1886–1887
oil on canvas
53 х 68

V.E. Makovsky was famous primarily for his numerous genre works depicting daily life situations which also had a note of social critique. The painting was devoted to one of the most acute problems of post-Reform Russia of the 1860s – the departure of peasants from the villages to the city in search of work leading to the collapse of the traditional way of life, loss of social roots and destruction of family ties. Here we see depicted one of the Moscow boulevards. On a bench is a bored artisan with a harmonica and next to him, a woman with a child, evidently his wife who has arrived from the countryside unexpected and unneeded. A small private fact becomes a symbol of the death of the patriarchal world.

at 10, Lavrushinsky Lane, Hall 24