At the Kennel

Aleksei Danilovich Kivshenko was a Russian-born painter of historical, genre, and hunting scenes, and was particularly well known for his paintings which depict the Russo-Turkish Wars. He was also associated with the Peredvizhniki, or the Association of Travelling Art Exhibits, a group of Russian realist painters who broke away from the Imperial Academy of Arts and state support for the arts in order to bring their work to the provinces in an effort to educate ‘common people’ about art. In 1880, after receiving a foreign fellowship, Kivshenko began to travel extensively, visiting Paris, Düsseldorf and Munich where he had the opportunity to work with Gabriel von Max and Wilhelm von Diez. It was on this first trip abroad, when the artist was visiting Munich, that the present work was painted. When he returned to Russia in 1884, the paintings he had produced earned him the title of ‘Academician.’ The artist would continue to travel throughout his life, visiting Palestine and Syria, and dying while on a return trip to Germany in 1895.