Merchant wife at tea by B.Kustodiev

The Merchant's Wife Drinking Tea is an oil painting by Boris Kustodiev, dated 1918 and painted in the summer of that year, when the artist, confined to a wheelchair, was living through the hardships of post-revolutionary Petrograd. The work belongs to a theme that had occupied him for some time: provincial merchant life, with its terraces, promenades and everyday rituals, which Kustodiev portrays with a mixture of admiration and irony. Here the focus is a generously built woman seated on a wooden balcony, holding a porcelain saucer delicately as she sips her tea. That gesture, with the little finger raised, recalls a custom born in France that reached Russia through the education of the elites. The model, a neighbour of the painter, embodies the ideal of popular beauty he admired in art, though it did not match his personal tastes. Beside her, a cat rubs against her shoulder, and its round face seems to echo, with a touch of humour, the features of its mistress. The palette of violets, pinks and blues, with luminous skin, conveys a sense of abundance that contrasts with the era in which it was painted.

Painter

Boris Kustodiev

Date

1918

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

120 × 120 cm

Museum

Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg

Depicts

cat

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