Merchant's Wife with Purchases 1920

Boris Kustodiev painted ‘Merchant's Wife with Purchases’, sometime before his death in 1927, we don’t know exactly when. There’s something so charming about how the artist goes about laying down these simple marks, the almost carelessly applied spots of colour, the textures which are built up from visible strokes of the brush. The colour palette is equally delightful, with its mixture of bright pinks and greens, the lavender sky, which make the work so visually appealing. What do you think about the green roof of the shopping arcade in the background? It’s a simple shape, but Kustodiev uses it as a vehicle to explore what the colour green can do. Then there’s the pink of the merchant's wife dress, which is so vibrant it almost vibrates, a colour which, depending on your mood, is either gaudy or full of life. You could compare Kustodiev to Henri Rousseau, another painter who found ways of rendering the world which were both simple and sophisticated at the same time. Making art is all about finding new ways to see, and it's up to us to embrace the ambiguity.