Festivities during the Shrovetide on the Admiralteyskaya Square in St. Petersburg by Konstantin Makovsky

Undoubtedly, one of the best paintings in the early work of Makovsky can rightly be considered “Folk party during the carnival at the Admiralteyskaya Square in St. Petersburg” – a true gallery of colorful types of urban estates.

For this work, Makovsky was awarded the title of Professor of the Academy of Arts, where fundamental reforms took place at that time, and household art turned from persecuted into a highly encouraged one. He gave an unprecedented monumental scope to the genre scene, presenting the image of “all of Petersburg” in this Shrovetide, as V. V. Stasov noted, who estimated the picture very highly. Here his main gift was manifested: the talent of the artist-director, who also knows how to give his things a special coloristic gloss.

This gloss, coupled with the growing love of the exotic and medieval, far from the “anger of the day” themes, for a long time fixed for Konstantin Makovsky the reputation of the “salon artist”, which his more politically engaged younger brother seemed to reproach him.