Abram Arkhipov (1862-1930)

Born into a peasant family in the province of Ryazan, Abram Arkhipov's artistic ability was encouraged at an early age. Between 1877 and 1888, the artist studied intermittently at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Vasilii Perov and Vasilii Polenov. Although he was also a student at the St Petersburg Academy of the Arts between 1884 and 1886, Arkhipov soon became dissatisfied with the Academy's system of teaching and returned to Moscow, where he would later spend many years as an instructor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

Throughout his lifetime, Arkhipov's works were widely exhibited both in Russia and abroad. He joined the Peredvizhniki, an exhibiting society of Russian artists committed to art's potential to serve a social function, and later exhibited his work with the Union of Russian Artists and the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR).
During the 1910s and 1920s, Arkhipov primarily focused his talents on depicting Russian peasant men and women of the Ryazan Gubernia and the Nizhny Novgorod region. In his paintings from this period, the artist frequently animated his subjects with sweeping, loose brushwork and a vibrant palette of reds and pinks.

Arkhipov painted many peasant scenes, but the present portrait of a Russian peasant woman is among his most impressive works. This portrait of a young woman bathed in sunshine reveals the artist's interest in the effects of light and the vibrant colors of the traditional Russian costume. Similar to other works by Arkhipov from the 1910s and 1920s, including At the Market (fig. 1) and Russian Peasant Woman drinking tea (fig. 2), the present painting reveals Arkhipov's enchanting optimism and his ability to capture the energy of his sitters with his thick impasto and lively brushstrokes.