Behind the toilet. Self-portrait Zinaida Serebryakova (1884-1967)

Description of the painting "Self-Portrait" by Zinaida Serebryakova

The painting was created in the winter of 1909 on the small estate of Neskuchnoe. The artist Zinaida Serebryakova was then 25 years old. She was waiting for her husband, who was going to pick her and the children up on his way back from Northern Siberia.

Christmas planned to meet in St. Petersburg. That morning was blindingly sunny and frosty. The happy young woman woke up in her sun-drenched room, stood up and went to the mirror, just smiling at her lovely reflection, began brushing her hair.

An unpretentious plot, cute feminine knickknacks on the table in front of the mirror frame - vials, spokes, a candle reflected in the mirror, the simple interior of the rustic room behind her. A slender, beautiful, barely concealed female body, the strap of her nightgown flirtatiously pulled down from her left shoulder, a silver bracelet on the wrist of her right hand, which holds her lush, long, dark hair. In her left hand is a comb. The picture is full of sunlight and clean air.

The look of black, mischievous, happy eyes attracts attention, is the dominant accent of the picture. One wants to gaze long and intently into these beautiful eyes, so lively, filled with the joy of life, the energy of youth and deep soulfulness. In the raised curve of black eyebrows, in the half-smile of bright, juicy lips, in the playful turn of the head reads simple human happiness, for which you do not need much.

"Self-portrait" and now is an exhibit of the Tretyakov Gallery, and for Zinaida Evgenievna himself it remained a memory of those wonderful, filled with genuine feeling days, which irrevocably passed into the past. Only 10 years later Serebryakova, having buried her husband, will bring up her four children by herself, take care of her ill mother, but she will not stop creating. Her paintings impress with the depth of meaning and freshness of external charm. The artist’s "Self-Portrait" is rightly considered the best.