A postcard with a special first-day cancellation for the State Russian Museum and a stamp featuring a reproduction of Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov’s painting “Reapers” (1820s), from the series “The State Russian Museum in Leningrad,” was issued on December 25, 1968. Print run: 4,500,000 copies. Artist: German Alekseyevich Komlev.
The subject of the painting is highly poetic. In a brief moment of rest, peasants—a mother and her son—admire butterflies that have settled on the woman’s hand. The models were real people: serf peasants, a mother and son (Anna and Zakhar Stepanov).
We can see the boy in another well-known painting by Venetsianov, “Zakharka.”
The artist presented “Reapers” as a gift to Emperor Alexander I for the Hermitage. Later, the painting was transferred to the State Russian Museum, where it is preserved to this day.