Portrait of Maria Akimova. 1908 Valentin Serov (1865-1911)

Description of Valentin Serov’s painting "Portrait of Akimova

"Portrait of Akimova" was painted by Valentin Serov in 1908. It is in the National Gallery of Armenia.

The painting depicts a woman with a pale face and Armenian-type features, Maria Nikolaevna Akimova (Akimyan). She was widowed when she married; her husband, a compulsive card player and a drunkard, threw himself into the water at night and drowned. Maria Nikolayevna was left in the clawed clutches of her creditors. It was not until she married a second time that she found her happiness, as it turned out, short-lived.

The year 1908, when Akimova posed for Serov, was just that period of happiness, when all her misfortunes were already behind her, but, unfortunately, Maria Nikolaevna had very little to live for - her worries led to illness, and those gradually broke her down. Soon she died.

Serov fully felt the difficult fate of his model. The picturesqueness, contrast - talk about the fanatical passion with which the artist worked on the portrait. Showing the picture to the public at an exhibition in the Union of artists, Serov struck a chord with many of his contemporaries. All pointed out the individuality, beautifully traced features of the face, which reflect the weariness of the soul, some exhaustion.

Many art historians agree that the "Portrait of Akimova" was written at the junction of two genres - this is not realism in the conventional sense, but also not Impressionism with its flicker and contrasts. Serov really went beyond styles - and therefore wrote a masterpiece. He was followed by portraits by Martiros Saryan, Ida Rubinstein and many others. A new time was dawning in art, the twentieth century, so rich in currents of painting, was gaining momentum.