Family portrait (in. AND. and a. With. Malosins with a child?)

The artist is Borovikovsky

Malsin Vasily Alexandrovich (1744-1803) – Ryazan landowner. Was married to a.With. Muromtseva. From 1787 to 1790 Moscow vice-governor. Was in friendly relations with d.P. Troshchinsky, writer n.M. Karamzin, poet g.R. Derzhavin. Played a positive role in the protection of g.R. Derzhavin from slanderous accusations of abuse of power during the period of being on the post of the Tambov governor.

Malsina Avdotya Silvestrovna (nee. Muromtseva; OK. 1763 – after 1816) – daughter of the Ryazan landowner with.AT. Muromtseva, spouse in.AND. Malosin.

In the Catalog 1980 dated 1790 (1). Dates from the end of the 1790s on the cover of the dress and the shape of the hairstyle depicted.
In connection with a change in the dating of the portrait, doubts arise in the correctness of the previously accepted definition of the depicted, since in the year of writing the portrait in.AND. Malsin was about 56 years old, and his wife is about 37, which does not correspond to the age of the models.
A miniature copy mounted in the lid of the snuffboxes in the 1920s-private collection (Ryazan).

At the end of the XVIII century, with the spread of Russo’s ideas, the type of family portrait against the background of the landscape became popular. Granted by the nobility of “liberties” allowed the aristocracy to lead a predominantly rural, manor lifestyle away from the capital’s service bustle. Life in the bosom of nature surrounded by family and devoted slaves seemed close to the Russo -vocabulary ideal of natural existence. The principles of sentimentalism: the superiority of intuition, feelings over logic and reason, preference for the direct expression of natural emotions to formal etiquette, rejection of heroic, volitional beginning in favor of contemplation, “dissolution in the landscape” of submission to the natural course of things, and were reflected in the images of the family in the portrait. The models of Vladimir Borovikovsky are not shy about the bodily expression of feelings: the children’s heads are pouring to their parents, the figures are inclined to each other, they are weaved with their hands. The tenderness of people’s relations echoes nature: animals, flowers, haze of fogs. Lyubov Shakirova. Family album of the Russian Museum // Portrait of Family. SPb, 2014. With. 7.