The portrait of Vera Muromtseva, the second wife of Ivan Bunin, was created by a friend of the writer, artist Evgeny Bukovetsky in 1910. Then the Bunins lived in Odessa, and Vera Nikolaevna recalled this time like this: ‘It was pleasant to live in Odessa. We met with the artists. I… started to learn French, went to sessions with Bukovetsky – he was painting me in a velvet coat and a fur hat. … The sessions were difficult, I had to stand for a long time, but it was always interesting with Bukovetsky’.
The artist painted Muromtseva in a dark velvet coat and a matching fur hat. The brown shades prevailing in Vera Nikolaevna’s clothes and in the background space of the painting emphasize the light tone of her skin and the blue colour of her eyes, “Leonard”s”, as the writer Boris Zaitsev said. Ivan Bunin himself described his wife as follows: “Sweet, quiet, absent-mindedly thoughtful eyes of Vera gazing somewhere forward. Even something childish – this is how happy children sit when they are being driven. The smooth, charming tarnish of her face, the colour of her eyes, which can only be seen in these snowy fields”.
Evgeny Bukovetsky was a famous portrait painter and collector. He graduated from the Odessa non-classical secondary school of Saint Peter and Paul and the Drawing School of the Odessa Society of Fine Arts which art scholars call one of the best in the territory of the Russian Empire. He studied painting with Gennady Ladyzhensky and Kiriak Kostandi, after which he became a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts – just for a year – and then went on a trip to Europe, where he studied the art of Western masters.
Bukovetsky returned to Odessa in 1891. He took part in many exhibitions of the Peredvizhniks in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and was also a member of the Association of South Russian Artists, for which he developed a charter together with the painter Pyotr Nilus, another friend of Ivan Bunin.
In 1919, in his own mansion on Kniazheskaia Street, Bukovetsky opened an art studio, and later, in 1937, he was promoted to a teacher at the Odessa Art School. He often held creative evenings in his house, which were attended by Ivan Bunin and Vera Bunina, Pyotr Nilus, Kiriak Kostandi, writers Aleksei Tolstoi and Kornei Chukovsky and other figures of art and science. Bukovetsky created portraits of many of his guests, for which he was called the main portrait painter of Odessa.
The artist painted Muromtseva in a dark velvet coat and a matching fur hat. The brown shades prevailing in Vera Nikolaevna’s clothes and in the background space of the painting emphasize the light tone of her skin and the blue colour of her eyes, “Leonard”s”, as the writer Boris Zaitsev said. Ivan Bunin himself described his wife as follows: “Sweet, quiet, absent-mindedly thoughtful eyes of Vera gazing somewhere forward. Even something childish – this is how happy children sit when they are being driven. The smooth, charming tarnish of her face, the colour of her eyes, which can only be seen in these snowy fields”.
Evgeny Bukovetsky was a famous portrait painter and collector. He graduated from the Odessa non-classical secondary school of Saint Peter and Paul and the Drawing School of the Odessa Society of Fine Arts which art scholars call one of the best in the territory of the Russian Empire. He studied painting with Gennady Ladyzhensky and Kiriak Kostandi, after which he became a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts – just for a year – and then went on a trip to Europe, where he studied the art of Western masters.
Bukovetsky returned to Odessa in 1891. He took part in many exhibitions of the Peredvizhniks in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and was also a member of the Association of South Russian Artists, for which he developed a charter together with the painter Pyotr Nilus, another friend of Ivan Bunin.
In 1919, in his own mansion on Kniazheskaia Street, Bukovetsky opened an art studio, and later, in 1937, he was promoted to a teacher at the Odessa Art School. He often held creative evenings in his house, which were attended by Ivan Bunin and Vera Bunina, Pyotr Nilus, Kiriak Kostandi, writers Aleksei Tolstoi and Kornei Chukovsky and other figures of art and science. Bukovetsky created portraits of many of his guests, for which he was called the main portrait painter of Odessa.
