Bildnis Schaljapins

Kustodiev painted this in Petrograd in 1921, as Russia came out of civil war and famine. By then his own body had failed him. A tumour on the spine had left him unable to walk, and he worked strapped into a wheelchair with the tall canvas tilted almost horizontal above his head, reaching up to paint. His subject is Fyodor Chaliapin, the most famous opera bass in the world, shown in an enormous fur coat, cane in hand, his little dog at his feet, rising over a bright winter fair with the swings and booths of the Maslenitsa festival behind him. The next year Chaliapin left Soviet Russia for good, and took the large version of this portrait with him.