Laundresses
Tkachev, Sergey and Aleksey
b.1922, b.1925
Laundresses
Oil on Canvas
120 x 165.5 cm
1957
Signed lower right and further inscribed and dated A.P. Tkachev/ S.P. Tkachev/“Laundresses”/1957/120x165.5 on reverse
PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly from artists.
EXHIBITED:
“About the Motherland” 15 April – 7 August 2011 The State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow
Laundresses is a key work by the renowned Russian painters, brothers Aleksey and Sergey Tkachev. Born in 1922 and 1925,they bothgraduated from the Surikov Moscow State Institute of Art (1951 and 1952) and soon found aunique artistic voice. Laundresses,one of Tkachevs’early works, was painted at Academic Dacha in the Tver region.
Founded as a charity for low-income artists in 1884,Academic Dacha became a creative studio under open skies for generations of Russian artists. Poetic beauty of local landscapes, the river Msta and the lake Mstinskoye, villages and their inhabitants served as sources of artistic inspiration.Here, around the time of the creation of Laundresses the younger brother Aleksey met his future wife Lidia. She lived in anearby village and satfor the preparatory sketches.
A. Tkachev. Sketch for Laundresses.
Lidka, 1956,artists’ collection.
Throughout their career the Tkachev brothers documented village life in all its variety and mesmerising simplicity. They meticulously recorded seasonal activities from ploughing and haymaking to harvesting and fishing, and observed lives of their neighbour villagers from birth and childhood to marriage and raising children. Russian countrywomen, whom the artists admired for their natural beauty, strength, and agility, occupied a central role in the Tkachevs’ works. Laundresses is a perfect example of the Tkachevs' portrayal of women tackling their everyday hard chores with grace and fluidity accompanied by laughter and song.
The painting shows women washing clothes in a river on a warm summer day. The group is standing on a wooden jetty bending over their washbowls. Children are swimming and splashing in the water in the background. The mundane task here becomes a joyful social event and two women smile broadly at the viewer. Strong, nimblefigures move cohesively and with precision. Beams of sunlight reflect from the water, naked shoulders and calves. Painted freely with large brushstrokes this canvas,full of fresh air and glittering colour,isRussian impressionism at its best.
Washing up and drying fresh laundry is a frequent subject in the art of 1950s-60s,representing a post-war evocation of youth, health, and rejuvenation. While it offers the artist a subtle way to explore female eroticism, it also symbolisespurity and underscores woman’s special statusas caring mother and wife. On the same theme, the famous painting Fresh Day(1958)by the Tkachevs’close friend and creative rival Vladimir Gavrilov was most likely inspired by Laundresses directly.
V. GavrilovFresh Day,1958.The State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow.
A. & S. Tkachevs. Sketch for Laundresses, artists’ collection
Laundresses belongs to the period when the Tkachevs mostly worked en plŠµinair, creating numerous sketches of figures in groups and individual portraits from life.The artists strove to convey the scene with utmost precision and to keep the freshness of initial observation.They reworked the composition severaltimes and produced a number of variants of this painting. (Laundresses). One of these is now in Kiev’s National Museum of Russian Art and another is in the artists’ museum in their hometown Bryansk. The present version was most recently shown at theTkachevs’retrospective exhibition at theState Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow in 2011.
A. & S. Tkachevs.Laundresses – Kiev National Museum of Russian Art
