the merchant's wife...and cat

public domain

Everything here is round and bright: the fruit, the cake, the samovar probably full of piping hot tea, the woman enjoying this bounty - and the cat, whose face shows every expectation of sharing soon to be fulfilled. I can't help but think all this plenitude is a neat trick to pull off in revolutionary Russia. This is Boris Kustodiev's (Russian, 1878 - 1927) 1918 portrait of The Merchant's Wife, full of color and a gentle wry look at his subject. Meticulously rendered, the artist's pleasure in its creation still shines through.

This is all the more delightful when you realize this work was created two years after tuberculosis of the spine paralyzed his legs and confined him to a wheelchair, and years after the onset of the illness had left one arm in great pain. Even so, he loved and lived to work, and seems to have been a man of cheerful and affectionate spirit. This biography page has some facts and photos (scroll way down, though).