Portrait of Alexey Shchusev

Nesterov's 1941 portrait of Alexey Shchusev, now in the Tretyakov Gallery, commemorates one of the most significant Soviet architects at the height of his career. Shchusev had designed Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square in 1924, the Kazan railway station in Moscow, and numerous other landmark buildings; by 1941 he was the most officially celebrated architect in the Soviet Union. The portrait was made in the final year of Nesterov's life — he died in October 1942 — making it among his very last works. Despite his advanced age and the upheaval of the German invasion, which had begun in June 1941, Nesterov maintained his characteristic rigour. The portrait belongs to the series of intellectual and creative figures Nesterov depicted under Soviet rule, a strategy that allowed him to paint great individuals during a period when religious subjects were foreclosed, and it stands as a powerful summation of his late portraiture.

Oil on canvas, the late portrait displays Nesterov's most economical means: no unnecessary detail, the sitter's presence communicated through the architecture of light on the face and the authority of the gaze. The handling is slightly looser than in middle-period work but no less controlled, with Nesterov's lifetime of observational experience evident in every passage.