UV light reveals retouching to the lower right corner and areas of retouching in the lower central section, one of which corresponds to the aforementioned patch. There is an uneven layer of discoloured varnish. Held in a simple wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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The offered portrait was painted in the village of Arkhanovo at the dacha of Falk's friends, the Kruzhovnikovs. It was conceived as a portrait of the housekeeper, but since she couldn't spare the time to sit for the artist, Falk's wife replaced her as the model. 'It was a rainy summer' she recalls, 'Falk only managed to paint one landscape from the back of the house. He worked on two paintings all summer at the open window: when the sun shone, he painted Aspidistra (The State Tretyakov Gallery) and when the weather was overcast, he turned to Geranium (Private Collection)' (A.V.Schekin-Krotova, Moi Fal'k, Moscow: HGS, 2005, p.123). The changeable weather may account for why the artist seated his model on the threshold, though the composition of portrait and interior evidently interested him since the following year he painted the comparable work, At the Dacha, Interior with Natasha (1957).

 

Falk painted his wife often, but as the only full-length portrait in this oeuvre this is a particularly rare work. 'I enjoy painting portraits most of all' he admitted, adding that accidental expressions in a face are the most dangerous, the artist's task was to capture the model only when 'they found their own harmony', a natural position from which he could strip away the transient and lay bare their essential features. Falk's stay at the Kruzhovnikov's dacha came to an end before the artist could finish this work, yet this personal, unassuming portrait bears out Ilya Ehrenburg's comment that '[Falk's] portraits, particularly in the later years, astonish one with their depth... It would take a writer an entire volume to describe his hero in detail, but Falk achieves this with colour: the face, jacket, hands, wall – on the canvas are a coil of emotions, events, thoughts – a plastic biography'. (cited in D.Sarabyanov and Yu.Didenko, 'Zhivopis' Roberta Fal'ka' in A.V. Schekin-Krotova, Moi Fal'k, p.30 ).