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The Russian Bride's Attire

1889

Radio journalist Hana Baba and Russian culture specialist Galina Epifanova on “The Russian Bride’s Attire"
Gallery 17

Narrator: Dressed in white, this Russian bride is surrounded by family as her hair is brushed out in preparation for her wedding. She will wear two braids around her head, covered by a headdress – never again the single braid of the unmarried girl. She looks down, perhaps at her sister, with emotion. Here’s Galina Epifanova:
Epifanova: I'm a specialist of Russian culture and Russian philosophy.
The bride is sad, since she will never return to her family. And she doesn't know what her life will be like now - and most often, she didn't know her groom, because the marriage was arranged by her parents.
Narrator: The painting was made by Konstantin Makovsky in 1889. It sets the scene in a Boyar, or noble, household, two hundred years earlier.
Epifanova: This part of the house was intended only for women and small children up to seven years old.
Narrator: As well as dressing the bride, an important ritual was the singing of wedding laments - a farewell to freedom. Here are some words from one traditional song:
Epifanova: My dear mother, have pity on me, mother, as you used to. I don't want to get married - after all, I'm still so young.
Narrator: Makovsky creates a sense of colorful magnificence and history with the women’s costumes and ceremonial headdresses, or kokoshniks. But actually there’s some artistic license here. The headdresses, with their many shapes, were from different Russian regions and wouldn’t have been worn by a single family. And a bride of the 1600s wore red or gold – white was for burial shrouds. But by the late nineteenth century, white had become fashionable for brides in Russia as well as the west, where Makovsky exhibited the painting to great acclaim.

One of
three monumental canvases by Konstantin Makovsky that imagine an imperial
wedding in seventeenth-century Russia, this scene depicts a bride preparing to
marry the tsar. In a ritual signifying her new marital status, the bride’s
mother double-braids her daughter’s hair as attendants look on. Catering to a
Western fascination with “exotic” Russian subjects, Makovsky exhibited this
work at the Paris Salon in 1891 before shipping it across the Atlantic. It
appeared in the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the 1894 Midwinter Fair
in San Francisco, and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. M.
H. de Young acquired it in 1916.

Radio journalist Hana Baba and Russian culture specialist Galina Epifanova on “The Russian Bride’s Attire"
Gallery 17

Narrator: Dressed in white, this Russian bride is surrounded by family as her hair is brushed out in preparation for her wedding. She will wear two braids around her head, covered by a headdress – never again the single braid of the unmarried girl. She looks down, perhaps at her sister, with emotion. Here’s Galina Epifanova:
Epifanova: I'm a specialist of Russian culture and Russian philosophy.
The bride is sad, since she will never return to her family. And she doesn't know what her life will be like now - and most often, she didn't know her groom, because the marriage was arranged by her parents.
Narrator: The painting was made by Konstantin Makovsky in 1889. It sets the scene in a Boyar, or noble, household, two hundred years earlier.
Epifanova: This part of the house was intended only for women and small children up to seven years old.
Narrator: As well as dressing the bride, an important ritual was the singing of wedding laments - a farewell to freedom. Here are some words from one traditional song:
Epifanova: My dear mother, have pity on me, mother, as you used to. I don't want to get married - after all, I'm still so young.
Narrator: Makovsky creates a sense of colorful magnificence and history with the women’s costumes and ceremonial headdresses, or kokoshniks. But actually there’s some artistic license here. The headdresses, with their many shapes, were from different Russian regions and wouldn’t have been worn by a single family. And a bride of the 1600s wore red or gold – white was for burial shrouds. But by the late nineteenth century, white had become fashionable for brides in Russia as well as the west, where Makovsky exhibited the painting to great acclaim.

Artist: Konstantin Makovsky (1839–1915)
Title: The Russian Bride's Attire
Date: 1889
Object Type: Painting
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 110 x 147 in. (279.4 x 373.4 cm)
Credit Line: Bequest of M.H. de Young
Accession Number: 53161

The artist
[Consigned to Edward Mikhailovich Grundwalt, St. Louis, Missouri, ca. 1903] [1]
[Transferred, by Grundwalt, to New York, New York, 1905]
Taken into custody by the U.S. Bureau of Customs, New York, 1906 [2]
[Transferred from Grundwalt to Henry I. Kowalsky, 17 March 1906] [3]
[Transferred, by Kowalsky, to warehouse in Toronto, Canada, April 1908]
[Transferred, by Kowalsky, to a warehouse in Oakland and consigned to Richard Partington, California, 1910] [4]
Seized by San Francisco Collector of Customs, 1910 [5]
Sold, by the Treasury Department, United States of America, through public auction, San Francisco, 5 February 1912
[Purchased by Frank Havens, San Francisco]
Sold to M.H. de Young (1849-1925), San Francisco, ca. 1916
Bequest to the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1926
Administrative transfer to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1972
Paris, Palais des Champs–Elysées, 1891. “Salon de 1891,” no. 1105 (as “Toilette de la mariée”).

Chicago, May 1–October 30, 1893. “World's Columbian Exposition,” no. 69 (as “The Bride’s Attire”).

San Francisco, January 27–July 5, 1894. “California Midwinter International Exposition,” no. 687 (as “The Toilet of a Bride”).

St. Louis, MO, April 30–December 1, 1904. “Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” no.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Legion of Honor), July 27–September 29, 1991. “The Russian Bride,” no cat. no (focused collection exhibition).
Rod, Edouard, “Les Salons de 1891 au Champ–de–Mars et aux Champs–Elysées,” Gazette des Beaux–Arts, 30, no. 3 (1891), pg. 457.

Bancroft, Hubert Howe, The Book of the Fair and Historical and Descriptive Presentation of the World’s Science, Art, and Industry as viewed through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, vol. 2, Chicago and San Francisco: The Bancroft Company, 1893, pgs. 757, 780, repr.

Vies, Halsey C., World's Columbian Exposition Official Catalogue; Part X Art Galleries and Annexes, Chicago, 1893, p. 137, no. 69 (as “The Bride’s Attire”).

Babad, Nathan A.,“Russia at the Fair,” Overland Monthly 23, no. 136 (April 1894), repr. pg. 423, pg. 429.

Stanton, J.A., “Impressions of the Art Display,” Overland Monthly 23, no. 136 (April 1894), pg. 404.

Photographs of Paintings in the Fine Arts Building, California Midwinter International Exposition, 1894 (as “The Toilet of a Bride”).

The Official History of the California Midwinter International Exposition, San Francisco: H.S. Crocker Company, 1894, repr. pg. 120, pg. 124.

Williams, Robert C., Russian Art and American Money; 1900–1940, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1980, pgs. 43, 80.

Bird, Alan, A History of Russian Painting, Oxford: Phaidon, 1987, pgs. 140–141, fig. 73.

Nash, Steven A., The Russian Bride, Exhibition pamphlet, San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1991, pgs. 1–4.

Bonetti, David, “Palace artworks are Legion,” San Francisco Examiner, August 16, 1991, pg. D–2.

Nash, Steven A., Lynn Federle Orr, Marion C. Stewart, Masterworks of European Painting at the California Legion of Honor, San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1999, pg. 12, repr.

Salmond, Wendy, Russell E. Martin, and Wilfried Zeisler, Konstantin Makovsky: The Tsar's Painter in America and Paris, Washington D.C.: Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, 2015, repr. pg. 51, fig. 41, repr. pgs. 60–61, pgs. 62, 102, 118, 119.

Currently on view

Lux Aeterna, 1914

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Camille Pissarro

Legion of Honor collection items
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Simon Vouet

Legion of Honor collection items

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G.A.R. Illumination in Chinatown, San Francisco, 1903

Willard E. Worden

de Young collection items
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Social Sharing

Radio journalist Hana Baba and Russian culture specialist Galina Epifanova on “The Russian Bride’s Attire" Gallery 17

Transcript

Radio journalist Hana Baba and Russian culture specialist Galina Epifanova on “The Russian Bride’s Attire" Gallery 17

Transcript

Provenance

Exhibition History

Bibliography

Radio journalist Hana Baba and Russian culture specialist Galina Epifanova on “The Russian Bride’s Attire"
Gallery 17

Radio journalist Hana Baba and Russian culture specialist Galina Epifanova on “The Russian Bride’s Attire"
Gallery 17