Description:
Visual Description: This is a square oil painting showing an older woman seated outdoors, holding a cluster of golden-yellow grapes. Her body faces slightly left, while her head turns in profile to the right. She has light skin, deep facial wrinkles, and brown hair mostly covered by a white scarf that drapes on her neck. She wears a white, long-sleeved blouse embroidered with geometric patterns along the sleeves, paired with a long skirt printed with large blue floral designs.
In front of her, a pile of grape clusters in a partially obscured willow basket fills the lower foreground in shades of gold, red, and dark purple. Behind her, several women workers, dressed in white headscarves and light clothing, bend over to pick grapes in rows of a vineyard that stretches into the background. The vineyard lines run diagonally upward, leading to green and brown hills and distant pale mountains beneath a hazy sky. Yellow grape vines with hanging fruit frame the upper corners of the composition, surrounding the seated figure. (Wasifa Orthy '26)
Label Text:
After losing her husband in World War II, Mariia Bryntseva (1906–1985), a mother of six living in Crimea, rose to national prominence as a distinguished grape grower. She became part of the Stakhanovite movement, an initiative that celebrated Soviet workers who exceeded production targets through improved labor efficiency. In a culture where personal worth was defined by productivity, such a figure embodied the ideal Soviet citizen. Here, Bryntseva wears a blouse embroidered with traditional ornaments from the Poltava region, often referred to as “the heart of Ukraine,” whose dialect forms the basis of standard Ukrainian. Although Bryntseva was born into a Russian family in Crimea with no known ties to Poltava—and was already in her late forties when the peninsula was transferred to Ukraine—the artist’s inclusion of a Ukrainian symbol may have been intended to highlight Bryntseva’s contribution to Ukraine’s welfare and appeal to the jury of a republican art exhibition.
MT, 2025
Tags:
painting; women; working; portraits; labor; elderly; fruit Subjects:
Older people; Painting; Portraits; Labor; Women; Work; Canvas; Fruit Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2020.15 |
