Female Portrait 1878

This is Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky’s oil painting of a ‘Female Portrait’. The dark background throws into sharp relief the pale skin, the soft frills, and the gentle face, with an almost photographic clarity of the sitter. Makovsky’s work, though celebrated in its time, fell out of favour towards the end of the 19th century, with its emphasis on light and a seemingly idealized representation of the sitter, and what some would say is a lack of psychological depth. However, the soft brushwork and the almost sentimental emphasis on beauty, can be re-evaluated through the lens of formalism. We can focus on the interplay of light and shadow and the subtle texture of the piece to re-imagine the artist's intent, and ask ourselves, did Makovsky wish to show us the sitter's inner emotional state, or rather, her ideal of the self, as represented through the very materiality of paint?