Robert Rafailovich Falk

Robert Falk and his wife, Angelina Shchekin-Krotova, would often spend the summer months in the town of Khotkovo, 60 kilometres northeast of Moscow. This small provincial town, near the artistic retreat of Abramtsevo, provided a peaceful respite for the artist where he spent much of his time capturing the beauty of the area in several works.

From all the landscapes painted in Khotkovo, Falk was particularly enthusiastic about the present work which he painted while ‘standing under a fine drizzle, giving the landscape a romantic uncertainty and dreamy haze’ (A.Shchekin-Krotova quoted in Zhivopis' Roberta Fal'ka, Moscow, 2006, p.699). Falk depicted his wife sitting in a chair on a path near the house which the couple were renting in the summer of 1946. His wife recalled that '...the house itself, the former house of the priest with beautiful log walls, was surrounded by an old garden and looked gloomy in the shade of the century-old lindens' (Ibid.). However, due to the unseasonally cold weather, Angelina fell ill and could no longer pose in a light dress, which prevented the artist from completing the painting.