Russian Peasant Woman 1923

Boris Grigoriev made this painting, Russian Peasant Woman, sometime in the early 20th century. It's a painting about process, I think, about how to build up a face, a body, and a whole landscape from the earth. The materiality of this piece feels really important; the way that the orange and brown tones are dragged across the canvas, thin in some places and thick in others. You can see the mark of the brush, the texture of the paint, particularly in the woman's face. Look at the lines around her eyes and mouth: they are not just descriptive, they're almost like topographic maps, each ridge and valley revealing something about her life, her labor. And then, that gaze. It's so direct, unflinching. It reminds me of some of Paula Modersohn-Becker's peasant paintings, that same earthy honesty, that refusal to romanticize rural life. Ultimately, this painting is less about a specific woman and more about the universal experience of work, resilience, and the deep connection between people and the land. It invites us to consider our own relationship to the earth and to each other.