Merchants' portraits appeared as the art of the middle class since at the certain time that class self-evaluated its significance. For that reason the merchants' portraits expressed the ideological opposition to the West-looking culture of the high-class.
   "The merchants are very religious, they keep on fasting and live their modest lives with their families. They enjoy good money, good tea, beer, honey-drink, occasionally - Champaign, but predominately - horses and their stout wives [...] Their wives do not save powder and rouge to make up their faces: they love, respect and fear their husbands, they spend most of the time staying at home, maintaining the household, at leisure time they entertain themselves cracking nuts, consuming various jams, marmalades, pickled apples with red bilberries, drinking home-made liqueurs, beer and having extremely long tea-parties" (P.Vistenhoff, "Ocherki moskovskoy zhizni" - "Review of Moscow Life").