Autumn festivities 1922

Boris Kustodiev made this bustling Autumn Festivities painting, presumably in oil, with a real eye for process, you can see the scene unfold before him, brushstroke by brushstroke. The paint in Kustodiev's painting is applied with a light touch, but the effect is anything but ephemeral. I find the details of the figures really pull me in - the way the light catches on the lady's blue dress, or how the children are simply painted as suggestions, blobs of colour and shape which animate the painting, and add so much energy to the piece. Look at the way he captures the textures of the marketplace - the hay bale, the cobblestones, the fruit. The work reminds me of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s folksy scenes. Kustodiev, like Bruegel, wasn’t interested in showing an idealised view of life, instead presenting something more democratic, which celebrates the rich tapestry of everyday experience, with all its ambiguities, and multiple interpretations.