Portrait of a Boy 1910

Zinaida Serebriakova made this portrait of a boy, maybe her son, with brushes and paint. I can imagine her, standing back to observe the face, making a quick stroke to capture a certain something. This is a loose, quick kind of painting, isn’t it? It's like Serebriakova wants to get the gesture just right, like that long stroke of brown that runs from the shoulder all the way down, suggesting weight and form without filling it in. She is really economical here. I wonder what she was thinking, what was the light like in the room? Did the boy get bored? I bet Serebriakova was looking at other painters, too, all painters do! She must have been in dialogue with a bunch of portrait painters and thinking about how to capture a likeness, the feeling of a person. Artists are always having a conversation, borrowing and riffing off each other’s ideas! This painting is part of that big, ongoing exchange.