Portrait of Border Guard V. Kotov.

Description

Author: Duzhnova, Zhanna. 1942-2002
A portrait composition executed in a realistic manner with dense painterly modelling of form, depicting a military man in a fur ushanka with a cockade and a sheepskin coat, with binoculars on his chest, set against a mountain landscape and a snow-covered steppe with thorny shrubs. The space is built on the contrast between the large, meticulously rendered figure in the foreground and the generalised mountain range dissolving into haze in the background. The colour scheme is restrained, built on closely related ochre-brown tones of the earth and clothing, set off by the cool grey-blue hues of the sky and snow, creating a sense of a harsh, vigilant border landscape.