1896
oil on canvas
66.5 x 53.2 cm (26 1/4 x 21 in.)
signed and dated lower right

LOT NOTES
In 1896, Mikhail Vatutin, then a student at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, won the silver medal of the Imperial Art Academy for a genre-painting entitled The Pawnbroker. Quite likely, this prize-winning work is the same as the painting featured in the present lot. The following year, Vatutin began his studies at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Art under the tutelage of Vladimir Makovsky, one of the leading painters of the time and a founding member of The Wanderers group. Vatutin studied with Makovsky for three years before completing the program and returning to Moscow, where he continued to live and work for the remainder of his life. Vatutin exhibited regularly and is represented in private and museum collections, including the Dnepropetrovsk Museum of Art.