For half a century of his creative activity, Sergey Malyutin was a painter and book illustrator, architect and theater decorator, creator of interior sketches and utilitarian works — armchairs, chests, coffers, which were carried out under his leadership by artisans in Talashkino, the estate of Princess M.K. Tenisheva.
However, the true vocation of the master turned out to be a portrait, which is the most important part of his artistic heritage and provides him with the glory of a talented successor of Russian realistic painting. The invitation to head the portrait-landscape class of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1909 contributed to the artist’s appeal to the human person as such, to create memorable images of his contemporaries. Malyutin left many portraits; the models are captured in them with invariable warmth and attention, but at the same time with utmost honesty and objectivity of the author’s look. He continued to create a gallery of ‘the best Russian people’, initiated by P. Tretyakov. The famous artists M. Nesterov, A. Vasnetsov, K. Yuon, poets and writers V. Bryusov, V. Veresaev, N. Teleshov posed for Malyutin, and each time amazing accuracy, vivid personality and sharp character of the image were achieved only by painting itself.
‘Portrait of a son’, created by Malyutin in 1912, is among his first works in this genre. The painting remarkably expresses the artist’s sincere interest in the personality of a teenage boy and his sensitive eye on the movement of his spiritual life. The compositional solution of the portrait is based on the expressiveness of a single generalized silhouette. The painting is devoid of multicolor richness of the palette and coloristic effects: mean and restrained in color dark crimson background and a figure in a black coat and gray scarf form a single tonal coherence, a common dull palette, where the lightest and most intense spot is the boy’s focused, somewhat tense face. He carefully and earnestly looks solemnly at the artist. In this inquiring glance both the inner work of thought and future fate are read — Mikhail Malyutin, like his father, will become a famous portrait painter in the future.
However, the true vocation of the master turned out to be a portrait, which is the most important part of his artistic heritage and provides him with the glory of a talented successor of Russian realistic painting. The invitation to head the portrait-landscape class of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1909 contributed to the artist’s appeal to the human person as such, to create memorable images of his contemporaries. Malyutin left many portraits; the models are captured in them with invariable warmth and attention, but at the same time with utmost honesty and objectivity of the author’s look. He continued to create a gallery of ‘the best Russian people’, initiated by P. Tretyakov. The famous artists M. Nesterov, A. Vasnetsov, K. Yuon, poets and writers V. Bryusov, V. Veresaev, N. Teleshov posed for Malyutin, and each time amazing accuracy, vivid personality and sharp character of the image were achieved only by painting itself.
‘Portrait of a son’, created by Malyutin in 1912, is among his first works in this genre. The painting remarkably expresses the artist’s sincere interest in the personality of a teenage boy and his sensitive eye on the movement of his spiritual life. The compositional solution of the portrait is based on the expressiveness of a single generalized silhouette. The painting is devoid of multicolor richness of the palette and coloristic effects: mean and restrained in color dark crimson background and a figure in a black coat and gray scarf form a single tonal coherence, a common dull palette, where the lightest and most intense spot is the boy’s focused, somewhat tense face. He carefully and earnestly looks solemnly at the artist. In this inquiring glance both the inner work of thought and future fate are read — Mikhail Malyutin, like his father, will become a famous portrait painter in the future.
