Stepan Fedorovitch Kolesnikoff

Ukraine 1879 – 1955
The Fishermen
Mixed media on paper
38 x 55 cm, with frame 46,6 x 63,5 cm
Signed & dated 1921 lower right

The Ukrainian artist Stepan Fedorovitch Kolesnikoff was an important painter of Realism who worked primarily in Serbia. His gouache works, in which he favoured depicting local genre scenes, are particularly well known.

In a light-coloured setting, two fishermen in the foreground are handling a large fishing net, which they are pulling out of the water. On the left is another male figure, who is also holding a net in his hand and is presumably trying to untangle it for their next fishing expedition; next to him hang lengths of net on a wooden frame. A rocky beach landscape with surrounding water can be seen in the middle ground; a mountain landscape against a cloudy sky is visible in the background.

Kolesnikoff rarely showed the character faces of the sitters, for example in the seated figure turning away on the left-hand side. However, this work is interesting in that the faces of the two standing fishermen are revealed, from which one can clearly read the effort of the feat of strength. The groups of figures also form an exciting contrast in the dynamic, representative activity and the rather passive turning away from the viewer. The painter also liked to use the colours blue and orange, whereby the blue colour dominates here – not only in the water and the mountain peaks, but also in the fishermen’s hair and clothing in an expressionist manner – and the orange can be seen in flashing accents.