Konstantin Makovsky was an accomplished Academic painter of fin-de-siècle Russia. He painted Classical subjects, like the Judgement of Paris, and official portraits of the Tsars Alexander II and Nicholas II. But he also produced interesting, folklorish depictions of life among the peasants and the old Boyar nobility.
Pictured above is the 1905 painting Christmastide Divination which portrays young girls watching a rooster peck at scattered grain, which they hope will portend a marriage in the coming year, a type of fortune telling called alectryomancy. Below is Makovsky’s most famous work, A Boyar Wedding Feast, which won a gold medal at the 1885 World’s Fair in Antwerp.
Nick Louras 