Grigory Grigorievich Myasoedov

Grigory Myasoedov was one of the principal organisers behind the Peredvizhniki exhibitions. A regular participant, his listed works exhibited in the 1870s include portraits of peasants and old men, who also form the subject of his most famous work, Zemstvo obedaet (1872, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). The present work compares closely with his 1879 portrait of a bearded peasant, Muzhik s lomom (Lesnik), (see I.Shuvalova, Grigory Myasoedov, Leningrad, 1971).

Myasoedov travelled widely in Western Europe in the 1860s and 1870s and spent a long period in Italy, where he became friends with Nikolai Ge and Alexander Herzen, whom he met in Florence. The present work is an exceptional work by an artist whose paintings a rarely found outside museum collections; the red signature and a palette which recalls Rembrandt’s work is characteristic of his portraits.