Zinaida Serebrjakova in Paris : iconographic analysis of a Russian in exile

Born in Russia in 1884, the painter Zinaida Serebrjakova arrived in France at age forty and lived there, troubled by both social and financial difficulties, until her death in 1967. Pictures and excerpts of published letters to relatives and friends place Serebrjakova in the context of research on Russian emigration to France. Visual analysis based on monographs and exhibition catalogues devoted to Serebrjakova's work published in 1922 and following years (mostly in Russian) reveals a huge gap between her Russian and Parisian periods. Her case, and the particularity of rural inspiration, should be understood as a unique phenomenon, to be considered separately from that of other artists in comparable circumstances. That Serebrjakova remains enigmatic underscores how much study is still to be done regarding her own identity and other, substantive issues of identity such as woman vs. man, mother/wife vs. childless spinster, and intelligentsia vs. bohemian.