Author: Grabar, I.E. (1871 - 1960)

Title: At the Samovar

Date: 1905

Media: Oil on canvas

Size: 80 х 80 cm

 Provenance: Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia 
 
 Accession number: # 22541

Subject: Grabar - Indoor tea-drinking – Samovar- Portrait – Still life – Impressionism

 
 
At the table covered with table-cloth is a paunchy copper samovar surrounded by glasses, cups, and jam saucers.Sense of warmth and quiet coziness of twilight is created by punky coals in the samovar. The artist used to live for a long time at the estate of his friend N.V.Mescherin. The girl at the evening tea-drinking, his niece, is a future wife of the artist. Grabar wrote about the life style in the house," ... a samovar in Dugino has never left the table - either in the day or at night. For the night samovar has been wrapped into quilted blankets and  woolen clothes in order to keep water hot till next morning".

Author: Korovin, K. A. (1861-1932)

Title: At the Tea-Table

Date: 1888

Media: Oil on canvas

Size: 48,5 х 60,5 cm

Provenance: The Museum Estate of V.D.Polenov, Tula Region, Russia

Accession number:

Subject: Korovin - Outdoor tea-drinking – Social gathering - Samovar- Group portrait - Gentry - Still life - Impressionism

Afternoon tea of close friends at dacha of the artist V.D. Polenov. It is a widespread tradition of having tea at a terrace of a country house during a summer time. The painting conveys warmth of friendship, poetry of sensible human being, modest steady private life full of intellectual interests, and harmony of everyday being. Still life on the table with the samovar in the center creates a sense of unity. The samovar sparkles with greenish and golden reflections and determines emotional atmosphere of the moment.

Author: Kustodiev, B.K. (1878-1927)

Title: The Merchant’s wife on the Balcony

Date: 1918

Media: Oil on canvas

Size: 120 x 120 cm

Provenance: The State Russian Museum, St.-Petersburg, Russia

Accession number:

Subject: Kustodiev - Outdoor tea-drinking – Samovar- Merchant - Portrait - Still life – Landscape - Folk painting

Peace and comfort are associated with Russian tea-drinking ceremony. Expensive samovar, a teapot of highly glazed pottery, painted with gold, the same kind of cup, the tableappointments, - everything says, that on the picture is a wealthy woman. She is beautiful, pink-cheeked, and stout. She drinks tea in a merchants’ style – from the saucer. Insouciance and peace of tea-drinking time are emphasized with blue sky behind the terrace. Nothing implies that it is time of Revolution with its stormy events.

Author: Makowsky, K. E. (1859-1915)

Title: Alekseich

Date: 1881-1882

Media: Oil on canvas

Size: 93.5 x 60 см

Provenance: Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

Accession number:

Subject: Makowskiy - Indoor tea-drinking – Samovar- Portrait - Still life – Realism

The man on the picture is an old servant of the artist. Image of the modest, kindhearted old man is opened up in quiet happiness, which fills his anticipation of peaceful solitary tea-drinking. Boiling samovar with a teapot cozily placed on the top, a heel of fresh bread, and a raspberry jam in a tightly wrapped glass jar, a box with tea and sugar carefully covered with a cloth – in all that there is feeling of warmth and grace so precious for an unpretentious man.

Author: Kurdov, V.I. (1905- )

Title: A Copper Samovar

Date: 1926-1927

Media: Oil on canvas

Size: 76 x 56 cm

Provenance: The State Russian Museum, St.-Petersburg, Russia

Accession number:

Subject: Kurdov - Samovar- Still life – Avant-Garde

Samovar had become a cherished focal point of the Russian household and was the centerpiece of any social gathering. Samovar played the role of “a silent interlocutor”. It is kind because of its shape - big and rounded. It lets out puffs and gurgles with boiling water. Samovar reflects in its sides people and things it surrounded with and thus, it gives to everything around the feeling of something unreal.

Author: Petrov-Vodkin, K.S. 1878-1939

Title: At the Samovar

Date: 1926

Media: Oil on canvas

Size: 81,2 x 65 cm

Provenance: The State Russian Museum, St.-Petersburg, Russia

Accession number:

Subject: Petrov-Vodkin - Indoor tea-drinking – Samovar- Family – Portrait - Interior – Still life – Avant-Garde

A family of working class becomes a purified ideal for the artist. Laborers are yesterday’s peasants. They inherited the same spirituality and combination of chastity and vitality. The artist thought about a family with his “planetary” categories. In this scene a family is a model of the universe. In the center of it there is samovar with all its symbolical connotations. China and simple glass on the tea table speak of reconciliation and co-existence of different social values.