Women's happiness (Women)

Executed on cardboard around 1900 and held by the Chelyabinsk State Art Museum, this smaller work demonstrates Malyavin's practice of working rapidly on intimate supports alongside his larger exhibition canvases. The cardboard ground was commonly used for studies and smaller finished works in Russian academic practice, offering a less expensive and more portable surface for rapid observation. The title Women's happiness (Women) suggests a subject close to Malyavin's central preoccupations — the communal life of Russian peasant women, their festive rituals, and the expressive possibility of traditional costume. Works on cardboard from this period often show a directness of touch that the pressure of large exhibition canvases could inhibit, and this piece is likely to display the same loaded, sweeping brushwork of the major paintings concentrated at smaller scale. The Chelyabinsk museum's holding reflects the distribution of Malyavin's work across regional Russian collections following the Soviet period's redistribution of art from private hands.

The cardboard support absorbs oil paint differently from canvas priming, producing somewhat matte surface passages alongside areas of rich impasto. Working at reduced scale, Malyavin would have used a more economical stroke, with less room for the sweeping gestures of the large canvases but no reduction in chromatic intensity.