Girl with a pot of roses Vasily Tropinin (1776-1857)

Description of Vasily Tropinin’s painting "Girl with a Pot of Roses".

This work, dates from 1850. At that time, the fame of its author, Vasily Tropinin, a magnificent portraitist who became the founder of a new and unique genre of everyday life, was unfortunately slowly fading.

However this state of affairs only encourages the artist. He continues to write and try new things in this direction, remaining faithful to his principles of depicting people living a happy and joyful life.

"The Girl with a Pot of Roses is a masterpiece and the crowning achievement of V. Tropinin’s heights. The painting depicts a young maid immersed in the trouble of cleaning the house. The canvases in the background can be seen turned into the interior of the room, and we can assume that the artist has painted his studio. The master’s unusual use of dark colors emphasizes the luminous image of the girl, all flooded with light and painted in exquisite golden-brown tones.

The fabric of her dress has an ornate pattern, small earrings in her ears, and a thin thread of beads peeks out from under her shawl. Her pitch-black hair, though tucked into a tight bun, accentuates the roundness and softness of her face. The girl is as young and beautiful as the roses in her hands, and so these seemingly insignificant details express the coquetry and desire to show off that is inherent to any woman.

The open, straight-eyed, playfulness-tinged and confident, frozen in movement, stately figure of the maid creates a wonderful sense of dynamics in the entire painting. The dark background shades the romantic, airy image of the girl. She is like a rosebud, ready to open in all its glory. Even on such an ordinary day, doing household chores, without pompous entourage, the girl captivates and enchants with her appearance.