Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaya
Like most students of the most famous Russian realist painter, Ilya Repin, Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaya was a passionate portraitist. She herself painted many acclaimed images of Anna Akhmatova, Nikolay Gumilyov, and Dmitry Kardovsky. Based on a portrait of the artist’s daughter, Little Woman is tinged with retrospectivism. The ten-year-old model peers inquisitively at her own reflection in an old mirror. The girl is depicted in the sunlit environment of a mid-19th-century manor house, surrounded by various elegant objects—silent witnesses of the past.
For many Russians living in the early 20th century, this world was associated with the Ivan Turgenev period. It was perceived as an embodiment of a lost beauty, harmony, and humanity, subtly expressed in Andrei Bely’s Gold in Azure cycle of poems and the prose of Ivan Bunin. As in the works of the other Neo-Romantic artists of St. Petersburg, Little Woman whimsically intertwines the past and the present, admiration for the charm of youth, elegiac sorrow at the swift passage of time, and reflections on the continuity of the generations.
We present today's masterpiece thanks to the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
If you would like to learn more about Women Artists, please check our Women Artists Notebook here. : )
P.S. We think our Little Woman could be best friends with this little girl, immortalized with her dog companion by Mary Cassatt. Do you think they would get along?
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