Peasant child's funeral, Chioggia

Alexandre Nicolaïevitch Roussoff was a Russian artist who spent most of his life in Europe. His pictures were admired in London where he routinely sent genre scenes and landscapes for exhibition. The subject of this watercolour is the funeral of a peasant child, which presumably the artist witnessed in Italy at the Chioggia Cathedral. The miniature, draped coffin holding centre stage in an expansive ecclesiastical setting adds to the restrained pathos of the work. The theme of innocence prematurely departed was a popular one in the Victorian period for painters and novelists alike.