"Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent." -- Psalm 71:9

Abram Arkhipov was a Russian artist raised in the Orthodox Church who painted in the realist style. In his later years he embraced the Russian revolution and was celebrated in his homeland as the "People's Artist of the USSR." This moving painting of washer women in their difficult drudgery is one of several that Arkhipov painted depicting the daily lives of women in Russia.

"Arkhipov found a rich and diverse source of inspiration in the Russian countryside and the peasantry; he painted peasants at work, the melting of the snow, the local church and priest, the villages of the far north and the White Sea." [from The Grove Dictionary of Art.]