Petr Petrovich Sokolov (1821–1899) Peasant And Horseman. Watercolour On Paper.

Pyotr Petrovich Sokolov (1821–1899) was one of the most eminent masters of 19th-century Russian realist watercolour painting. Coming from a famous dynasty of artists (he was the son of the portrait painter Pyotr Fedorovich Sokolov and the nephew of Karl Briullov), he chose to move away from rigid academic conventions to devote himself to the vivid and sincere depiction of Russian rural life.

Painted in 1869, this work is characteristic of his mature period. In it, Sokolov displays the full extent of his technical virtuosity in watercolour, enhanced by pencil lines of great anatomical precision. The artist excels in the art of capturing the immediacy of a genre scene: the rider’s composure as he controls his mount, the natural postures of the peasants engaged in conversation, and the hazy dust of the steppe or the path in the background.

His works, which beautifully depict Cossack life, hunting scenes and everyday life in the Russian countryside, enjoyed immense success during his lifetime. They were notably popularised by his illustrations for the stories of Ivan Turgenev (Memoirs of a Hunter) and Nikolai Nekrasov. This watercolour is a refined and sophisticated example of the realist movement in Russian painting of the second half of the 19th century.