Good Luck (No Feather, No Down)

In this canvas, Nikolay Solomin takes and ironic yet realistic view of an ordinary moment from everyday life. The artist chose the familiar hunting genre, well known from works such as Vasily Perov’s “Hunters at Rest”. The artist's model for this work was the man who was building a house for Solomin and once invited the artist to join him on a hunting expedition. "We walked for some time, we got tired, then the dogs were tired as well. I realized what unprofessional hunters we were. And I thought then - that's a perfect theme for a painting. A subject that can be drawn with humor," recalls Solomin. Traditionally in Russian people say ‘no feather, no down” – equivalent to the English “break a leg” – when wishing one another good luck. This time, however, it seems to be a literal assessment of the hunters’ performance - judging by the lack of trophies, the characters in the painting failed to shoot either down, or feather. Despite this, both the hunter and his two setters seem to be pleased with themselves.