The sketch for the painting entitled On the Escalator, shortly named Mother, was made by a Soviet painter Grigory Shegal, a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts and an author of many paintings on historical events, landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. Shegal expressed himself as a true artist of his time reflecting the values of a new man and a new country in his art.

Grigory Shegal was born in 1889, so at the moment of changing of the political system he was a grown man. Shegal accepted the spirit and the challenge of new reality and became an active participant of the art life. His works were the kaleidoscope of faces and images showing our fellow countrymen as well as the main events in the social and economic life (On to the Technique Mastering, At the Book, The Portrait of the Engine Driver, and others).

The portrait sketch Mother from the collection of the Kurgan Regional Art Museum was painted one year before the start of the Great Patriotic War and it shows the image of a young ruddy woman holding a baby in her hands. She’s absorbed in her thoughts and doesn’t get distracted. The sketch was painted by the artist while working on the canvas entitled On the Escalator of Moscow Metro created in 1941-1943. At the moment the painting is in the collection of the Art Museum of Altai.

Construction of the Moscow metro was a remarkable event in the capital’s life. The metro wasn’t just a new transport system, it was supposed to demonstrate the whole beauty and festivity of the Soviet reality. According to the author’s idea, the people of different ages and social classes of the Soviet society (young people, children and old people, soldiers and students, intellectuals and villagers) were supposed to appear in the painting going up and down at the escalator.

The mother’s image also corresponded to the author’s idea about the variety of the Soviet people. In the list of Shegal’s works given in the Sofya Razumovskaya’s monograph this sketch is entitled Mother (Bashkir Woman ot the Escalator). The woman shown in the sketch indeed has distinctive Eastern facial features. It’s remarkable that it’s the image of a mother with a child which is the central one in the painting. The artist slightly changed the angle and visually enlarged the blanket covering the baby. In terms of colour it’s the lightest place in the painting. The viewer’s attention immediately gets drawn to this very image. The artist’s choice was therefore not accidental.

Shegal was working on this painting during the war time. The painting rich with people’s feelings and emotions gives a main idea (placed in doubt by the war) about the value of human life. This work is one of the most expressive images of mothers in the whole collection of the Kurgan museum.