L'Enlèvement de la mariée

In the summer of 1908 Nicolai Fechin, a final-year student at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg, travelled out to the Mari villages near his home city of Kazan to gather material for a large picture. The Mari, then called the Cheremis, were one of the peoples of the Volga region, and Fechin watched their wedding customs firsthand in the village of Lipsha. This is the result: the moment the bride is carried off, painted with his slashing, thickly loaded brushwork. Back at the Academy it won first prize at the annual exhibition and helped earn him a travelling scholarship abroad. Fechin later emigrated to the United States and settled in Taos, New Mexico, far from the Volga villages where he first made his name.