Porträt des A.I. Abrikosov

The Portrait of A.I. Abrikosov (1895), at the State Historical Museum in Moscow, depicts a member of the Abrikosov merchant dynasty — one of the most prominent commercial families in late nineteenth-century Russia, founders of a confectionery empire that became one of Russia's largest industrial concerns. The Abrikosovs were significant patrons of art and culture, collectors in the Tretyakov tradition, and participants in the modernizing commercial culture of Moscow's merchant class. Serov was the preeminent portrait painter of the Russian plutocracy and intelligentsia in the 1890s and 1900s, and commissions from wealthy merchant families like the Abrikosovs formed a significant part of his professional life. His portraits of merchants and industrialists are notable for treating their subjects with the same psychological seriousness he brought to aristocratic and artistic sitters — in the tradition of his teacher Ilya Repin, who believed in the equal human dignity of all social classes. The State Historical Museum's holding of the work reflects its documentary value for the social history of Moscow's mercantile culture.

Oil on canvas in Serov's mature portrait style: a confident integration of loose background handling with more precise modeling in the face. His palette in merchant portraits tends toward the warm, dark tones appropriate to the domestic interiors in which such commissions were made. The sitter's bearing and dress are rendered with the social observation that makes Serov's portraits sociological documents as well as likenesses.