Provenance
Private collection, UK
Winter Palace Gallery, London
In Russian Attire, 1916, Murom Museum of History and Art
Kulikov painted his wife quite a few times in various roles: as a good looking peasant girl (By the Gate, 1913, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), an urban woman (Cheremukha, 1912, Murom Museum of History and Art) and a Russian boyar woman wearing a headdress decorated with pearls and a resplendent outfit with precious stones (In Russian Attire, 1916, Murom Museum of History and Art).
Kulikov, a devoted pupil and follower of Ilya Repin, was a wonderful portrait painter. Having enjoyed a successful early career, by the early 1910’s he had already begun to revise the creative principles of his predecessors. Along with Boris Kustodiev and Filipp Maliavin, he was one of a few artists who chose Russian provincial life as his main subject matter. In his mature works, he managed to fuse the images of national Romanticism movement with almost impressionistic treatment colour.
Works by Ivan Kulikov are in many museum collections, including the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, the Murom Museum of History and Art and others.
