Sergei and Alexei Tkachyov completed ‘Daughter’ in the late 1970’s. They depicted the bride’s preparations in a village room. The young woman is adjusting her wedding dress with her sisters’ help. A slightly worried mother stands in the middle of the room in a red dress. She is the painting’s main subject. The artists have highlighted her figure with bright colors. The light streaming in from the window makes it possible to see her expression clearly. The mother looks thoughtfully at her daughter - she is worried about her future.

All of the painting’s subjects are based on real people. They painted the family of their friends from Novoye Kotchishche. Vera Paketova gave birth to thirteen children - six sons and seven daughters. She was the inspiration behind the mother in “Daughters”.

The Tkachyovs had a great deal of respect for the woman’s life. Vera Paketova was born in 1918 in the same region to a poor peasant family and became an orphan at a young age. During the period of collectivization, she was one of the first to join the local kolkhoz, called ‘the Proletarian’. A little later on, she married and raised a large friendly family.

Over more than 30 years Vera Paketova and her children, and then grandchildren, inspired the Tkachyov brothers in their creative endeavors. In this work, the artists respectfully and accurately convey the expressions of every family member: they all have an individual face and figure, a special demeanor.

The Paketov family’s women also worked on needlework: they wove lace, spun rugs, and embroidered patterns on fabrics. Rugs, pillows and bedskirts were all typical for the interior of a village house in the mid-twentieth century. A bedskirt is a traditional decoration for beds. It covers the bedframe and hangs down to the floor. Patterns with charms were often embroidered onto the bedskirt. Pillows were usually placed in a large pile on the made-up bed. The artists also included a samovar - the symbol of hospitality - in the painting. Family members and their friends would often gather around the samovar in the evening. “Folk life presents an artist with inexhaustible material to paint, ” the Tkachyov brothers say, “you only need to look at every scene and every person.”

The theme of motherhood is one of the brothers’ central themes. In many paintings, they expressed the heroism of working mothers. The artists painted portraits of their mother and Vera Paketova in ‘Mothers’, ‘Portrait of Mother’, ‘Parents’, and ‘First steps’. In ‘Daughters’, they explored the anxieties mothers have for their children, and to what extent a mother’s heart can be full of love.