In the late 1820s and early 1830s, portraits of merchants were in high demand. By that time, the merchants had become a separate class and there were whole dynasties in many cities. The merchant portraits were a kind of proof of their high social status in society: provincial artists painted all the members of merchant families for their home art galleries. Usually, such portraits were not only pieces of art but unique documents confirming the identity.

The painting, displayed in the exhibition, was given to the museum together with a female paired portrait. According to the tradition of merchant married couple portraits, a man and a woman are supposed to look at each other. The artists of these two paintings remained unknown.

Only signatures were preserved: “K. I. Pervov” and “A. I. Pervova”. The researchers turned to archival documents to find out the married couple portrayed in the painting. As a result, they found records about Karp and Anna Pervov whose names were the same as the names in the portraits. Anna Pervova was Karp’s second wife.

After the examination of parish registers, confessional records and marriage books in the Vladimir State Archive, the museum staff stated Karp Pervov was the son of the merchant of the third guild Ilya Pervov and Akilina Pervova. The document dated 1769 says that Ilya Pervov owned a shop in Murom “near Moskatelnaya Square”.

In the painting, the head and body of Pervov are slightly turned to the left — to his wife, to the place where her portrait must have been. The man has a thin face, blue eyes and red hair, a mustache and short beard common for the merchant fashion of those years. Karp Pervov is depicted in casual clothes: a dark fitted frock coat with a stand-up collar and a slightly raised shoulders. The clothes are solo-colored, without any details, texture or shading.

Pervov’s portrait is painted against the dark plain brown background. That was important since the background should not distract the viewer from the image of the portrayed.