KONSTANTIN FEDOROVICH YUON | In the Dining Room (Portrait of the Weideman Family at Petrovskoe)

1899 marks a turning point in Yuon’s development as an artist. Recently graduated and finishing his training in the studio of Valentin Serov, he was finding his feet as an artist and searching for an aesthetic under the equal but opposing influences of the older generation of Itinerant artists and the newly formed World of Art group. He later wrote of this period ‘I felt that my place was somewhere between Moscow and St Petersburg’.

In 1899 Yuon visited his first-cousins, the Weidemans, at Petrovskoe in Tver Province, literally on the road between the two capitals. During this happy time he painted four views of the surrounding landscape, one of which Birches (Petrovskoe) was exhibited at the 28th Itinerant Art Exhibition and acquired by the famous collector Ivan Morozov, and the present lot, an intimate interior portrait of his cousins in the dining room. The Impressionistic study-like quality reveals the influence of Serov and brilliantly conveys the sense of dappled light passing through the windows and illuminating this tender family scene. The painting has been in the collection of the sitters’ family ever since.