The Girl in The Red Hat

Some museum workers call this girl “Tatiana Larina” for completely unexplained reasons. But the portrait of the girl in the red hat was painted by a Ukrainian, Oleksandr Murashko, in Paris. Ilya Ripyn's student studied in Munich, Paris, and St. Petersburg.

At the International Exhibition in Munich, he received a gold medal for another of his paintings, Carousel. Success accompanied the artist at exhibitions in Venice, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, Venice, Cologne, and Dusseldorf. “Murashko's fame spread across Europe from exhibition to exhibition,” art historians write.

In the painting, the first thing that catches the eye is the red hat, which contrasts with the dark outfit. It draws attention to the girl's face, which glows with deep peace. The stranger is surprisingly serious for her age, but at the same time childlike and direct. Murashko's furor became a bone in the throat of Moscow critics, who accused him of being “European, lacking Russian identity.”

Of course, these manifestations of envy had no more than a local resonance. Western collectors were eager to buy the artist's paintings, and today they are the adornment of eminent art collections in Amsterdam, New York, Berlin, Budapest, and Geneva. This work is currently kept in the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv.