old woman with a horse. 1898 Valentin Serov (1865-1911)

Description of Valentin Serov’s painting "Baba with a Horse".

Rustic Russia is one of Serov’s favorite subjects in his work. Who better than Serov to accurately reproduce the everyday life of the peasantry, to show the toil of the peasants. The artist is not drawn to the reproduction of the stressed squalor of the village or embellished nature: he looked at the village from the perspective of a realist. But Serov’s rustic paintings are full of tenderness and cordiality, such as Baba and a Horse in 1889.

In the center of the painting is a young Russian girl with cheeks red from frost and a perky smile. She is holding on to the bridle of her horse, which has become noticeably overgrown, and her mane is falling down over her eyes.

Serov painted the picture in a real freezing cold. It’s impossible to work with oil paints in such weather - Serov made the decision to put the paints aside and take up pastel. As the artist said, he wanted to reflect in the picture a joyful feeling of Russian frost, which strongly rouge the cheeks, and makes the horse clinging to his mistress.

Serov did not paint the picture alone: at the beginning of the work he was surrounded by peasants. Only a few strokes were enough for the peasants to start shouting out the names of what they saw on the pastel: the nose, lips, kerchief. The villagers watched the artist’s work to the very end and marveled at Serov’s mastery of drawing. It seemed, enough to take a pencil, to also realistically portray the environment. Serov has more than once admitted that it is not the critics who make him proud of his work, but the peasants and their approval.

Several decades have passed, but Serov’s Baba with a Horse still reflects the truthfulness of village life in a frosty Russian winter.