Inconsolable Grief

Kramskoi worked at this canvas on and off for about four years, and in that stretch he buried two of his young sons. The woman in black is not a stranger he posed. He gave her the face of his wife, Sofya. Look how little happens here: no coffin, no body, no relatives wringing their hands, just a mother standing still beside a wreath, pressing a handkerchief to her mouth, her eyes swollen. When it was finished Kramskoi felt he had put too much of his own house into it, and he offered the picture to the collector Pavel Tretyakov as a gift. Tretyakov would not take it for nothing. He paid for it, and hung it.