Ruzhnikov - Paintings

Ruzhnikov Fine art & antiques

Ruzhnikov Fine art & antiques

APN SARL Paris, France

Andre Ruzhnikov +44-7866-638-973 +1-917-244-3777 +7-905-715-5530 ruzhnikov.com e-mail: andre@ruzhnikov.com info@ruzhnikov.com

About Ruzhnikov I started in the art business almost 50 years ago in the Soviet Union. First I concentrated on Russian icons which were abundant in those days and from the business angle were rather lucrative owing to the burgeoning interest in the West. Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London and NYC conducted brisk trade having around 10 icon sales a year while selling well over 1,000. icons per year. Multitude of icon dealers from Europe flocked to these sales and spread around newly purchased icons in numerous galleries and antique shops thus furthering interest towards Russian icons and creating many collectors and forging new collections. A constant unending supply of icons from the Soviet Union fueled the growing market.

In 1976, I left Moscow and after a short period of deliberations as to what to do I seriously embarked on the Russian antique business. My meagre finances allowed only few very small investments. My English was luckily by far superior compared to that of a couple of my countrymen whom I met at the time. My new friends succeeded in bringing significant collections of Russian icons, silver, etc. They needed a vehicle to sell the icons and other Russian imperial wares, so I became their representative. The opportunity allowed me access to a significant diversified stock. Upon settling near San Francisco I serendipitously rather quickly met several well endowed American collectors of Russian art and antiques as well as a few budding enthusiastic novices.

Many a year have passed, these days I still carry a large inventory of Russian icons of varying subject matters, schools, vintage and size. Collection of silver and enamel includes pieces by prominent Russian makers such as Faberge, Ovchinnikov, Khlebnikov, Sazikov, Grachev and many others, some with Imperial provenance. A group of porcelain is primarily based on the military plates and Easter eggs dating from the periods of Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II. A significant collection of Russian watercolors features works by P.Sokolov, W.Hau, M.Vorobiev, A.Brullov, P.Balashev, I.Repin, M.Dobuzhinsky and many others.

A newly created collection of European silver consists of major works by Odiot (resplendent set of 4 large candelabra from the Rothschild collection), Aucoc (silver–gilt table with marble top from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition), Garrard, Hunt & Roskell (equestrian figure of William of Orange), John Mortimer and John Samuel Hunt, Paul Storr and others. The silver catalogue is being currently assembled and with a bit of luck will be available in late spring of 2017.

Paintings include both classical Itinerant Russian works by 19th – early 20th century artists by K.Makovsky, A.Makovsky, S.Zhukovsky, I.Kulikov, N.Bogdanov-Belsky, K.Aivazovsky, I Shishkin, just to name a few. Collection of European works is quite eclectic featuring 16th and 17th century works by Dutch masters as well as Impressionist and Modern featuring T.Lempicka, G.Loiseau, H.Martin, H.Moret, A.Renoir, de Smet among many others.

• We eagerly solicit outright purchases of works similar to those in the current catalogue • We provide brokering services and search for the desired pictures • We advise on auction buying • We help with restoration • We help and advise on framing • We arrange very competitive rate insurance • We assist with the most reliable shipping • We assist with tax free storage

Paintings • Old Masters 19th & 20th century Impressionism, Post-Impressionism & Modern

Ruzhnikov

10 • PAINTINGS

PHILIPP PETER ROOS (1655 – 1706) A GOAT AND A SHEEP IN AN ITALIANATE LANDSCAPE circa 1690 oil on canvas 98 x 73 cm Goat and a Sheep in an Italianate Landscape is a perfect example of Philipp Peter Roos’ masterful animal portraiture.

Committed to studying animals from life, his attention to form is reflected in the exceptionally lifelike rendering of the titular animals’ physique and fur. This painting is distinguished by the startling intensity of the goat’s expression, rendered in gestural marks of impasto paint. His burning eyes stare directly out at the viewer: an emphatic, arresting presence whose wildness and intensity are echoed by the sheer rock and brooding sky of the painting’s background.

Roos’ paintings from this period are characterised by the marriage of a loose, informal compositional style, and highly precise brushwork. As demonstrated by A Goat and a Sheep in an Italianate Landscape, his animals are full of character and individual vitality. This work closely resembles the paintings completed by Roos around the year 1690, such as Resting Goat and Sheep, held in the collection at the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland. His paintings are featured in major public collections, including the Hermitage Museum, St.Petersburg, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Louvre, Paris, the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, the Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, the Museo del Prado, Madrid, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 11

Ruzhnikov

12 • PAINTINGS

WORKSHOP OF ANTOINE CARON (1521 – 1599) BLOODBATH OF THE TRIUMVIRATE mid 16th Century oil on wooden pane 86 x 149 cm The rare surviving works by Antoine Caron, one of the most important French Mannerist painters, depict historical and mythological events and elegant court ceremonie. The unusual subject of the present painting depicts a scene from ancient history: the massacres in Rome in 43 B.C. ordered by the Triumvirate of Octavian, Mark Antony and Lepidus, who are seen enthroned on the right of the picture. The subject was probably drawn from Claude de Seysels Les Guerres des Romains which went through several editions between 1544 and 1560. These paintings were undoubtedly intended as a commentary upon contemporary events, in particular the savage repression of the French Protestants at the massacre of Vassy (1562) under the Duc de Guise, whose alliance with the Constable de Montmorençy and Jacques d’Albon de Saint-André was also known as the Triumvirate.

The composition relates to Massacres under the Triumvirate (1566) in the Louvre, the only signed and dated painting by Caron, and is known in some twenty different versions, all of them anonymous.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 13

Ruzhnikov

Antoine Caron Massacres of the Triumvirate, 1566 Louvre, Paris

Antoine Caron Tiburtine Sibyl (Augustus and the Sibyl) circa 1575–1580 Louvre, Paris

14 • PAINTINGS

Workshop of Antoine Caron Massacres of the Triumvirate, circa 1550 Musée cantonal de Lausanne

Antoine Caron can be named among the few significant French painters of the epoch of the Wars of Religion (1560–98). Antoine Caron started his career in Beauvais, his native city, then a relatively important artistic centre, where he painted some religious pictures and designed cartoons for stained-glass windows. Between 1540 and 1550 Caron was active in the workshops at Fontainebleau. Later, he became court painter to Catherine de’ Medici, Queen Regent (1560–63). Besides Jean Cousin the younger, he was the only French artist from this period with a recognizable artistic personality and was an important witness to the activities of the Valois court during the reigns of Charles IX (reg. 1560–1574) and Henry III (reg. 1574– 1589) and the violent wars between Catholics and Huguenots.

Like his royal patrons, Caron was an ardent Roman Catholic; he was connected with the Catholic League and a friend of its poet and pamphleteer, Louis d’Orléans.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 15

Ruzhnikov

16 • PAINTINGS

FRANS FRANCKEN THE YOUNGER (1581 – 1642) BRAVERY OF THE PERSIAN WOMEN circa 1605 oil on copper panel 50 x 66.5 cm stamped on the reverse with the panel maker’s mark of Pieter Stas (active in Antwerp 1587-1610) Bravery of the Persian Women is an early example of Frans Francken the Younger’s celebrated history paintings. Here he portrays one of the stories related by Plutarch in volume five of his Moralia, which is dedicated to the courage of women.

Beating a frantic retreat, the Persian army led by Cyrus the Great sought to re-enter the city from whence it came, at the risk of bringing the pursuing enemy with it. Furious that they should be placed in danger, the women of the city ran out to meet the soldiers and lifted up their garments to shame them.

Accusing their husbands of cowardice, the women urged them back into battle. Mortified, the Persians renewed their courage and returned to rout the enemy.

This cabinet-sized painting is exemplary of Francken’s technical skill in the composition of tightly-packed crowd scenes and the rendering of small figures. It is also typical of his preference for historical or allegorical subject matter that could—like Plutarch’s stories—convey a moralising message to the viewer.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 17

Ruzhnikov

18 • PAINTINGS

AFTER JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC SCHALL (1752 – 1825) LA SERVANTE OFFICIEUSE late 18th century oil on copper panel 41 x 54 cm The painting is a replica of the same composition by the French rococo artist Jean-Frederic Schall (1752-1825). The original version, signed and dated 1785, was formerly in the Louis Deglatigny Collection, Rouen (see A. Girodie, Jean-Frederic Schall, un peintre de Fetes Galantes, 1927, plate xi) and has been engraved by Alexandre Chaponnier.

Jean-Frederic Schall (1752-1825) was one of the last important Rococo artists. He became famous for his erotic and pastoral scenes in a style influenced by François Boucher, JeanHonoré Fragonard and Pierre-Antoine Baudouin. The present composition, a meticulously painted private scene set in an interior, is a characteristic example of the artist’s style and recurring subject matter.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 19

Ruzhnikov

20 • PAINTINGS

FOLLOWER OF CARAVAGGIO (1571 – 1610) CIMON AND PERO 17th century oil on canvas 96.5 x 116 cm The exemplum – a story or anecdote designed to encourage moral instruction – of ‘Roman Charity’ was one of the most popular subjects throughout seventeenth-and eighteenthcentury Italian and Flemish painting. Taken from the ancient Roman historian Valerius Maximus’s Memorable Acts and Sayings of the Ancient Romans, the tale presents an act of selfless devotion as the highest example of honouring one’s parent.

This painting, by one of Caravaggio’s followers, depicts the moment at which Pero, a beautiful young woman, visits her father Cimon while he is incarcerated in prison. Cimon has been sentenced to death by starvation, and is close to perishing. Pero, however, is able to keep him alive by secretly breastfeeding him.

When the jailers discover her actions, they are moved to pity.

Cimon’s life is spared.

The scene was depicted by many artists, notably Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Janssens. Caravaggio himself featured the scene in his 1606 work The Seven Works of Mercy. The present painting is based on Caravaggio’s version. It captures the desperation, urgency and tenderness of this extraordinary moment of sacrifice.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 21

Ruzhnikov

22 • PAINTINGS

THE MASTER OF THE FERTILITY OF THE EGG (IL MAESTRO DELLA FERTILITÀ DELL’UOVO, ACTIVE IN BRESCIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY) GROTESQUE SCENE WITH ANIMALS AND STYLISED FIGURES 17th century oil on canvas 90 x 120 cm inscribed ‘Il scolaro maggiore è un asino - e il maestro è un porco - giudicatelo voi - chi ne sa più di noi’ The paintings of the still anonymous Master of the Fertility of the Egg (Il Maestro della Fertilità dell’Uovo) are often associated with those of Faustino Bocchi (Brescia 1659-1741) and his circle.

However, the satirical content and symbolic meanings of his paintings are expressed in a unique and unusual style.

In all the three paintings, the protagonist is a black pig in a pink garment that appears to personify authority. Since pigs are generally associated with negative values such as greed, lust, gluttony or sloth, the paintings should very likely be read as satirical allegories, containing elements of the world turned upside down (‘Il mondo alla riversa’) The translated inscription of the first painting reads: “The student is a donkey and the teacher is a pig / you can judge who has a greater knowledge than us”. The black pig is shown as a teacher lecturing a number of students who are personified by various animals; among them, in the upper left corner, is the donkey mentioned in the inscription. The painting recalls a composition by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Ass at School, which bears an inscription that reads in translation: “Although the ass goes to school in order to learn, if it is an ass, it will not return (as) a horse”. Also the Master of the Fertility of the Egg’s painting can be read as a visualisation of the saying that a slowwitted person is not capable of becoming learned regardless of how much he studies. Beyond that, since the Italian master also personifies the teacher as a pig, the painting seems to mock the incompetence of teachers as well.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 23

Ruzhnikov

24 • PAINTINGS

THE MASTER OF THE FERTILITY OF THE EGG (IL MAESTRO DELLA FERTILITÀ DELL’UOVO, ACTIVE IN BRESCIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY) GROTESQUE SCENE WITH ANIMALS AND STYLISED FIGURES 17th century oil on canvas 90 x 120 cm inscribed ‘Fe pian pian che il porco dorme’ In the second painting we find the black pig in a hammock that bears an inscription reading: “Be quiet / the pig sleeps”. Below this, several scenes are shown which seem to have negative connotations. Compare, for instance, the second rendering of the black pig that is about to kill a cock. The general meaning of the painting is more difficult to decipher than the other two works but it seems very likely that the underlying statement is similar to the saying: “When the cat is away the mice will play”. It is tempting to transfer this general meaning to a socio-political level, and read the painting as a plea for a strong central power in order to prevent the society from descending into chaos.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 25

Ruzhnikov

26 • PAINTINGS

THE MASTER OF THE FERTILITY OF THE EGG (IL MAESTRO DELLA FERTILITÀ DELL’UOVO, ACTIVE IN BRESCIA IN THE 17TH CENTURY) GROTESQUE SCENE WITH ANIMALS AND STYLISED FIGURES 17th century oil on canvas 90 x 120 cm inscribed ‘Fama volat che il porco fa l’astrologo’ In the third painting the black pig plays the role of an astrologer, as described in the inscription on the flag in the upper right corner (‘Il porco fa l ́astrologo’). The first part of the inscription (‘Fama volat’) is a saying taken from Virgil ́s Aeneid (III, 121) that can be translated as “rumour has wings”. The motif of the cat, which is sitting on a flying cock in the upper left corner, can be read as a humorous allusion to this passage. However, the main subject of the composition seems to be a different one.

The painting portrays depictions of charlatan practitioners who are offering their services on the marketplace, or in the course of festivals, that had already been depicted by Hieronymus Bosch and his circle. At the same time, the painting seems to denounce both the fraudulent intentions and incompetence of the astrologer, as well as the credulousness of the “customers”.

Since the painting bears compositional similarities to depictions of triumphal processions such as Andrea Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar, the grotesque character of the low content is additionally emphasised by the contrast to a noble tradition.

The name of the painter derives from a painting in the Milwaukee Art Museum, titled The Fertility of the Egg. There is no documentary evidence regarding this master and the painter’s identity is still in question. Based on his 17th century manner of painting and Northern style some scholars have suggested that the painter may have been a predecessor of Faustino Bocchi.

The Master could be seen as the inventor of a “moral zoology”, emphasizing the madness of human condition and the vanity and ridiculousness inherent in life by depicting seemingly absurd characters. The contents and style of the Master are typical of the 17th century.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 27

Ruzhnikov

28 • PAINTINGS

CIRCLE OF CORNELIS VAN DALEM (1530-1573); JAN VAN WECHELEN (ACTIVE IN ANTWERP CIRCA 15301550) THE LEGEND OF THE BAKER OF EEKLO circa 1570-1580 oil on wooden panel 74 x 103 cm

Van Dalem’s paintings, the chronology of which remains to be established, were highly appreciated by 17th-century connoisseurs; Rubens owned a landscape by him, to which he added the figure of St Hubert hunting. Van Dalem’s Landscape with Primitive Men, of which only scattered fragments survive, was in the collection of Cornelis van der Geest and was included in Willem van Haecht’s imaginary depiction of his art gallery (1628; Antwerp, Rubenshuis).

The painting depicts the curious legend of the baker of Eeklo, which was popular in the Netherlands during the 16th century.

According to the story, those who wanted to change their appearance or revert the effects of time on their faces could go to the town of Eeklo, where they could have a new head baked for them. The head would be carefully cut from the trunk, kneaded, glazed and placed into the oven. In the meantime, a green cabbage was placed over the trunk, symbolically «replacing» the head. Once the new head was baked, it was sewn in its place on the trunk. However, the new head could fail to bake, or it could over bake, resulting in deformed or deficient heads. This story served as a cautionary tale to those who were dissatisfied with their appearance.

There are about ten extant versions depicting this interesting subject, with differing compositions. The best known is a small panel in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, on display in the Muiderslot, which is labelled in the 1976 Rijksmuseum catalogue as ‘Copy after Cornelis van Dalem and Jan van Wechelen’. Others are, for example, in the museums in Leipzig and Turin, Sabauda.

The existence of these many versions attest to the popularity of the story and the influence of the image. The background is also depicted in a gallery interior by David Teniers the Elder (see E. Duverger, H. Vlieghe, David Teniers der Aeltere, Utrecht 1971, fig. 47).

The present painting relates closest to the panel in the Rijksmuseum, and Dr. Luuk Pijl has suggested a tentative date of circa 1570-1580 on stylistic grounds, on the basis of photographs. It is quite likely that this and the Rijksmusum version relate in turn to the original by Cornelis van Dalem and Jan Van Wechelen, whereabouts of which remain so far unknown.

Cornelis van Dalem (1530-1573) - Flemish Mannerist painter, contemporary of Pieter Bruegel the elder, was most famous for his landscapes and cityscapes. The figures in his paintings were often added by other artists, such as Gillis Mostaert or Jan van Wechelen (active in Antwerp circa 1530-1550).

After Cornelis van Dalem and Jan van Wechelen The Legend of the Baker of Eeklo oil on panel, 30 × 39.5 cm.

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 29

Ruzhnikov

30 • PAINTINGS

NIKOLAI ORLOV (1863-1924) MONOPOLY 1904 oil on canvas 152 x 203 cm signed in Cyrillic and dated lower right: ‘N. Orlov, 1904’ Provenance The artist’s collection Frank C. Havens, Oakland, CA George Lievre, San Francisco, CA (purchased from above in 1916) Joseph B. Friedman (purchased from above in November 1928) Private collection, USA Exhibitions Louisiana Purchase exposition, St. Louis, Missouri, 1904

In his preface to the album reproducing Orlov’s series of paintings ‘Russian Peasants’, Leo Tolstoy named ‘Monopoly’ among the best works by the artist.

Tolstoy first saw one of Orlov’s paintings in 1884 at the 22nd exhibition of the Society of Wandering Exhibitions in St.Petersburg. The work made a strong impression on the writer, who sought an introduction to the artist and thereafter became a committed follower of Orlov’s work. The two maintained an intensive correspondence, with Orlov sending photographs of his latest paintings to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy’s famous country estate. Seven reproductions of paintings by Orlov hung in the writer’s office. Writing the introductory text to Russian Peasants (St.Petersburg, 1908), Tolstoy confessed that, ‘It is a wonderful thing to publish an album of Orlov’s paintings. Orlov is my favourite artist, and is my favourite artist because the subject of his paintings is my favourite subject. This subject is the Russian people, the real Russian peasants.’

Literature World’s Fair Bulletin, vol 6, no.2, 1904 L.N. Tolstoy, Russkie muzhiki [Russian peasants], St.Petersburg., 1908, ill. VII, illustration in colour R.C. Williams, Russian Art and American Money, Cambridge, 1980, p.

53, ill.6, illustration in colour

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 31

Ruzhnikov

‘It is a wonderful thing to publish an album of Orlov’s paintings. Orlov is my favourite artist, and is my favourite artist because the subject of his paintings is my favourite subject. This subject is the Russian people, the real Russian peasants.’

L. Tolstoy, Russian Peasants, 1908

View of the Russian Section of the Fine Arts Exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904 32 • PAINTINGS

Nikolai Vasilyevich Orlov was born in 1863 to a poor peasant family in a small village near Tula. He was left an orphan at an early age. His Initial artistic training Orlov obtained in an icon-painting workshop under the guidance of his uncle, the icon painter V.I. Boghuslavky. Later, he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Vladimir Makovsky, and Illarion Pryanishnikov. He graduated from the School with a large silver medal and the title of the class artist. In 1892 he moved with his family to the village of Kuleshov in Kaluga province. He worked mainly as a genre painter, depicting the meager life of the Russian peasantry.

In 1893-1894, Orlov showed his works at exhibitions of the Moscow Society of Art Lovers. Since 1894 he became an exhibitor, and since 1896 - a member of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions or the Wanderers (Peredvizhniki). In the 1900’s, in addition to easel painting, Orlov painted icons and church interiors in Tambov, Tula, Kaluga and Orel provinces. After 1910 Orlov gradually abandoned painting and focused on teaching.

Orlov belonged to a circle of genre artists such as Nikolai Yaroshenko, Vladimir Makovsky, and Nikolai Kasatkin; he was a close friend of Leo Tolstoy.

The fate of Orlov’s paintings is dramatic: only some of them are now kept in museums (the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum in St.Petersburg, the State Historical Museum, the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia, the Lipetsk Regional Museum, and the Tula Regional Art Museum, etc.). Part of the artist’s heritage belongs to his descendants. But the rest of his works were lost.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 33

Ruzhnikov

34 • PAINTINGS

ALEXANDER MAKOVSKY (1869-1924) HOSPITALITY 1901 oil on canvas 74 cm x 86 cm signed in Cyrillic and dated lower left: Alexander Makovsky, 1901 The present painting reveals the influence of the renowned Konstantin Makovsky, who was Alexander’s uncle. The composition resembles that of Konstantin Makovsky’s From the Everyday Life of the Russian Boyar in the Late XVII Century, one of the elder Makovsky’s best paintings from the 1860’s.

Born to a famous artistic dynasty, Alexander Makovsky was also the son of Vladimir Makovsky and grandson of the collector Yegor Makovsky. He studied painting at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow with Vasily Polenov and Vladimir Makovsky, and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in St.Petersburg under Ilya Repin. In 1893, he joined the Wanderers (Peredvizhniki), a group of realist painters and Russia’s first independent artistic society.

Alexander Makovsky’s works are found in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian Museum in St.Petersburg and numerous other museums.

Konstantin Makovsky From the Everyday Life of the Russian Boyar in the Late XVII Century, 1868 Sold at Sotheby’s London 26 Nov 2007, price realized 2,036,500 GBP

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 35

Ruzhnikov

36 • PAINTINGS

ANDREI RUMYANTSEV (? - 1907) RECONCILIATION 1898 oil on canvas 80 x 100 cm signed in Cyrillic and dated lower right: Rumyantsev, 1898 Provenance Private collection, USA Sale Sotheby’s New York, 1 May 2001, Sale 7642, lot 49 The painting by Andrei Antipovich Rumyantsev is a characteristic example of the artist’s realist manner. Similar works by Rumyantsev are in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Chuvash State Museum of Art in Cheboksary.

Rumyantsev was a later follower of the Russian realist school of genre painting, represented by such names as Vladimir Makovsky, Ilya Repin, Vasily Perov and others. In 1863-1866 Rumyantsev studied art at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, in 1876 presented his work at the exhibition of the Imperial Academy of Fine Art in St.Petersburg, the same year he became a member of the Moscow Society of Art Lovers.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 37

Ruzhnikov

38 • PAINTINGS

NIKOLAI RACHKOV (1825 – 1895) HOMELESS 1869 oil on canvas 64 x 77 cm signed in Cyrillic and dated lower left: 1869 N. Rachkov Provenance Private collection, UK Sale Sotheby’s London, 7 April 1989, lot 23 Nikolai Rachkov is best known for his portraits of young women and children, such as Little Flower Seller (1869) and Portrait of a Young Girl (1877). Here, however, the artist demonstrates his skill in depicting a genre scene, and introduces a strong narrative element to the piece. The painting captured moments of ordinary life, and imbued them with a sense of narrative or emotion. In Homeless, Rachkov demonstrates his ability to capture the intense emotional charge of his portrait paintings.

Born near Nizhny Novgorod in 1825, from 1838 Rachkov studied at Alexander Stupin’s art school in Arzamas, and after at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St.Petersburg. In 1845 the Academy awarded him with a silver medal for the Portrait of a Gypsy Woman. From 1860-s the artist moved to Moscow where he was one of the founding members of the the Moscow Society of Art Lovers along with such as I.Aivazovsky, I.Levitan, V.Perov, A.Savrasov, and others.

Rachkov was one of the most significant Russian genre painters, his works are in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian Museum in St.Petersburg and the Voronezh Museum.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 39

Ruzhnikov

40 • PAINTINGS

KONSTANTIN MAKOVSKY (1839 - 1915) RUSSIAN BEAUTY 1885 oil on canvas 94 x 66 cm signed in Latin and dated lower left: K. Makovsky, 1885 I.I. Provenance Private collection Sale Sotheby’s London, December 1, 2004, lot 30 Private collection, USA In the 1880’s, Konstantin Makovsky became interested in the opulent boyar life. In the following years, he created a number of large-scale multi-figure compositions based on this theme, including A Boyar Wedding Feast, 1883, now at the Hillwood Museum, Washington, D.C., and The Russian Bride’s Attire, 1887, the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, that earned him the admiration of Alexander II. These ambitious works were built up from smaller portrait studies of Boyars and Boyarinas, such as the present work.

Russian Beauty is exceptionally fine example of this genre, it is particularly notable for the finely rendered details: intricately embroidered garments and pearl-encrusted kokoshnik underscore Makovsky’s virtuosity, while the young girl’s delicate features, softly modelled and slightly blurred, recall the gentle mastery of Renaissance artists.

A Boyar Wedding Feast, 1883 Hillwood Museum, Washington, D.C. WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 41

Ruzhnikov

42 • PAINTINGS

NIKOLAI DMITRIEV-ORENBURGSKY (1837 – 1898) SOLDIERS RESTING BY THE WELL 1877 oil on wooden panel 47 x 33 cm signed in Cyrillic and dated lower right: 1877, Paris, N. DmitrievOrenburgsky Soldiers Resting by the Well is a fine example of late nineteenthcentury Russian genre painting. It was painted in the first year of the Russian-Turkish War, however, and may have been Nikolai Dmitrievich Dmitriev-Orenburgsky’s attempt to depict that conflict in an unexpected light.

Nikolai Dmitrievich Dmitriev-Orenburgsky was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1837. In 1856, he embarked upon his studies under the painter Fidelio Bruni at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, St.Petersburg. Here, between 1856 and 1860, he won numerous silver medals and a minor gold medal. He was also part of the ‘revolt of fourteen’: a group of students who rebelled against the formal conservatism of their school, and refused to paint the topic set by the Imperial Academy.

In 1863 Dmitriev-Orenburgsky resigned, receiving the title of Second-Class Artist as a result of his early departure. The same year he became a founding member of the famous St.Petersburg Artel of Artists. Headed by the painter and critic Ivan Kramskoy, the Artel was created to support a network of Realist painters, who rejected Academic traditions in favour of direct depictions of ordinary Russian life.

Dmitriev-Orenburgsky settled permanently in Paris in the early 1870’s. He was one of the main participants in the establishment of the local ‘Society of Russian Artists’, which exhibited his paintings in the annual salons. During the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 Dmitriev-Orenburgsky was commissioned by the Russian Imperial court a series of battle paintings. Emperor Alexander II Convoy’s Battle at Sistovski Heights and Alexander II’s Entrance to Ploeshty are the most famous examples.

Works by Dmitriev-Orenburgsky are in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Russian Museum in St.Petersburg.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 43

Ruzhnikov

44 • PAINTINGS

IVAN KULIKOV (1875 – 1941) PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST’S WIFE 1917 oil on canvas 90 x 120 cm signed in Cyrillic and dated lower right: I. Kulikov, 917 Provenance Private collection, USA Kulikov painted his wife quite a few times in various roles: as a good looking peasant girl (By the Gate, 1913, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), an urban woman (Cheremukha, 1912, the Murom Museum of History and Art) and a Russian boyar woman wearing a headdress decorated with pearls and a resplendent outfit with precious stones (In Ruissian Attire, 1916, the Murom Museum of History and Art).

Kulikov, a devoted pupil and follower of Ilya Repin, was a wonderful portrait painter. Having enjoyed a successful early career, by the early 1910’s he had already begun to revise the creative principles of his predecessors. Along with Boris Kustodiev and Filipp Maliavin, he was one of a few artists who chose Russian provincial life as his main subject matter. In his mature works, he managed to fuse the images of national Romanticism movement with an almost impressionistic treatment of colour.

Works by Ivan Kulikov are in many museum collections, including the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Murom Museum of History and Art and others.

Ivan Kulikov In Ruissian Attire, 1916 Murom Museum of History and Art

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 45

Ruzhnikov

46 • PAINTINGS

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 47

Ruzhnikov

48 • PAINTINGS

UNKNOWN PAINTER PAIR OF PORTRAITS OF VSEVOLOD PAVLOVITCH PUSHIN (1803-1877) AND HIS WIFE NÉE NATALIA NIKOLAEVNA NOROVA oil on canvas circa 1840 81 x 66 cm Vsevolod Pushin, Colonel of Life-Guard His Imperial Majesty’s Cuirassier Regiment, participated in the Polish campaign of 1830-1831. He was awarded orders of St.Stanislaus II class, St.Vladimir 4th class, St.Anna 3rd class and a badge for 15 year exemplary service. V.Pushin was later promoted to MajorGeneral.

The portraits are contained within original oval gilt plaster frames, V.Pushin’s portrait is mounted with a rectangular brass plaque inscribed in cursive Cyrillic Vsevolod Pavlovitch Pushin.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 49

Ruzhnikov

50 • PAINTINGS

CARL FRIEDRICH SCHULZ (1796 – 1866) GRAND DUKE MIKHAIL PAVLOVICH LIFE-GUARD LANCER REGIMENT ON MANOEUVRE 1848 oil on canvas 75 x 95 cm signed and dated lower right: Carl Schulz / 1848 Completed in 1848, the painting depicts Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich Life-Guard Lancer Regiment in Poland during the campaign of 1831.

Tsar Nicholas I was a great collector of military paintings, and Carl Friedrich Schulz was among his favourite artists in the genre. Grand duke Mikhail Pavlovich life-guard lancer regiment on manoeuvre is one of a group of paintings portraying the Russian army commissioned by Nicholas I, and is believed to have come down to us from the Tsar’s private collection.

Considering himself a connoisseur, the Tsar took a close interest in the works of art that he commissioned, choosing the artists himself and tasking them with a specific subject. He was particularly meticulous over the painter’s attention to details of uniform, equipment and insignia. As a consequence of his enthusiasm, he soon accumulated an exceptional collection of military paintings.

The German painter Carl Friedrich Schulz was educated at the academies of Dusseldorf and Berlin but took much of the inspiration for his later work from his time as a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars, in which he volunteered to serve in 1815.

Having travelled extensively around Europe, Schulz settled in Berlin in 1830, where he was appointed professor of the Academy of Arts in 1841 before moving to Russia in 1847.

His exquisite grasp of anatomy and form, as well as his own experiences in the army, were easily transferred to the military scenes that preoccupied his later years, and of which this is a prime example. He was commissioned to paint these by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III as well as Tsar Nicholas I.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 51

Ruzhnikov

52 • PAINTINGS

FEDOR BURKHARDT (1854 – 1918) SPRING LANDSCAPE circa 1900 oil on canvas 31.5 x 49 cm signed in Cyrillic lower right: F. Burkhardt Fedor Karlovich Burkhardt was an acclaimed master of the 19th century Russian lyrical landscape. Spring Landscape is a fine example of the artist’s mature style, which is typified by its appreciation of serene rural landscapes and bodies of water.

The painting’s composition is highly characteristic of the artist’s work, in which the surfaces of rivers and lakes are brought into reflective harmony with expansive, cloud-filled skies.

Spring Landscape demonstrates the artist’s mastery of the ‘mood landscape’: a genre that celebrated the serenity and grandeur of the Russian rural scene, and sought to capture its fleeting shifts in weather and light. Like his contemporaries Issac Levitan and Aleksey Savrasov, Burkhardt was a remarkably talented painter. As the Russian art critic Alexandre Benois wrote in 1916, two years before Burkhardt’s death, the painter captured ‘the inexplicable charm of our humble poverty, the shoreless breadth of our virginal expanses, the festal sadness of the Russian autumn, and the enigmatic call of the Russian spring.

Only a small number of Burkhardt’s works survived. The details of his biography are scant. Burkhardt was born in 1854 in St.Petersburg into an aristocratic family. From 1889 to 1913, he was an exhibitor at the St.Petersburg Society of Artists and the Moscow Society of Art Lovers. Though we know quite little about the artist’s life, his work is highly developed. Burkhardt applied to his paintings a highly sophisticated, realist technique, using fine brushwork to emphasise precision and detail. At the same time, he captured on the canvas a degree of emotional sensitivity more often associated with the Impressionists. His work continues to be popular among discerning collectors.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 53

Ruzhnikov

54 • PAINTINGS

NIKOLAI SAMOKISH (1860 – 1944) NIGHT RAID 1910’s oil on wooden panel 49.5 x 37.5 cm signed lower right: N. Samokish Provenance Private collection, USA Nikolai Samokish was a highly respected military painter. His skills are demonstrated on this painting, particularly in its masterful composition, which conveys a strong sense of narrative tension through a subtle arrangement of forms.

Samokish’s style was honed from direct experience. In 1887 he was appointed an official artist by the Defense Ministry and, together with Ivan Aivazovsky and Franz Roubaud, sketched military manoeuvres. He visited the Caucasus the following year, and painted three battle pictures for the Tiflis Museum of Military History. In 1904-1905 he was the official painter at the RussianJapanese war, and later explored themes linked to the Red Army as a military painter.

Born in the Ukraine in 1860, Nikolai Semenovich Samokish received academic training at the St.Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts between 1879 and 1885, and in 1886 was granted a travel scholarship from the Academy, enabling him to study painting in Paris. Samokish was well versed in the traditions of military painting in the late nineteenth century, and sought to expand the repertoire of Russian military painting through his own work.

Samokish returned to the Academy in 1912 – as a professor this time. In recognition for his mastery of the genre, he was appointed director of the Academy’s battle-scene class, where his students included M. I. Avilov, P. I. Kotov, and G. K. Savitskii.

He based a number of paintings on the heroic feats of the Red Army during the Civil War of 1918–20. Notable among these canvases is The Crossing of the Si-vash by the Red Army (1935), held in the Simferopol Art Museum.

Samokish was also well known as an illustrator: he contributed 173 illustrations to four volumes of Royal Hunting in Russia (1896– 1911), illustrated A Century of the Ministry of War and A History of the Dragoon Life Guards Regiment (1890’s) and the works of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol and Leo Tolstoy.

Works by Nikolai Samokish can be found in such museums collections as the State Russian Museum in St.Petersburg, the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Kiev national museum of Russian art, Simferopol Art Museum and others.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 55

Ruzhnikov

56 • PAINTINGS

GASTON LA TOUCHE (1854 – 1913) SCÈNE DE THÉÂTRE circa 1910 oil on canvas 77.5 x 86 cm signed and inscribed lower left: Gaston La Touche StC Provenance Private collection, France The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Selina Baring Maclennan The painting is a stunning example of the harmonious decorative style of the artist’s mature period. It show his trademark delicate brushwork and beautifully vivid palette, and the subject matter reflects the influence of the Rococo painters, such as Watteau and Fragonard.

In this wonderful display of colour and technique, in La Touche’s characteristic style, he depicts a glorious scene set outside in an open air theatre, popular in the late 19th - early 20th century.

The audience, comprising elegant men and women, grouped together in front of the stage, are enjoying a piece of theatre on a beautiful summer’s evening, the women gently fanning themselves in the warm dusk air. The figure to the right is perhaps taking part as narrator. The play appears to be set in the 18th century, according to the players’ costumes and the men with their tricorn hats.

Gaston La Touche The Arbor, 1906 Walters Art Museum, Baltimore WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 57

Ruzhnikov

The painting is signed and inscribed “StC” on the lower left to denote that it was painted at La Touche’s family home in St Cloud, on the outskirts of Paris. St Cloud was a wealthy town where many Parisians owned large villas. The town borders onto the Parc de St Cloud where the Chateau de Saint-Cloud was located, which then leads onto Versailles.

Born in St Cloud, near Paris on 29th October 1854, Gaston La Touche showed an early vocation for an artistic career. From the age of ten, he spent every available moment of recreation drawing, and eventually managed to obtain permission from his parents to take lessons from a Monsieur Paul. His teacher quickly discovered his natural aptitude and encouraged the young boy to persevere with his studies.

Interrupted by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the lessons ceased when the family fled to Normandy. La Touche never received any further formal training, but he came under the influence of two older painters, one of whom in particular was to have a profound and far-reaching effect on the development of European painting. The two were Felix Bracquemond and Edouard Manet.

La Touche was born into one of the most exciting periods of Western Art – the Impressionist movement was gathering momentum and painting as we know it was to change forever.

His early career was influenced by the Realist movement of which François Bonvin, Jean-François Millet and Pascal DagnanBouveret were the revered masters.

Heeding Bracquemond’s advice, he showed two works, “Les Phlox” and “Les Pivoines” in his new style, the former being immediately purchased by the French State, and is still hanging in the Musée de la Roche-sur-Yon today. La Touche was so overcome with this official recognition that he made a bonfire of some two hundred paintings in his early style that remained in his studio. He made another bonfire later in life, shortly before his untimely death in 1913.

In Europe, La Touche was represented by the most important dealers of his day: Georges Petit, Galerie Boussod & Valladon, Manzi Joyant and The Fine Art Society.

Gaston La Touche had three main associations with America during his lifetime – the first was with the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, where he exhibited nineteen paintings between the years 1897 and 1914. The other two associations were more personal. Through the close friendship between his wife and Madame Knoedler, La Touche exhibited regularly at M. Knoedler & Co in New York. This was the same dealer who assisted the titans of the period with the formation of their collections – men like Andrew Mellon, Samuel Kress and Henry Clay Frick to name but a few. The artist’s final American connection was 58 • PAINTINGS

Gaston La Touche A Water Fountain in the Tuileries, c. 1919 Musée d’Orsay

with Cornelia B. Sage Quinton (1876-1936), the Director of the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York. She was the first woman director of an American museum.

La Touche was extremely well-respected in his lifetime and was commissioned to paint numerous works for government and public buildings, including a suite of “Quatre Saisons” for the Town Hall in Saint-Cloud, a decorative panel for the restaurant “Le Train bleu” at the Gare de Lyon, The Senate and a large impressive work painted on a gold ground panel for the First Class Dining Room of the Liner SS France (1911). This ship was the rival to the Titanic and was known as the ‘Chateau of the Seas’.

La Touche exhibited regularly at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Société des Peintres et Sculpteurs, as well as at the Société de la Peinture à l’Eau which he had founded in 1906 and of which he was president. A large exhibition at the Galeries Georges Petit was held in 1908 and another at Boussod and Valadon in The Hague, some two months before he died suddenly while working on a painting on 12th July 1913.

La Touche’s paintings are held in major museum collections internationally, including The State Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg, Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and others.

One of his most important friendships was with the poet and playwright Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), famously known for his play “Cyrano de Bergerac”. La Touche painted a number of works for his home The Villa Arnaga in Cambo, which also housed a number of decorative panels by the PostImpressionist artist Henri Martin (1860-1943). Upon the occasion of La Touche’s first solo exhibition in 1908 at the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris, Rostand wrote a wonderful poem for the catalogue. Other important clients included Raymond Poincaré, the French Prime Minister, Serge Shchoukine, Princess Tenicheff, M. Kousnitzoff (Odessa), Le Comte de Raczuskie, Mr Calouste Gulbenkian and the King of Siam.

Gaston La Touche Translation of a Holy Relic, 1899 The State Hermitage Museum

Gaston La Touche Dinner at the Casino, c. 1906 Dayton Art Institute WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 59

Ruzhnikov

60 • PAINTINGS

GASTON LA TOUCHE (1854 – 1913) LE RÊVE DU POÈTE circa 1910 oil on canvas 109 x 124.5 cm signed and inscribed: Stc, on boat end & inscribed: Peint P. M. Chouanard, lower centre Provenance Collection Emile Chouanard (1861-1930), France Lucie Chouanard Goiran (by descent from the above) Philip Goiran, USA (by descent from the above) Exhibitions Brussels, Galerie des Artistes Français, Gaston La Touche, 18 February 1932-6 March 1932, no. 8 The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Selina Baring Maclennan This delightfully painted scene comprises all that is important and most well-known of Gaston La Touche’s paintings: the autumnal setting which was his preferred season; swans at play; a joyful landscape in the distance with satyrs running through a meadow; a beautiful woman with her baby and a man (the poet) happily contemplating his life, whilst cupids tear at the red autumnal leaves and Pan plays his flute. The present work was painted at the artist’s home in St Cloud, just outside Paris, for the great art collector Emile Chouanard, who lived on the Avenue Montaigne. Chouanard was one of La Touche’s most important patrons and other works by La Touche from the collection are found in museums in the United States today.

During his long, prolific career, La Touche was awarded a number of official commissions for large-scale decorative schemes at various French ministries. These large canvases and murals are characterised by glowing colours and broad brushstrokes. The present work is a smaller version of a composition belonging to one of such series - a large-scale decorative program of four pieces that were executed around 1910 for the Parisian Sénat and depict allegorical figures of the Poet, Painter, Musician the Sculptor.

The painting demonstrates the artist’s stylistic shift after the 1890’s, his move from sober realism, inspired by Zola’s novels, to idealistic compositions of peaceful parks and fanciful gardens dotted by fountains, streams and forests populated by swans, water nymphs and fauns. During this period, La Touche employed techniques reminiscent of those of his fellow artists Henri Martin and Henri le Sidaner, by using a palette composed of carefully studied colour complements and contrasts and creating multi-coloured surfaces and a magical atmosphere.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 61

Ruzhnikov

62 • PAINTINGS

DELPHIN ENJOLRAS (1857 – 1945) LA LECTURE circa 1900 oil on canvas 55 x 73 cm signed lower left: D Enjolras Curled into her chaise longue, a languid young woman spends the evening with a novel. The listless, hazy beauty of the scene is characteristic of the artist’s dreamlike compositions. Much of the effect is, in this composition, achieved through the textures of the fabric against the subject’s body, its folds falling from her shoulders, the fine material draping her in a shining nimbus.

Enjolras drew inspiration from the lives of the haute bourgeois and aristocracy of early twentieth-century French society. The soft-focus effect achieved by using a single light source to illuminate a scene realised in his delicate brushstrokes is in evidence here. This is a portrait of domestic bliss, laced with erotic potential.

Born in Coucouron, in the Ardèche region of south east France, Delphin Enjolras went on to study in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Léon Gérôme, one of the key exponents of the Academic style that would dominate the mainstream of European art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and against which radical movements such as Impressionism and Fauvism opposed themselves. Among his peers at the Beaux-Arts was Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, who became a leading figure in the naturalist school of painting, and Gustave-Claude-Étienne Courtois. He later entered the École de Dessin, where he studied under Gaston Gérard.

Academicism, named for the fact that it was the mode taught at the registered academies, was by the time that Enjolras came to artistic maturity much the most popular style in France.

Exhibitions such as the Paris Salon and the Salon d’Automne attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors in the course of their two month runs, during which paintings were hung gridlike on the venue’s walls. Enjolras, a regular exhibitor at the Salon of the Societaire des Artistes Français (to which he was elected a member in 1901), worked in Paris and in the South of France, painting portraits, nudes and interiors in oil, watercolour and pastel. He also created a series of fine landscapes, the most notable of which can be found in the museums of Puy and Calvet d’Avignon.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 63

Ruzhnikov

64 • PAINTINGS

DELPHIN ENJOLRAS (1857 – 1945) NU DEVANT LE FOYER circa 1900 oil on canvas 73 x 54 cm signed lower left: D Enjolras Returned from an evening’s entertainment, the elegant female subject familiar from other of Enjolras’ paintings reclines in front of the fire. Lit by a low, warm glow emphasising the contours of her body and the softness of her skin, she is turned in halfprofile, as if lost in thought. Her glamour, and her physical allure, is reflected in the soft furnishings on which she relaxes: the discarded silk gown; the fur rug beneath her feet.

That this work was intended as part of a series is evident in the recurrence of certain features from other of Enjolras’ works.

Atop the mantelpiece stands a jade vase similar to that in his Élégante se délassant, and we might understand this painting as documenting one stage in the evening of a fashionable French lady belonging to high society. The precisely-rendered interior demonstrates the artist’s ability to capture the domestic scene and the composition is typical, too, of Enjolras’ focus on the nude in the latter part of his career.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 65

Ruzhnikov

66 • PAINTINGS

DELPHIN ENJOLRAS (1857 – 1945) ÉLÉGANTE SE DÉLASSANT circa 1900 oil on canvas 73 x 54 cm signed lower left: D Enjolras A graceful, long-limbed woman, dressed in the most fashionable styles of the time, returns from the evening’s entertainment.

Her elegant demeanour is reflected in the accoutrements of her costume—the bejewelled flapper hat, her diaphanous silk dress, the narrow curve of her high-heel—and amplified by the tasteful surroundings in which she relaxes, from the luxurious rug beneath her feet to the Bourbon-style mahogany cabinet and the jade vase perched atop the mantelpiece. Caught in the intimate surroundings of her bedroom, and bathed in the soft, warm glow of a standing lamp, she embodies a soft, sensuous ideal of femininity.

The scene captures the decadent, luxurious ambiance of high society during the Belle Epoque in France. The model’s posture, reaching down to an arched ankle, her dress slipping off her shoulder, invests the tableau with a subtle but unmistakeable erotic thrill. A fine example of the intimate, opulent style of painting for which Enjolras was best known during his lifetime, this work of art casts the viewer back in time to the era of the aesthete and a flamboyant, aristocratic style of living now long past.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 67

Ruzhnikov

68 • PAINTINGS

FRANZ ROUBAUD (1856 – 1928) BUZKASHI 1889 oil on canvas 120 x 180 cm signed and dated lower left: F Roubaud/1889 Provenance Private collection, USA Buzkashi ranks among the most important paintings by Roubaud in private hands. The large and impressive oil painting is a rare example of the artist’s mature style.

The painting belongs to the key period of the artist’s career.

During the late 1880’s - early 1890’s Roubaud created his most accomplished masterpieces, including the famous Caucasus cycle (1885-1893) and its centerpiece The Storm of Achulgo (the Museum of Graphic Arts in Makhachkala, Daghestan). The period was marked by Roubaud’s increased official recognition: he had his first solo exhibitions in St. Petersburg (1898), Paris (1891), and Madrid (1892). In 1890 he was admitted to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and gained several prestigious awards.. Most artworks from this period are in museums (The Russian Museum, St.Petersburg; Museum-panorama The Borodino Battle, Moscow; P. S. Gamsatova Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts, Machachkala; A. Tacho Godi Dagestan State Museum, Machachkala; Museum of History of Azerbaijan, Baku).

Buzkashi or kokpar (literally «goat bashing» in Turkic, buz is Turkic for «goat» and kashi means «bashing») is Central Asian sport in which horse-mounted players attempt to drag a goat carcass toward a goal. Buzkashi is played amongst Kyrgyz, Pashtuns, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Turkmens.

It is widely believed the game was first played in the Oxus basin, now known as the Amu Darya, along a border of Afghanistan.

Expert horsemen, the nomads of northern Afghanistan fought Alexander the Great’s triumphant army to a standstill. When the ancient Greeks first saw these formidable horsemen of Central Asia, they believed the legend of the centaur (half horse, half man) had materialized. For any witness of modern Buzkashi, this reaction is easily understood. Before moving on to India, Alexander replenished his cavalry with this sturdy breed of horse.

Many people associate Buzkashi with the famous Genghis Khan. The Mongol horsemen were adept at advancing swiftly on enemy campsites and, without dismounting, swooping up sheep, goats, and other pillage at a full gallop. One theory is that in retaliation, the inhabitants of northern Afghanistan established a mounted defence against the raids and this practice might be the direct forbearer of today’s Buzkashi. As speculative as this story on the origins of Buzkashi might be, it seems a plausible re-enactment of the campaigns of the great Mongol and his Golden Horde in Asia Minor.

Franz Alexyeevich Roubaud (1856-1928) - famous Russian battle and genre painter. Born in Odessa in 1856 to a Catholic family of French descent. Since 1865, he studied at the Odessa Drawing School, and since 1877 at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.

Having returned to Russia, Franz Roubaud taught at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St.Petersburg. In 1913 he left Russia and settled in Munich, where he lived for the rest of his life.

The first success came to Roubaud in 1880’s when he painted 18 monumental canvases depicting the conquest of Caucasus by the Russian Empire.

Roubaud is one of the most celebrated Russian battle painters, a master of grandiose size canvases. His most famous works are the Defense of Sebastopol, 1902-1904 and Panorama of the Battle of Borodino, 1912.

Roubaud’s paintings are in the collection of the Pinacotheque Museum in Munich, The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian Museum in St.Petersburg and many others.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 69

Ruzhnikov

70 • PAINTINGS

KONSTANTIN MAKOVSKY (1839 - 1915) PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST’S WIFE oil on canvas 214 x 110 cm 1900 signed lower left: K Makovsky 1900 Provenance Private collection, Europe Sale Blanchet & Joron-Derem, Paris, November 10, 2000, lot 63 Private collection, USA Exhibitions Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900 Literature Catalogue illustre officiel de l’exposition decennale des beaxarts, Paris 1900 L. Greder, Loisirs d’art: mélanges, la peinture étrangère à l’Exposition de 1900, Paris, 1900 W. Salmond, R.E. Martin, W. Zeisler, Konstantin Makovsky: The Tsar’s Painter in America and Paris, Hillwood, 2016, illustrated Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky left a significant artistic legacy.

He worked as a genre painter, was a master of history painting and was also a skilled landscape artist. However, Makovsky is especially renowned for his elegant female salon portraits.

Makovsky frequently painted women he was close to. He was happily married three times. Maria Alexeevna Matavtina (1869-1919) was his third wife. The artist met her in 1889 in Paris, where he kept a studio. As a result, Makovsky divorced his second wife, Iulia Pavlovna, in 1892 and remarried in 1898.

Maria Alekseevna was thirty years younger than him.

From the 1890s, Maria Alekseevna became the artist’s favourite model. Her portraits were frequently shown at various exhibitions. She posed for such famous paintings as Romeo and Juliet (1895, Odessa Art Museum) and Ophelia.

The present portrait of Maria Matavtina is painted in the best tradition of classical formal European portraiture, imparting the desire of a maestro to compete with the Old Masters. It is not by chance that Makovsky’s contemporaries compared him to van Dyck while the art critics remarked that ‘His colours sing, like those of Rubens.’ As Dr Elena Nesterova writes, ‘his canvases...combined the formal and the intimate, the majestic and the sentimental... [They] were remarkable for their superb technique, excellent detail (...) rich and decorative colours, the freedom and energy of the brushwork’ (K.Makovsky, St.Petersburg, 2003, p. 268).

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 71

Ruzhnikov

Konstantin Makovsky Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Maria Alekseevna Makovskaya, circa 1900 Private Collection

72 • PAINTINGS

Makovsky’s female portraits constitute a body of superb painting, with a wonderful sense of detail and of its place in the overall composition of the work, a richness and ornamentation of colouring, a free and temperamental brushwork and an eroticism, which although not overt, was nevertheless expressed in the very presentation of the image. This portrait of the artist’s third wife, Maria Matavtina, possesses all of these characteristics to the highest degree.

Konstantin Yegorovich Makovsky (1839—1915) was an influential Russian painter, affiliated with the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers). Konstantin was born in Moscow as the older son of a painter Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky. His brothers Vladimir and Nikolai and his sister Alexandra also went on to become painters.

In 1851 Konstantin entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where he soon became the top student. His teachers were Karl Bryullov and Vasily Tropinin.

Makovsky’s inclinations to Romanticism and decorative effects can be explained by the influence of Briullov.

In 1858 Makovsky entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in St.Petersburg. From 1860 he participated in the exhibitions of Academia with paintings such as Curing of the Blind (1860) and Agents of the False Dmitry kill the son of Boris Godunov (1862).

In 1863 Makovsky, together with the other 13 students eligible to participate in the competition for the Large Gold Medal of Academia, refused to paint on the set topic in Scandinavian mythology and instead left Academia without a formal diploma.

In 1863 he joined the St.Petersburg Artel of Artists led by Ivan Kramskoy, the forerunner of the Wanderers and the most potent symbol of the break with classical tradition. From 1870 he was a founding member of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions also known as Peredvizhniki (‘Wanderers’). As a member of the Wanderers, Makovsky was most notable for his new subject matter, namely the common people. However, he split with the society in 1883 and by 1891 had become a member of the newly formed and more Salon-orientated St.Petersburg Society of Artists, of which he was subsequently to be president. He exhibited his works on both the Academia exhibitions of the Wanderers.

A significant change in his style occurred after traveling to Egypt and Serbia in the mid-1870’s. His interests changed from social and psychological problems to the artistic problems of colours and shape.

In the 1880’s Makovsky became a fashioned author of portraits and historical paintings. He exhibited in Vienna, Dresden and Berlin, and settled in Paris, where his work was shown at the Salon de Paris. In 1889, for his paintings Death of Ivan the Terrible, The Judgement of Paris, and Demon and Tamara he was awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle and made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. He was one of the most highly appreciated and highly paid Russian artists of the time.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 73

Ruzhnikov

74 • PAINTINGS

NIKOLAI KHARITONOV (1880 – 1944) RELIGIOUS PROCESSION AT THE PSKOV PECHERSKY MONASTERY circa 1900 oil on canvas 63.5 x 80 cm signed in Cyrillic lower left: N. Kharitonov Provenance Private collection Sale Sotheby’s London The Russian Sale: Thursday, December 14, 1995, Lot 209 Private collection, London The Pskov Pechersky Monastery of the Caves is located 50 kilometres west of the city of Pskov: the caves were originally used by religious hermits. Nikolai Kharitonov brought a profound understanding of the religious and cultural world of monastic life to this painting, having spent part of his early life in training to be a monk at the orthodox monastery in the island of Valaam in northwest Russia. Primarily known for his portraits and genre scenes, Kharitonov also painted numerous exceptional landscapes of the Russian North, the Crimea and the Caucasus.

Kharitonov’s focus here is not on individual characters so much as the grander significance of the crowd itself. The loose, expressive brushwork suggests the influence of Impressionism.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 75

Ruzhnikov

76 • PAINTINGS

LOUIS ABEL-TRUCHET (1857 – 1918) FÊTE FORAINE À MONTMARTRE 1911 oil on canvas 89 x 116.5 cm signed and dated lower left: Abel Truchet 1911 Provenance Private collection, Paris Exhibitions Exposition Universelle et Internationale, Ghent, 6 April - 31 October 1913, no. 167 Fête Foraine à Montmartre is a perfect example of Louis AbelTruchet’s richly painted Parisian scenes. In this painting, the viewer’s eyes are drawn to the brightly lit spinning carousel and the majestic facade of the Sacré-Coeur, which shines from the top of the hill.

Born in Versailles in 1857, Abel-Truchet began his career at the prestigious Academie Julian in Paris. Alongside other notable artists, including Henri Matisse and André Derain, he studied there under the tuition of Julien Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant. From 1891, he began to exhibit at numerous salons, including the famous Salon d’Automne, the Salon des Artistes Français and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Аbel-Truchet developed an Impressionistic style, using vigorous brushwork to depict the excitement and atmosphere of modern life.

Abel-Truchet is well-known for his elegant paintings capturing the life of Belle Époque Paris with its cafés, theatres and shops.

Like so many other artists, he was particularly drawn to the artist’s quarter of Montmartre, which characterised the artistic life of the city: his images of cafe-concerts, the Place Pigalle, the Folies-Bergère and the Moulin Rouge have become part of popular culture through widespread reproductions.

Works by the artist can be found in major museum collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Мusée Carnavalet, Paris, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Pau, France, Musée de Grenoble, France, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Le Petit Palais, Paris, and the Smithsonian Museums, Washington, DC.

Louis Abel-Truchet Le Gaumont Palace illuminé dans la nuit Musée Carnavalet, Paris

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 77

Ruzhnikov

78 • PAINTINGS

ARMAND GUILLAUMIN (1841-1927) PAYSAGE DE LA CREUSE circa 1900 oil on canvas 72 x 91 cm signed lower left: Guillaumin Provenance Private Collection A colleague and friend of Pissarro, Cezanne, Gauguin, and later Van Gogh, Guillaumin’s contribution to Impressionist landscape painting have long recognized by scholars. Paysage de la Creuse is an example Guillaumin’s mature proto-Fauve style, characterized by the expressive use of colour and constructive brushstroke. The composition bears the stamp of Guillaumin’s friendship with Van Gogh, who in the late-1880’s alerted him to radical chromatic innovations of the Pont-Aven group.

The painting depicts a view of the Creuse Valley, one of Guillaumin’s favourite places, which he had frequented since the early 1890’s, being known as the unofficial leader of the so called Crozant School. Guillaumin was one of many prominent artists who admired the picturesque landscapes of Creuse. It was here in 1889 that Claude Monet conceived his first true series, paving way for the artistic method that three decades later was to find its most accomplished expression in the famed Waterlilies.

Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin was born in Paris in 1841. He studied at the Académie Suisse, where he met Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro who were to become his lifelong friends.

Their influences are clear, especially in his early works, which act as a basis from which Guillaumin developed his own mature style of post-impressionist landscape painting. Together with Pissarro and Cézanne, Guillaumin exhibited at the first Salon des Refusés in 1863. He participated in six of the eight Impressionist exhibitions: 1874, 1877, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1886.

Guillaumin’s early reputation was based upon his accomplishment as a draughtsman, his style characterised by the dynamism and economy of his line. He was quickly accepted into the circle of Emile Zola and Edouard Manet, a mark of acceptance into Paris’ flourishing, bohemian artistic circles. In his 1880 article ‘Le Naturalisme au Salon’, in which he continued his efforts to promote the Impressionists as the real artists of their day, Zola wrote that, ‘Pissarro, Sisley, Guillaumin followed in the footsteps of Claude Monet … they committed themselves to faithfully rendering the corners of nature in Paris, under the true light of the sun, without recoiling from the most unexpected effects of colour.’

In 1883, Guillaumin befriended Paul Signac, and then Georges Seurat. In the following years he began to work in the pointillist style. In 1886 he became close with Vincent van Gogh, with whose work his own has certain affinities.

Towards the end of his life, the vigour of his brushwork and his bright palette brought him close to the Fauves.

In the 1890’s Guillaumin’s prospects improved when he was taken up by the dealer Auguste Portier, who had commenced his career with Durand-Ruel. Financial stability allowed him to travel: he spent some time in Saint-Palais, in 1893-1913 he worked in the Creuse, Crozant, Agay, Auvergne, Louin, Rouen, and Holland. With his death in 1927, Guillaumin was the last survivor of the Impressionist group, of which he was one of the most faithful members.

Guillaumin’s works can be found in major museum collections around the world, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée d’Orsay, the State Hermitage, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Neue Pinakothek in Munich and many others.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 79

Ruzhnikov

80 • PAINTINGS

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919) VUE DU MOURILLON 1890 oil on canvas 46 x 56 cm signed lower right: Renoir Provenance Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris Private Collection, Switzerland Sale: Galerie Motte, Geneva, 27th November 1965, lot 71 Purchased at the above sale by the late owner Exhibitions An Exhibition of Paintings from European Collections in aid of the Renoir Foundation, London, Marlborough Fine Art, Renoir, 1956, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue This work will be included in the forthcoming Renoir Catalogue critique being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute and established from the archives of François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein.

This work will be included in the second supplement to the Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles de Pierre-Auguste Renoir being prepared by Guy Patrice Dauberville and Floriane Dauberville, published by Bernheim-Jeune.

Vue du Mourillon is a serene and evocative vision embodies the fresh spontaneity of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s later pleinair painting. Painted in 1890, the present work depicts a lush landscape in the Southern Mediterranean with rich green foliage, feathery vibrant blue brushstrokes and a sailboat visible in the distance. Unlike Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet who often depicted labourers in landscapes, Renoir preferred to focus on scenes of leisure. Discussing Renoir’s landscapes from this period and how they helped to shape the rest of his career, John House comments that Renoir’s paintings of the early 1890’s were characterised by a ‘softer more supple handling... This harmonious interrelation of man and nature became a central theme in Renoir’s late work’ (Renoir (exhibition catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London; Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris & Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1985-86, p. 262).

The late nineteenth century was a particularly prosperous time for Renoir, during which he began to achieve a degree of economic success. By this time, Renoir had become recognised as one of the foremost Impressionist painters and received a significant degree of financial support from the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. This newfound financial freedom allowed him to paint en plein-air with greater frequency, finding that the freshness of natural light was much more desirable to studio work.Vue du Mourillon is a vivid and bright composition created during this period of artistic growth. During this time, Renoir travelled to the south of France annually, motivated in part by his weakening health but also in search of fresh inspiration for new paintings. In a letter to Durand-Ruel, towards the end of one of his stays in the Mediterranean, Renoir comments on the glorious weather and his newfound delight in plein-air painting: ‘I am cramming myself with sunshine!’ He continued, ‘This landscape painter’s craft is very difficult for me, but these three months will have taken me further than a year in the studio.

Afterwards I’ll come back and be able to take advantage at home of my experiments’ (quoted in Barbara Ehrlich White, Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters, New York, 1984, p. 191).

The present work was acquired from Galerie Motte in 1965 by Annemarie Düringer and has remained in her family’s collection until the present day. A Swiss actress of extraordinary beauty, Düringer was a member of the prestigious Vienna Burgtheater where she was known for her portrayal of Queen Elisabeth in Schiller’s Maria Stuart.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 81

Ruzhnikov

82 • PAINTINGS

HENRY MORET (1856 – 1913) ÎLE DE HOUAT 1893 oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm signed, dated and titled lower left: ‘Île de Houat. Henry Moret. 1893 Provenance Arthur Tooth & Sons, London (no. A6969); Private collection, London Île de Houat is a fine example of Henry Moret’s Pont-Aven school period, and testifies to his admiration for Paul Gauguin.

Although he was a native of Normandy and received an academic training in Paris, Henry Moret spent almost the entirety of his working life in Brittany. In 1888 he came to PontAven, which had by then been an artist’s colony for over twenty years. Gauguin had just returned there from Martinique to embark on a second stay at the Pension Gloanec, where he was joined also by Emile Bernard, Charles Laval, and Ernest de Chamaillard Moret’s earliest artistic training took place in the Breton town of Loreint under Ernest Corroller, a disciple of Corot and Courbet who introduced him to plein air painting. Later as a student in the Ecôle des Beaux-Arts in Paris, his style betrayed leanings towards the Barbizon School of landscape painting. Throughout this period he continued to spend time in Brittany, and his first submission to the Salon in 1880 was entitled Marée Basse; Côte de Bretagne. In the ensuing years he led a peripatetic existence exploring the coastline of Brittany, while still exhibited at the Paris Salon. The present painting depicts a view from a small island off the southern coast of Brittany. Île de Houat, bears all the hallmarks of the artist’s Pont-Aven period, which lasted from 1888 until the mid-1890’s. In its palette and its handling of the medium, it compares closely with The Island of Raguenez, Brittany. The abbreviated description of the motif in both of these paintings points to Moret’s adherence to the practices of Synthetism, a frequent subject of conversation at the Pension Gloanec in the summer of 1888.

According to this technique, the artist was to identify the salient characteristics of a motif and deploy these in order to capture the essence of his subject. Influenced by Japanese woodcut prints, Gauguin also advocated description of a motif by means of unmodulated colour instead of modelling, and tilting the perspective sharply up or downward. The result was an artistic accent considered suitable for the depiction of rural subjects and savage nature.

Gauguin, a charismatic and persuasive figure, believed that the painter should not ‘copy from nature too much. Art is an abstraction; derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming

before it, but think more of creating than the actual result’ (Letter to Schuffenecker, quoted in Gauguin and the Pont-Aven Group, exhib. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1966, 7 January – 13 February 1966, p. 8). In Île de Houat, Moret simplifies the view to give a condensed account of his motif. Meanwhile, thanks to his handling of the brush, the surface of the canvas is animated by a network of shimmering strokes of colour that emphasise the medium and concurrently diminish the pictorial content.

Together with the simplification of form, these qualities are closely comparable with Gauguin’s Seascape with Cow on the Edge of a Cliff, which depicts a scene close to Le Pouldu.

By remaining in Brittany throughout his mature career, Henry Moret somewhat isolated himself from the art world.

Nevertheless, in 1895 he entered into an agreement with the Paris dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who successfully sold his paintings to collectors in Europe and America.

His paintings are held in such collections as Musée d’Orsay, the Hermitage, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Museums and Galleries of Wales, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and many others.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 83

Ruzhnikov

84 • PAINTINGS

HENRY MORET (1856 – 1913) LES GABELOUS (THE CUSTOMS OFFICERS) 1891 oil on canvas 48 x 61 cm signed and dated lower left: Henry Moret (18)91 In this painting, Moret depicts Customs Officers in their navy uniform with red striped trousers perched atop the cliffs and rocky coastal outcrops which are typical of the rugged Breton landscape. Brittany has 1300 kilometers of coastal paths. These pathways were created during the French Revolution by the customs authorities for surveillance of the coast and to combat smuggling and the pillaging of shipwrecks.

Day and night they scoured the coastline, rifles at the ready, on the lookout for illicit unloading of salt, tobacco, coffee, or weapons.

The Breton coast, due to its rugged terrain with thousands of inlets and its sheer length was a favourite site for illegal landings of a vast range of smuggled goods. Thus, until the beginning of the 20th century, hundreds of customs officers walked the coastal paths day and night in all types of weather, seeking to intercept any illegal smuggling of goods.

Today, the pathways once used by the customs officers are protected sites, and are now registered hiking trails for walkers and ramblers. The trail meanders along the Breton coast from Saint-Nazaire to Mont-Saint- Michel, offering spectacular maritime landscapes. It passes by the Guerande salt marshes and the Bay of Douarnenez, and further north, the jagged reefs of the Coast of the Abers.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 85

Ruzhnikov

86 • PAINTINGS

FERNAND MORIN (1878-1937) LE PORT ANIMÉ circa 1900 oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm Fernand Morin - French Post-Impressionist artist, known principally for his landscapes and industrial cityscapes.

Fernand Morin was born in 1878 in St-Aubin de Baubigné (DeuxSèvres) in Western France. The artist belonged to the so-called Pont-Aven school - the group of painters associated with Paul Gauguin in Brittany. From 1906 the artist exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 87

Ruzhnikov

88 • PAINTINGS

LÉON DE SMET (1881 – 1966) SOUS-BOIS 1909 oil on canvas 100 x 140 cm signed and dated lower left: Leon De Smet 1909 Exhibitions Kunstenaars zien Latem, Latemse Kunstkring, Sint-MartensLatem, 1974, no. 72 Leon De Smet 1881-1966, Museum Leon De Smet, Sint-MartensLatem, 1991 Léon de Smet was born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1881. He received his artistic training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and in 1901 held his first exhibition in the city. He exhibited regularly throughout the 1900’s, in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent. In 1909, he represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale and the following year his work was included in an international exhibition in Brussels alongside Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. Léon was the younger brother of Gustave de Smet, who was also a painter.

In 1906 Léon joined the Second Group of Saint-Martens-Latem, an artists’ colony including the painters Maurice Sys, Frits van den Berghe, Constant Permeke, and his brother Gustave de Smet. His time in Saint-Martens-Latem proved highly influential: it was here that de Smet developed the neo-impressionistic techniques, combining fragmented pictorial surfaces with bold colour combinations, that underpinned his mature style.

De Smet moved to London in 1914; he lived there throughout the war. Though motivated by necessity, de Smet’s relocation had a hugely beneficial impact on his career. The painter began to move in literary circles, whose members included George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy and Joseph Conrad, and exhibited paintings in the Royal Academy. De Smet returned to Belgium in 1920 and, throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s, continued to exhibit widely in Europe and America. In 1953 the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent honoured the 72-year-old artist by staging a large solo exhibition of his work; the gallery now contains a number of de Smet’s canvases.

His paintings are also held in the Groeningemuseum, Bruges, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 89

Ruzhnikov

90 • PAINTINGS

LÉON DE SMET (1881 – 1966) AU BORD DU BOIS 1909 oil on canvas 75 x 80 cm signed and dated lower left: Leon De Smet 1909 Provenance Sale De Vuyst, Old Masters, Modern and Contemporary Art, 14 May 2011, lot 111 Private collection, USA Dating from the period in which Léon de Smet was living in an artists’ commune in Saint-Martens-Latem, in his native Belgium, the present painting displays the influence of French developments in Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist thought on the artist’s work. Chosen to represent Belgium at the Venice Biennale the same year he produced this canvas, de Smet was keenly aware of artistic developments on the Continent.

Particularly pertinent to this canvas is the Impressionist fascination with shadow and half-shadow; their infinite nuances of colour and shade. De Smet demonstrates his mastery of the concept in his subtle evocation of the foreground grass, setting the complementary colours of red and green, vermillion and emerald, against each other.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 91

Ruzhnikov

92 • PAINTINGS

LÉON DE SMET (1881 – 1966) NATURE MORTE AUX FLEURS, COQUILLAGES ET ÉVENTAIL 1914 oil on burlap 72.1 x 92 cm signed and dated lower left: Léon de Smet, 1914 Provenance Private collection, USA Generous application of paint combines with a highly focused composition in this richly textured still life. Saturated in tones of intense red, this is a highly controlled canvas – the tabletop provides a readymade pictorial device for drawing together the disparate elements into a unified whole, strongly demonstrative of the more decorative style developed by de Smet during the 1910’s. The Impressionistic picture surface, in which applications of impasto oil appear to vibrate against narrow patches of bare canvas, is brought into tension with the painting’s more strongly linear aspects.

Léon de Smet moved from Antwerp to London in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War. Among the first works created by the artist in England, Nature Morte aux Fleurs, Coquillages et Éventail demonstrates his use of burlap backing. A rougher, darker surface than the more traditional canvas fabric, burlap challenged the artist to adapt his technique. He developed a dense yet exuberant style through the 1910’s that prefigured the more decorative work of the following decade. As we can see on this canvas, the burlap encouraged de Smet to experiment with a looser painting technique that greatly enhanced the vibrancy of his images, while losing none of his underlying sense of pictorial form.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 93

Ruzhnikov

94 • PAINTINGS

LÉON DE SMET (1881 – 1966) COUCHER DE SOLEIL SUR LE VILLAGE circa 1920 oil on canvas 74 x 106 cm signed lower left: Léon de Smet Provenance Private collection, Belgium Literature P. Boyens, H. Bosschaert, Léon De Smet, 1994, pp. 153-156, 246 Though painted in a recognisably expressive mode, the artist’s generous application of paint, combined with a palette of astonishing intensity, lends this painting a luminous, almost visionary quality. While the painting captures a traditional scene of natural beauty – the sun descending through a cloudless sky, casting warm light on a peaceful village – the central positioning of the sun, the vertical motifs of the trees and church tower, and the sharply veering road produce an image that subverts the expectations of the genre. Rather than evoke the soft, sensual mood of an idealised evening, the artist here asserts the almost violent forcefulness of sunlight.

The painting dates from the period in which the artist had begun to experiment with burlap, following his move to London in 1914, on the outbreak of World War One. While de Smet’s use of discrete dashes of impasto colour do indeed recall Post-Impressionism, he allows the rough texture of the burlap beneath to ‘breathe’ through the image, producing a painting that appears to vibrate with light. While de Smet’s compositional techniques and subject matter recall his French contemporaries, such as Henri Martin, the density – and intensity – of his technique are highly distinctive.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 95

Ruzhnikov

96 • PAINTINGS

NIKOLAI BOGDANOV-BELSKY (1868 – 1945)

BY LANTERN LIGHT circa 1900 oil on canvas 76.8 x 63.5 cm signed lower left: N. Bogdanoff-Belsky Provenance Private collection, USA Sale Sotheby’s Arcade, Old Master & 19th c. European Pntgs, Drws. & Wcs, December 9, 1988, lot 396 Private collection Exhibitions New York and other cities, Grand Central Palace, The Russian Art Exhibition, 1924 Literature The Russian Art Exhibition (exhibition catalogue), New York, 1924 Bogdanov-Belsky is best known for his charming genre paintings that capture the vitality of Russian children. Peasant children was always the main theme of his art. As he once remarked: ‘Children have always fascinated me; I have dedicated my life to them and still do’.

Painted in an Impressionist manner, By Lantern Light is a fine example of Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky’s later work. The picture plane is composed of a series of swiftly applied strokes of colour, focused on a humble moment of innocence and intimacy.

Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky was born in 1868 in the village of Shitiki in the Smolensk Province, Russia. In 1884-1889 he studied painting at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture under the renowned painters Vasilii Polenov and Vladimir Makovsky, and then, in 1894, at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St.Petersburg under Ilya Repin. In the late 1890’s Bogdanov-Belsky decided to continue his artistic education at the Colarossi Academy, a famous private studio in Paris attended by Gauguin and Modigliani, among others.

Bogdanov-Belsky was a prominent member of several groups of artists. These included the Peredvizhniki (or ‘Wanderers’) – an influential group of Russian Realist painters who rejected the restraints of the Academy – and the Arkhip Kuindzhi Society, of which he was founding member and, from 1913 to 1918, chairman.

Soon after the Revolution Bogdanov-Belsky left Russia and settled in Latvia. Since 1921 he lived and worked exclusively in Riga.

The artist’s works are well represented in the major Russian museums including the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian Museum and the State Hermitage in St.Petersburg, the Museum of Fine Arts in Perm.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 97

Ruzhnikov

98 • PAINTINGS

STANISLAV ZHUKOVSKY (1873 – 1944) INTERIOR OF THE SHEREMETYEVO PALACE IN KUSKOVO, MOSCOW 1917 oil on canvas 84 x 109 cm signed, dated and titled lower right: ‘Moskva, Kuskovo, S. Zukovski, 1917’ Provenance Private collection, Poland Private collection, USA Sale Butterfields, San-Francisco, USA, May 16, 2001 Private collection, USA Exhibitions The Society for Traveling Exhibitions (Tovarishchestvo peredvizhnykh khudozhestvennykh vystavok), Petrograd, 1918 Solo exhibition, Warsaw, 1923-1924 (supposedly) A celebrated Russian landscape artist of the Polish descent, Zhukovsky was one of the leading Russian Impressionist painters. He turned to interiors in the second decade of the twentieth century, embarking on a cycle of paintings depicting Russia’s grand estates.

The 1916-17 series of interiors of Kuskovo, the famous summer estate of the Sheremetev family, is considered to be his best work in this genre. Built in the mid-18th century several miles to the east of Moscow, the Palace of Kuskovo is one of the oldest and most beautiful summer residences in Russia. According to the design of its owner, Count Pyotr Sheremetev, Kuskovo was intended to be comparable in size and beauty to the Tsar’s own residences. In a letter addressed to Dmitri Sheremetev, Zhukovsky betrays his fascination with interiors: ‘Would you be kind enough to allow me to paint in your houses in Ostafievo and Kuskovo? I am a great admirer of the old times … Here they speak so clearly and are so wonderfully, carefully preserved. I would like to do some interiors of this priceless memorial to a wonderful era. Unfortunately, they have been disappearing so rapidly in recent times and there are few genuinely cultured and refined people who can appreciate these sacred places and are not converting them to factories and using as firewood the parks where Eugene Onegin once walked.’

The present painting belongs to the same series of the Sheremetyevo Palace interiors as the work now in the Warsaw National Gallery.

Stanislav Zhukovsky Kuskovo, 1917 Warsaw National Gallery

1892, where he studied under Isaac Levitan, Valentin Serov, and Vasily Polenov. Prior to his graduation in 1899, the Tretyakov Gallery acquired one of his paintings, entitled ‘Moonlit Night’. He exhibited with the Wanderers from 1896 to 1917—participating in the famous ‘World of Art’ exhibition in 1902—and became a member in 1904. He opened a private art studio where he tutored celebrated avant-garde artist Liubov Popova and the revolutionary poet and painter Vladimir Mayakovsky. In the early twentieth century, he developed an interest in the Impressionist movement, which was reflected in his works.

After the 1917 Revolution, he joined the Art Section of the People’s Commissariat of the Enlightenment and was appointed to the Art Committee of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. One of his paintings was exhibited at the First Russian Art Exhibition in Berlin in 1922. He moved back to his native Poland in 1923, where he died in a concentration camp shortly after the Warsaw uprising in 1944. Most of Zhukovsky’s later paintings were destroyed.

Works by the artist can still be found in major museum collections such as the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian Museum in St.Petersburg, the Warsaw National Gallery and the Galleria Nazionale in Rome.

Stanislav Zhukovsky was one of the most revered landscape artists in Russia. Born in the city of Grodno in 1873, he enrolled at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 99

Ruzhnikov

100 • PAINTINGS

GUSTAVE LOISEAU (1865-1935) BORDS DE LA SEINE 1913 oil on canvas 73 x 92 cm signed and dated lower right: G Loiseau 1913 Provenance Durand Ruel, Paris (acquired from the artist 7 November 1913, stock no. 10456/13190, photograph no. 77976) Private collection, France (acquired from the above 1 February 1985) Private collection, Brittany (acquired before 1996) This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by Didier Imbert.

Bords de la Seine exemplifies Gustave Loiseau’s lifelong fascination with the Seine and its tributaries. Highly characteristic of Loiseau’s en plein air technique, the present work captures the movement of the water, the stillness of the trees, and the enveloping mist of the river in the early evening light.

Although taught by Paul Gauguin, it was Loiseau’s close friend Claude Monet who would ultimately have the stronger influence over the artist. Having signed an exclusive contract with Monet’s influential dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in 1897, Loiseau was able to travel extensively throughout Normandy. Journeying down the Seine from source to mouth provided Loiseau with the inspiration for his most significant and successful body of work.

Bords de la Seine is a particularly intense example of his directly observed studies of the river. The palette of soft lavenders and lilacs, muted greens and delicate white create a painting that is as much an expression of a mood as a depiction of a place. It is a particularly subtle demonstration of the reason behind the artist’s reputation as the ‘historiographer of the Seine’.

Claude Monet Morning on the Seine near Giverny, 1897 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 101

Ruzhnikov

102 • PAINTINGS

GUSTAVE LOISEAU (1865-1935) BORDS DE L’EURE 1920 oil on canvas 72 x 92 cm signed and dated lower right: G Loiseau 1920 Provenance Durand-Ruel, Paris Galerie des Granges, Geneva Private collection, New York (acquired in 1983) To be included in the Loiseau Catalogue raisonné being prepared by Didier Imbert Loiseau was born in Paris. He was apprenticed to a decorator, a job he particularly disliked, but his interest in art (especially landscape painting) grew when his parents moved back to their hometown of Pontoise in 1884. This town near Paris had an important place in French painting at the time, its environs having recently been depicted extensively by Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne, the former having a home there.

The son of a Parisian butcher, Loiseau announced his intentions to become an artist in 1880, aged just 15. However, it was not until 1887, when Loiseau received a legacy from his grandmother, that he was able to give up his job as a decorator and devote his life to painting. After a move to Paris, his first teachers included such illustrious names as Jean-Louis Forain, but Loiseau did not appreciate the more academic tendencies such artists promoted. It was not until a move to Pont-Aven in 1890 and his meeting with Henry Moret and Maxime Maufra that he found his style. He learnt a great deal first hand from Gauguin, but his work also shows a debt to Alfred Sisley and Pissarro. After a period of pointillist experimentation, he re-discovered his pure landscape ideals painting in a PostImpressionist manner directly from nature.

Loiseau returned to Paris in 1891 where he began to exhibit his work, showing first at the Fifth Exhibition of Impressionist and Symbolist Painters.

For the rest of his life, he travelled extensively, painting in the Dordogne, Dieppe and on the banks of the Seine. Loiseau also painted an important series of works of Paris that form a fascinating development to the first Impressionist views of Monet and Pissarro. In these works, he took a high viewpoint and concentrated on the contrast between the small figures below and the large buildings, often shown with obvious advertising hoardings. Although he died in Paris in 1935, his last years were spent in Pontoise, where his introduction to painting had begun. Today Loiseau is recognised as a significant figure in Post-Impressionism. His paintings are held in numerous public museum collections globally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 103

Ruzhnikov

104 • PAINTINGS

GUSTAVE LOISEAU (1865-1935) BRUME SUR L’EURE 1919 oil on canvas 73.7 x 92.2 cm signed lower left: G. Loiseau Provenance Private collection, USA Gustave Loiseau, one of the most poetic and sensitive of the Post-Impressionists, was fascinated by rivers and watercourses.

Returning to the subject again and again throughout his career, they provided inspiration for his finest canvases. Particularly successful were the paintings that achieved a harmonious marriage of water and sky, reflection and atmosphere, as demonstrated here.

Painted in with Gustave Loiseau’s own characteristic style, in which the surface of the canvas is painted using a series of cross-hatching marks, the work, at the same time, shows the influence of such masters as Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 105

Ruzhnikov

106 • PAINTINGS

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 107

Ruzhnikov

108 • PAINTINGS

GUSTAVE LOISEAU (1865 – 1935) FALAISES D’YPORT 1921 oil on canvas 61 x 74 cm signed on reverse and dated 1921 signed lower right Provenance Private collection, London The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Didier Imbert.

From 1897, when Loiseau received a commission from the influential dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, he spent much time travelling in the west of France, throughout Île-de-France and Saint-Cyr du Vaudreuil in l’Eure, where he owned a house.

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, he studied the cliffs and beaches of the Pays de Caux, Normandy, and in particular those at Yport, Dieppe, Les Petites-Dalles, Etretat, and Grainval. The present work is amongst the best of the series of studies that Loiseau made of the cliffs at Yport in 1924.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 109

Ruzhnikov

110 • PAINTINGS

GUSTAVE LOISEAU (1865-1935) LE QUATORZE JUILLET À PARIS 1925 oil on canvas 60 x 49 cm signed and dated lower right: 1925, G Loiseau Provenance Galerie Jacques, Bailly, Paris (1966) Mrs. Robert A. Magowan, San Francisco Mr. Mark Magowan, New York (inherited from above) Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco Private Collection, Spain This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by Didier Imbert.

Although celebrated as the lyrical painter of France’s rivers, Loiseau was also drawn throughout his career to the bustle of Paris, particularly to pulsating, bohemian Montmartre. Loiseau moved to Montmartre in 1887 when the inheritance from his grandmother enabled him to give up his job and devote his life to painting. He settled down at La Maison du Trappeur in the Rue Ravignan, later to be known as the Bateau-Lavoir. Loiseau was one of the first artists to occupy this house, which would later achieve international fame as the Bateau-Lavoir, where Picasso lived and worked in his early career.

Le Quatorze Juillet à Paris shows a place only a few steps away from there - the corner of the Rue Clignancourt and Boulevard Rochechouart was one of Loiseau’s favourite Parisian subjects.

The work not only gives the precise record of the topography of the area; the slightly chaotic succession of building façades of different periods and styles, punctuated by chimneys and skylights, are immediately identifiable, but the the lively and relaxed atmosphere of the streets of Montmartre is also portrayed. The energy of this artistic quarter is emphasised by the people crowding around the carousel, and by the cars and the brightly-coloured billboards. Loiseau conveys well the atmosphere of 14 July, a national holiday in France.

Loiseau took up the subject of 14 July several times: the same year in Rue Clignancourt, Paris, on 14th July from ThyssenBornemisza Museum in Madrid, the following year, in 1926, in a version kept at the Dieppe museum, and in another one formerly in Alain Delon’s collection.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 111

Ruzhnikov

Gustave Loiseau Rue Clignancourt, Paris, on 14th July circa 1925 Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

In these paintings the artist varies his brushwork, using staccato dabs for the moving figures, feathery hatching for distant buildings seen through a pearly haze, and circular touches for the scudding clouds. The bright yet subtle palette alternates squares of primrose and ochre with blue, green and purple, further evoking an atmosphere of Jazz Age syncopation within Loiseau’s Post-Impressionist technique. «I only acknowledge having one quality, that of being sincere. I work in my own little corner, as well as I can, and do my best to convey the impression I receive from nature[...] Only my instinct guides me, and I am proud I do not resemble anyone,» declared 112 • PAINTINGS

the artist. Nevertheless, his views of Paris clearly recall the streets decorated with flags painted by Monet, such as Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Festival of June 30, 1878, as well as the series of views of Paris painted by Pissarro from a window, like those of the boulevard des Italiens and the boulevard Montmartre in 1897, or of the avenue de l’Opéra and of the place du Théâtre Français the following year. In a picture like this one, Loiseau shows an undeniable talent, but in 1925 art went through crucial changes which followed from the Impressionist revolution of 1874. Unperturbed, Loiseau continued to depict the Parisian landscape and its delicate light with a gentle brush, showing a sense of space, a vivacity in his touch and a feeling for silvery shades which reveals his unfailing loyalty towards his first masters, Monet, Pissarro and Sisley. With a feeling of nostalgia for the struggle of the New Painting which it had supported and encouraged, the Durand-Ruel gallery bought this painting and backed Loiseau’s art, as it had done fifty years before with the Impressionist pioneers.

Claude Monet Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Festival of June 30 , 1878 Musée d’Orsay, Paris

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 113

Ruzhnikov

114 • PAINTINGS

OCTAVE DENIS VICTOR GUILLONNET (1872 – 1967) BAIGNEUSES SOUS LES GLYCINES 1925 oil on canvas 61 x 74 cm signed lower right Provenance Private collection, London The canvas is an exquisite example of Octave Denis Victor Guillonnet’s mature style, characterised by a delicate understanding of Post-Impressionist techniques combined with idealised subject matter. Recalling both Homer’s Odyssey and the gardens of Monet, the central figures in Baigneuses Sous les Glycines resemble nymphs bathing in an Impressionist bower.

The marriage of captivating subject matter and a well developed, modern style allowed Guillonnet to become a highly decorated artist in his lifetime. As we can see from the painter’s emphasis on the way light and shade affect the viewer’s appreciation of lawn, body and blossom, Guillonnet was highly sensitive to Impressionist colour theories regarding the surprising colour combinations present in shadows.

Guillonnet was extraordinarily precocious as an artist, entering the studio of Lionel Royer at the age of thirteen and, incredibly, gaining his first medal at the Paris Salon two years later. His glittering youth was continued when he was classed HorsConcours by the Salon at 21 years of age (which meant his exhibits did not have to be judged by the committee – his six exhibits were hung as a matter of right), and in 1901 he won the national travel scholarship, which was only awarded every two years and which allowed him to spend a year in Algeria. This proved to be a decisive turning point in his career, because he was greatly affected by the bright light and colours of Algeria, as have many artists before him, notably Delacroix. It was also in Algeria that Guillonnet developed his interest in the painting of ‘half shadows’; the Impressionists had shown that shadows contained contrasting colours and Guillonnet developed their theories.

Works by the artist can be found in major museum collections such as the Paris Museum of Modern Art, the Museums of Luxembourg, Bordeaux, Dijon, Nantes and others. He also illustrated various books, including L’Arlésienne by Alphonse Daudet.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 115

Ruzhnikov

116 • PAINTINGS

ALBERT LEBOURG (1849 – 1928) BORD DE RIVIERE late 19th – early 20th century 50 x 73 cm signed lower left: a lebourg Primarily a landscape artist, Lebourg sought to harmonise light variations in his representation of riverbanks, snowscapes and sunsets. Concentrating in his work on capturing the subtle nuances of light and the effects of atmosphere, Lebourg began to paint studies, depicting a single site in a variety of different lights, as Monet and Pissarro also did later.

Lebourg was made Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1903 in recognition of his contribution to painting. Between the years 1883 and 1914, his canvases were exhibited at several institutions including: the Salon des Artistes Français; the acclaimed Les XX exhibition, Brussels, alongside Pissarro, Morisot and Georges Seurat; and the Salon der Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

Lebourg’s canvases are held in major public collections worldwide, including the Hermitage Museum, St.Petersburg, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the Fondation Bemberg Museum, Toulouse, the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.

From 1880’s until the mid-1890s, Lebourg moved around the Île de France, Normandy and the Channel ports. He painted in Auvergne, Normandy and Île-de-France, but his main occupation were animated scenes of the Seine. He wrote at the time: «I will paint often at the banks of the Seine: Nanterre, Rueil, Chatou, Bougival, Port-Marly. These are a source of themes and very beautiful landscapes». His river landscapes, painted in a luminous Impressionist style, are widely regarded as amongst his greatest artistic achievements .

French Impressionist painter of the Rouen School, Albert Lebourg was born in 1848, in Monfort-sur-Risle, HauteNormandie, and initially trained as an architect. When introduced to a local landscape painter Victor Delamarre, however, Lebourg shifted his focus. The young, aspiring artist was particularly inspired by the Impressionist technique of en plein air painting, which placed the artist firmly inside their landscape.

Lebourg continued to work as an architect in parallel with his development as a painter. At the Academie de peinture et de dessins in Rouen, France, Lebourg attended evening classes run by Gustave Morin, a noted genre and history painter.

1872 marked a turning point in Lebourg’s development as a painter. He exhibited a canvas in Rouen that so impressed a local collector that he offered Lebourg a position as a teacher in Algeria. Lebourg spent five years in the country, absorbing its culture and observing the shifting intensities of North African light. It was a transformational experience.

Lebourg returned to Paris in 1877. He studied in the École des Beaux-Arts under the highly regarded Academic painter JeanPaul Laurens. His close friend August Renoir, however, exerted upon him a more important influence. In 1878, he exhibited alongside Renoir, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Camille Pissarro, and was featured as part of the Impressionists’ group exhibitions the following two years.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 117

Ruzhnikov

118 • PAINTINGS

HENRI MARTIN (1860-1943) MARQUAYROL, SOUS LA TREILLE, TRAVAUX DE COUTURE ABANDONNÉS circa 1920 oil on canvas 82.5 x 80 cm signed lower left: ‘Henri Martin’ Provenance Findlay Galleries, Inc., New York Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John R. McFarlin, San Antonio, Texas Private Collection, UK The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Cyrille Martin Martin was born in Toulouse in 1860. His father was a carpenter, but the young Henri had aspirations to paint. He studied under the noted teacher Jules Garipuy at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, and in 1879 moved to Paris. A scholarship enabled him to study with the celebrated Academic painter Jean-Paul Laurens – also a former pupil of Garipuy – where he developed a rigorous, academic technique applied to literary and Biblical subjects. He gained his first medal in 1883, aged twenty-three, at the Paris Salon. Additionally, he won the grand prize at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. Later, in 1914, he was named a Commander of the Legion of Honour.

Martin had developed a precise and formal style over years of academic study. All that was about to change, however, when he travelled abroad. Granted a travel scholarship by the Salon in 1885, Martin ventured to Italy. The trip utterly transformed his ideas about art. His immersion in the Italian climate, with its particular qualities of light, and his study of Renaissance painters encouraged a looser, more experimental style. Upon his return to Paris in 1889, Martin moved away from the academic manner of his earlier works and embarked on a lengthy period of experimentation with Symbolism, Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. Under the influence of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, Martin adopted Pointillism, which is exemplified by his most successful works.

In a period in which art looked to the modern and abstract, Martin’s work runs against the prevailing tide, looking back to a form of Romantic idealism that was overtaken by other cultural currents in the twentieth century. However, his art still has a universal relevance; as René Albert Fleury commented in his 1905 book on Martin, ‘He celebrates the majesty, the attitude and the labour of life and its everlasting rests. He sings life. His canvases and large frescos, all his works seem to evoke Georgic gods...He was lyrical and religious and still is. There is no genius with less than that.’ (J. Martin-Ferrieres, Henri Martin 1860-1943, Paris, 1967, p. 105.)

Today Martin’s paintings are held internationally in major public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 119

Ruzhnikov

120 • PAINTINGS

HENRI MARTIN (1860-1943) MARQUAYROL, LE BASSIN DE LA TONNELLE SUD

circa 1920 oil on canvas 73 x 86 cm signed lower left: Henri Martin Provenance Findlay Galleries, Inc., New York Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John R. McFarlin, San Antonio, Texas Thence by descent Private Collection, UK This work is accompanied by a photocopy of a folio comprising an essay on the artist and a certificate of authenticity from Findlay Galleries, Inc., signed and dated October 1965, and a photo certificate issued by Cyrille Martin, dated 23rd January, 2014.

In 1900, Martin purchased a large, seventeenth-century villa in the village of Labastide-du-Vert in southwest France.

Marquayrol became Martin’s summer retreat, and it was here that he would retire from Paris between the months of May and November, revelling in the beauty and serenity of nature that the city lacked. The peaceful surroundings of Marquayrol were to become Martin’s preferred subject matter; as well as the landscape around the property, he depicted every single detail of the house and gardens - the round pool, the terrace, the vineyard, and the gate became recurring themes in his work.

Marquayrol was as important to Martin as the gardens at Giverny were to Claude Monet. It was here that Martin’s unique style, a synthesis of Impressionism with pointillist brushwork, reached its maturity. He used divisionist techniques to convey mood and the ‘diverse effects’ of nature. Taking nature as his new ‘model of beauty’, he repeatedly painted his beloved garden using varying colour schemes to characterise different times of day and year until the very end of his career. Later, Martin wrote: ‘my preoccupation with rendering atmospheric effects increased in the country, face to face with nature. Trying to capture its diverse effects, I was compelled to paint it differently.

The natural light, now brilliant, then diffuse, which softened the contours of figures and landscape, powerfully obliged me to translate it any way I could, but other than by using a loaded brush - through pointille and the breaking up of tone’ (from a letter to his friend Bernard Marcel, director of the Marble depot and art critic, quoted in the exhibition catalogue Henri Martin, Musée Henri Martin, Cahors, 1992, pp. 89-90).

Though not considered by scholars as a revolutionary painter, Martin absorbed the radical painting styles of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists to develop his own pictorial language.

Short, expressive brushstrokes, harmonious compositions and delicately nuanced palettes enabled him to capture the beauty of his native France.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 121

Ruzhnikov

122 • PAINTINGS

HENRI MARTIN (1860-1943) LA TOUR DE COLLIOURE, LEVER DE LUNE 1923-1924 oil on canvas 97 х 86 cm signed lower center: Henri Martin Provenance Galerie Georges Petit, Paris Private collection (acquired from above in the 1930’s) Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, 9 November 1994, lot 156 Private collection Exhibitions Exposition de Bruxelles, Brussels, Galerie du Studio, 1924 The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Cyrille Martin The amber light of a fading day envelops a harbour in this exemplary Neo-Impressionist work. Glowing with warm contrasts, La Tour de Collioure, Lever de Lune shows Henri Martin at the height of his powers, and depicts the town in which he produced the finest paintings of his career. The balance of light and shade, the subtle play of the complementary colours yellow and blue, and the rhythmic arrangement of the ships’ masts capture the artist’s sensitivity to his subject.

Having developed a successful career as a painter in Paris, Martin began to feel stultified by the clamour of city life. In 1923, seeking fresh inspiration, he turned his back on the capital for the seclusion of Collioure, a port town located at the foot of the Pyrenees near the Spanish border. Martin was in his sixties when he moved to this Roman town. Though he was in the latest phase of his career, the move reinvigorated his work; he produced his best pieces here. He was able to draw upon the company of fellow artists who gathered in the town. Andre Derain, Henri Matisse and Paul Signac visited the town from 1905 onwards; Collioure features in many key, early Fauvist works. It was Martin, however, who captured the town at its most enchanting. La Tour de Collioure, Lever de Lune depicts the view from his studio overlooking the port.

Henri Martin Le port de Collioure oil on canvas, 91 x 110 cm.

Sold: Sotheby’s, London, 20 June 2006, price realized £534,400 ($986,075)

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 123

Ruzhnikov

124 • PAINTINGS

HENRI MARTIN (1860-1943) LES PEUPLIERS DU PRINTEMPS 1923-1924 oil on canvas 81 x 45 cm signed lower right: Henri Martin Provenance Wally Findlay Galleries, Inc., New York Private collection, Waco, Texas, 1985 Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 3 October 1990, lot 47 Private collection Exhibitions Acquired Images, Works from Waco Collections, Waco, Texas, The Art Center, April - May 1985 The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Cyrille Martin The beauty and pastoral serenity of Henri Martin’s postimpressionist landscapes find exquisite expression in a series of views of Labastide-du-Vert and its surroundings, where Martin owned a villa named Marquayrol. Marquayrol was Martin’s favourite summer retreat where he would retire from the city between the months of May and November. It was here that the artist felt most at ease and it is therefore not surprising the landscape inspired many of his most noteworthy compositions.

The present view depicts a row of poplar trees that lined the river Vert, near Labastide-du-Vert. Martin was particularly fond of poplars as the subject of his paintings. He wrote: “it enrages me to still be in Paris when the poplar leaves begin to emerge in Labastide”. Similar landscapes were used by the artist in many of his works. In the monumental murals he made in 1903 for the Salle Henri Martin at the Capitole in Toulouse representing summer, the same valley serves as a background.

The technique and style of this painting is typical of the artist’s mature work, with bright colours applied in large strokes in a neo-impressionistic fashion, used to reveal the special light of the region around Labastide du Vert. Certainly influenced by Pointillism, Martin also shows a strong interest in repetition and geometric of patterns reminiscent of Claude Monet’s poplar series of the 1890’s. Like Monet, Martin was fascinated by the interplay of light and shade. Jacques Martin-Ferrières, the artist’s son, writes, «Henri Martin was without contest an Impressionist and one who had the deepest sensitiveness, certainly equal to that of Monet, whom he most admired.

Their interpretation of nature is certainly owing to their utmost sensitiveness and not through research of a technical process, a poetical evocation hued by a thousand colours which can undoubtedly be called a work of art» (Jacques Martin-Ferrières, Henri Martin, Paris, 1967, p. 35).

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 125

Ruzhnikov

126 • PAINTINGS

HENRI MARTIN (1860-1943) LA VALLÉE DU VERT À LABASTIDE-DU-VERT circa 1920 oil on canvas 112 x 117.5 cm signed lower left: Henri Martin Provenance Ansas de Pradines, Toulouse William Findlay Gallery, Chicago, Illinois New York University Law School, New York Sotheby’s, New York, February 11, 1987, lot 64 Hammerbeck Works of Art, London, acquired from the above; Richard Green, London Private collection, acquired circa 1993 Arthur Pergament, New York Private collection The present work represents a subject Martin returned to on a number of occasions: the view from his house of Marquayrol that overlooked the valley of Labastide-du-Vert, near Cahors, southwest France. The harmonious interaction of manmade habitations and their natural environment are typical of the sense of peace and contentment that Martin brought to his art.

The broken brushwork dissolves the forms of the landscape, emulating the effect of a softening light; indeed, Martin attributed his divisionist technique to the study of nature: ‘My preoccupation with rendering atmospheric effects increased later, after three months in the country, face to face with nature.

The natural light, now brilliant, then diffuse, which softened the contours of figures and landscape, powerfully obliging me to translate it any way I could, but other than by using a loaded brush – through pointillé and the breaking up of tone’ (quoted in the exhibition catalogue Henri Martin, Musée Henri Martin, Cahors, 1992, p. 89).

new ‘model of beauty’, he repeatedly painted his beloved garden using varying colour schemes to characterise different times of day and year until the very end of his career. Later, Martin wrote: ‘my preoccupation with rendering atmospheric effects increased in the country, face to face with nature. Trying to capture its diverse effects, I was compelled to paint it differently.

The natural light, now brilliant, then diffuse, which softened the contours of figures and landscape, powerfully obliged me to translate it any way I could, but other than by using a loaded brush - through pointille and the breaking up of tone’ (from a letter to his friend Bernard Marcel, director of the Marble depot and art critic, quoted in the exhibition catalogue Henri Martin, Musée Henri Martin, Cahors, 1992, pp. 89-90).

In 1900, Martin purchased a large, seventeenth-century villa in the village of Labastide-du-Vert in southwest France.

Marquayrol became Martin’s summer retreat, and it was here that he would retire from Paris between the months of May and November, revelling in the beauty and serenity of nature that the city lacked. The peaceful surroundings of Marquayrol were to become Martin’s preferred subject matter; as well as the landscape around the property, he depicted every single detail of the house and gardens - the round pool, the terrace, the vineyard, and the gate became recurring themes in his work.

Marquayrol was as important to Martin as the gardens at Giverny were to Claude Monet. It was here that Martin’s unique style, a synthesis of Impressionism with pointillist brushwork, reached its maturity. He used divisionist techniques to convey mood and the ‘diverse effects’ of nature. Taking nature as his WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 127

Ruzhnikov

128 • PAINTINGS

JACQUES MARTIN-FERRIERES (1893-1972) SOLEIL COUCHANT SUR LA SEINE early 20th century oil on canvas 50 x 61 cm. signed lower right: Martin Ferrières Provenance Private collection, Texas This post-Impressionist canvas depicts the sun setting over a canal. The soft light of dusk is evoked by delicate dots of emerald, lilac, blush-pink and amber, which appear to shimmer on the surface of the canvas. The foreground image displays five barges resting upon the water’s surface; the sun blazes at the top of the image, casting light on the trees, towpaths and church. In keeping with the post-Impressionist tradition, which sought to enhance the Impressionist project with new techniques, the artist produces a painting alive with a sense of movement.

Jacques Martin-Ferrières here demonstrates his mastery of the Pointillist technique. Close inspection of the pictorial surface reveals an astonishing diversity of colours, each carefully selected to merge into an image of beguiling softness and warmth. Balmy heat appears to radiate from the canvas, dots and dashes of orange and green seeming to vibrate against each other like rays of light on flowing water. Martin-Ferrières’s works are held in several major museum collections, including: the Boca Raton Museum of Art and the Musée Malraux, Le Havre.

Jacques Martin-Ferrières was born in 1893 in Saint-Paul, France, Martin-Ferrières. He received his early training from his father, the great Impressionist painter Henri Martin (1860-1943).

Martin-Ferrières later received a more formal education at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he studied under the Academic painter Frederic Cormon (1845-1924). Like his father before him, however, Martin-Ferrières felt restricted by the traditionalism of the academy. He was more attracted by the great outdoors, and spent much of his life travelling around the south of France.

Martin-Ferrières, like his father, was particularly adept at capturing subtle alterations in light and shade. His adoption of pointillist techniques allowed him to treat the pictorial surface like a kind of mosaic, each brushstroke floating atop the pale surface beneath and creating images that scintillated with light. Though greatly influenced by his father, Martin-Ferrières’ paintings gradually developed into looser, freer style. His work is further distinguished from his father’s by his use of thick, impasto paint.

Martin-Ferrières’s regular submissions to the Salon des Artistes Français, Paris, were successful. He was awarded a Mention in 1920; a Silver Medal in 1923; a travelling grant in 1924; the National Prize in 1925; and the Gold Medal and the Institute Prize in 1928.

Works by Martin-Ferrieres are in major museum collections including the Louvre and Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris, Tate Gallery and Courtauld Institute in London, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San-Francisco, Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 129

Ruzhnikov

130 • PAINTINGS

JACQUES MARTIN-FERRIERES (1893-1972) VUE D’AMSTERDAM oil on canvas 54 x 65.5 cm. signed lower right: Martin Ferrières Provenance Private collection, France

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 131

Ruzhnikov

132 • PAINTINGS

JACQUES MARTIN-FERRIERES (1893-1972) MARCHÉ ORIENTAL oil on wooden panel 41.5 x 50 cm signed lower left: Martin Ferrières Provenance Private collection, France In the beginning of the 1930’s Martin-Ferrieres spent several months traveling around Southern Europe: he visited Spain, Greece and Yugoslavia. Travels inspired him to adopt lighter palette and looser, freer style. The present painting belongs to the series of Kosovo views. In 1937, the series won him the Gold Medal at Paris Salon. In 1939 the paintings were presented at a large retrospective exhibition in Paris.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 133

Ruzhnikov

134 • PAINTINGS

JACQUES MARTIN-FERRIERES (1893-1972) NATURE MORTE AU VIOLON oil on canvas 50 x 60 cm signed lower right: Martin Ferrières Provenance Private collection, France

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 135

Ruzhnikov

136 • PAINTINGS

GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT (1870 - 1950) YOUNG NUDE circa 1910 oil on canvas 65 x 54 cm signed with initials upper left: gdE Provenance Private collection, USA Soft brushwork and a delicate palette lend a tender intimacy to this lyrical scene: a young woman captured in a moment of contemplation. While careful attention has been paid to the shape and shadow of the young woman’s torso, the composition is underpinned by a decorative, almost abstract attention to form. A high-quality example of d’Espagnat’s mature style, in which the painter has fully absorbed the lessons of the Fauves and Impressionists, Young Nude features one of his signature subjects. D’Espagnat produced a series of female nudes during the period: similar works are on display in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes.

D’Espagnat was born in Melun in 1870; he moved to Paris aged 18. D’Espagnat studied part­-time at the Académie Colarossi in Paris under Gustave­Claude E ­ tienne Courtois (1852–1923) and Jean-­André Rixens (1846–1924), but was mostly self­-taught. In 1891, he exhibited at the Salon des Refusés and the following year at the Salon des Indépendants.

His early works, such as Suburban Railway (c. 1895; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay), showed a strong debt to Impressionism. He was a friend of Renoir as well as of Paul Signac, Henri Edmond Cross, Louis Valtat and later Maurice Denis, Bonnard and Vuillard. In 1898, he visited Morocco where he painted such works as Moroccan Horseman. After his return to France, he concentrated on studies from nature, paintings of women, children and flowers and decorative projects for private patrons.

In 1904, he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, becoming its vice­-president in 1935. Between 1905 and 1910, he made several trips with Valtat to visit Renoir on the Côte d’Azur as well as travelling to Spain, Italy, Portugal, Britain, Germany and elsewhere. In 1906 he illustrated Remy de Gourmont’s book Sixtine, published in Paris.

interiors there (e.g. Interior, 1925; Metz, Museum of Art and History). During the 1930s, he worked in various media. He illustrated Alphonse Daudet’s L’Immortel (Paris, 1930) and also produced theatre designs. In 1936, he decorated the Mairie in Vincennes; in 1938, the Palais de Justice in Toulouse and in 1939, the ceiling of the Salle Victor Hugo in the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris. Ironically, considering his earlier attitudes, from 1936 to 1940, he was a professor at the Ecole des Beaux­Arts in Paris.

Though disrupted by the Second World War, he continued to paint until his death and with his pupil, Suzanne Humbert, illustrated Francis Jammes’s Clairières dans le ciel, 1902–1906 (Paris, 1948).

D’Espagnat’s paintings are in major collections internationally, including: Musée Eugène Delacroix, Bibliotheque Nationale and Palais de l’Institut, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana.

In the early 1910s, he painted a number of portraits, including several of his musician friends, including Albert Roussel, by which time his work was more simplified, fluid and intimate.

In 1914, he provided the decor for a production of Alfred de Musset’s play Fantasio at the Théâtre de Batignolles in Paris. After working in a camouflage unit during World War I, in 1920, d’Espagnat bought a country house in the Quercy region and over the next decade painted numerous landscapes and

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 137

Ruzhnikov

138 • PAINTINGS

CHARLES CAMOIN (1879 – 1965) LE PORT DE CASSIS circa 1905 oil on canvas 66 x 81 cm signed lower left: Ch Camoin Provenance Private collection, Europe Sale: Tajan, Paris, 18 December 2003, lot 15 Private collection, Paris (acquired from the above sale) Private collection, New York (acquired from the above) Anne-Marie Grammont-Camoin has confirmed the authenticity of this painting Charles Camoin was a member of the short-lived movement in modern French painting known as Fauvism. Camoin joined the Fauves in 1905, exhibiting with them in the Salon d’Automne.

Working alongside with Henri Matisse, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Henri Manguin, Maurice Vlaminck, Camoin shared their passion for the picturesque nature of Provence and Côte d’Azur.

Like most of these painters, he spent lengthy periods on the Mediterranean coast where he produced some of his most accomplished works.

Charles Camoin was the son of a paint manufacturer in Marseilles who died when Charles was six years old. His mother travelled extensively, absenting herself for long periods at a time, and Camoin’s studies suffered accordingly. At 16, he enrolled at a commercial college in Marseilles, but also attended courses at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was awarded a first prize for drawing and composition. In 1896, at the age of 17, Camoin moved to Paris where he was admitted to Gustave Moreau’s class at the École des Beaux Arts, shortly before the latter’s death. He soon left on his travels in the company of Albert Marquet. During his short time in Moreau’s class, Camoin made a number of lasting friendships, notably with artists who would go on to pioneer Fauvism: Henry Manguin, Georges Rouault and, in particular, Jean Puy and Henri Matisse, with whom he exchanged letters on a regular basis.

In 1900, Camoin did his military service, first in Arles, where he painted compositions inspired by Vincent Van Gogh motifs, then in 1902 in Aix, where he frequently met with Paul Cézanne, with whom Camoin maintained a life-long correspondence and whose advice and counsel he cited repeatedly. In 1903, Camoin exhibited for the first time – at the Salon des Artistes Indèpendants in Paris. The following year, he met Claude Monet; he then held his first solo exhibition at the Berthe Weil Gallery in Paris. The following decade saw Camoin travelling extensively in the company of Marquet, visiting London, WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 139

Ruzhnikov

Charles Camoin Le Port de Cassis, c. 1905 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

Frankfurt, Naples, Capri, Corsica and Morocco (where he was accompanied by Matisse). In 1912, Camoin exhibited at the Galerie Kahnweiler in Paris and, in 1913, examples of his work were featured at the now legendary Armory Show in New York City. In 1918, Camoin and Matisse travelled to Cagnes to visit Renoir, the meeting was to prove decisive because it signalled the end of Cezanne’s influence on Camoin’s work. In 1920, at the age of 41, Camoin married Charlotte Prost; their daughter Anne-Marie was born in 1933.

Camoin worked latterly out of two studios, the one in Montmartre that he had occupied since 1944, and the other in St. Tropez. He was made an officer of the Legion d’Honneur that same year and in 1959, he was elected Commander of the Order des Arts et Lettres. Camoin’s early work was influenced by the Provence tradition: striking colours applied liberally in bold brush strokes, to the point where some of his works were wrongly attributed to Paul Gauguin. After his travels from 1905 to 1915 in the company of Matisse and Marquet, a change of technique became apparent as Camoin began to focus more on light than on colour. In this respect, he and Marquet were as one, as their work dating from this period shows. Overall, his 140 • PAINTINGS

work from what might be considered his genuinely Fauve period is targeted very much towards the critical audience identified at the 1912 Kahnweiler Gallery exhibition and at the 1913 New York Armory Show. For some reason or other, his personal success at both exhibitions provoked a kind of depression in Camoin and he promptly destroyed more than 80 of his canvases. There has been considerable speculation as to the reasons which lay behind this depression, but it is difficult to explain it away on purely artistic grounds; that it was provoked by his association with the Fauves seems unlikely, given that he never fully espoused the Fauvist style or colours. In the event, some of the paintings he opted to destroy were subsequently ‘retrieved’ by collectors, a fact which triggered a successful lawsuit in 1927 against Francis Carco and resulted in a benchmark decision to the effect that a painting which has been destroyed and thrown away may be recovered in its existing form but may not be subsequently ‘restored’ to its original form. In other words, the artist is and remains the sole arbiter. After visiting Renoir in 1918, Camoin became increasingly obsessed with light and the interplay of light and colours. As a result, he painted both in the studio and outdoors, directly from nature. His notebooks and journals document the difficulty he experienced in achieving a balance between the two.

Camoin’s productive life extended over 50 years up to 1964, although his output in the early years was minimal and consisted of mainly pastels and watercolours. His total output is around 3,000 paintings, of which one third were destroyed during his bout of depression and nearly 700 of the remainder are in major public and private collections.

Works by Camoin are held by major museum collections, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and others.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 141

Ruzhnikov

142 • PAINTINGS

CHARLES CAMOIN (1879 – 1965) NUDE circa 1905 oil on canvas 81 x 100 cm signed lower right: Ch Camoin Provenance Private collection, France Private collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1998) During mid-1900’s and 1910’s Charles Camoin, member of the short-lived Fauvist movement, painted a series of canvases representing the world of brothels which he explored alongside his friend Albert Marquet. Painted in rich, vibrant colours, the present works is an outstanding example of this series, alluding to both Manet’s Olympia and Toulouse-Lautrec’s scenes of the Parisian demi-monde.

The style of Camoin’s early work was influenced by the Provence tradition: striking colours applied liberally in bold brush strokes, to the point where some of his works were wrongly attributed to Paul Gauguin. After 1905 and his travels with Matisse and Marquet, Camoin began to focus more on light than on colour. Camoin’s bright, luminous palette was also influenced by Renoir whom he met in 1918.

Albert Marquet The Two Friends, 1912 Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie de Besançon WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 143

Ruzhnikov

144 • PAINTINGS

EDWARD ATKINSON HORNEL (1864-1933) JAPANESE GARDEN 1922 oil on canvas 102 x 76 cm signed and dated lower left: E. A. Hornel, 1922 Provenance Private Collection, UK Japanese art and culture were steadily drawn to the British public’s attention through a series of exhibitions in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The result was a flourishing Japonisme – a taste for things Japanese – and it was under this prevailing mood that Hornel and his friend George Henry set forth to Japan in 1893, “to see and study the environment out of which this great art sprung, to become personally in touch with the people, to live their life, and discover the source of their inspiration” (E. A. Hornel quoted in B. Smith, Hornel, Edinburgh 1997, p. 89). The thirteen month trip had a great impact upon Hornel’s artistic career. On his return to Scotland, he exhibited his Japanese paintings at Alex Reid’s gallery in Glasgow to high critical acclaim, with audiences captivated by his dazzling portrayal of Japanese life. Hornel’s experience of Japan provided him with an ongoing source of inspiration.

To him the Japanese aesthetic was “the greatest impressionism the world has so far possessed – all useless details are laid aside”, “whereas we have been working too much on the surface, and in striving to realise Truth have forgotten the spirit” (Hornel’s 1895 lecture, “Japan”, Corporation Art Galleries, Glasgow, 9 February 1895 (transcript from Broughton House).

Edward Atkinson Hornel The Balcony, Yokohama, 1894 Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 145

Ruzhnikov

146 • PAINTINGS

EDWARD ATKINSON HORNEL (1864-1933) GEISHA GIRLS 1922 oil on canvas 76.5 x 64.5 cm signed and dated lower right: E.A. Hornel, 1922 He revisited the subject throughout his career, forever enchanted by the tea ceremonies, the beautiful dancing, the elegance of the young women and their vibrant costumes. The decorative splashes of colour he employs display the influence of Japanese art, but the formal approach to composition is largely his own. He uses more intense, mosaic-like brushwork and colour, which highlights the influence of late PreRaphaelitism, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and more specifically of the French painter Adolphe Monticelli (1824-1886). The Japanese Garden reveals Hornel’s enthusiasm for Japanese culture, while the energetic surface, the dynamic postures and expressive faces of the geishas reflect Hornel’s driving interest in rendering life and movement in his art.

Edward Atkinson Hornel was born in 1864 in Australia, but was brought up and lived in Scotland. In 1880, he started his formal studies in art at the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh. Three years later he enrolled to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, an experience which immersed him in the avant-garde ideas engaging the continent during the period.

Hornel exhibited for the first time in 1883 at the Edinburgh Exhibition. Later, he became a member of the International Society of Painters and Engravers and an associate member of the New Gallery. In 1901, Hornel was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy but declined the honour.

Hornel was one of the leading figures of the Glasgow School, an informal alliance of some twenty artists that came together in the early 1880s known to introduce forms of Impressionism to Scotland. Inspired by contemporary French painting and Japanese prints, the Glasgow Boys produced their most notable works between the 1890’s and 1910. They used realism and naturalism to move away from Victorian sentimentality in painting. They are now recognised as having revolutionised Scottish painting and paved the way for a new ‘modern’ style of painting that swept Europe and America.

Over the years, Hornel closely collaborated with the painter George Henry. The two worked side by side for about ten years having produced a series of pictures that are regarded as the essence of the Glasgow School. Through this friendship, Hornel moved to a more colourful, decorative and increasingly symbolic style. In 1893–94, the two artists spent a year and a half in Japan.

Hornel became fascinated with the beauty of Japanese culture.

Influenced by Oriental art, Hornel developed a decorative approach, sometimes bordering on the abstract and inspired in part by Whistler’s progressive art.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 147

Ruzhnikov

148 • PAINTINGS

TAMARA DE LEMPICKA (1898 – 1980) À L’OPÉRA 1941 oil on canvas 76.2 x 50.8 cm signed and dated lower right: T. de Lempicka, 1941 Provenance Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, 1979 Wolfgang Joop, 1980 Private collection, USA Exhibitions Tamara de Lempicka (Baroness de Kuffner), Julien Levy Galleries, New York, no. 18; San Francisco, Los Angeles, no. 7, 1941 Tamara de Lempicka (Baroness Kuffner), Milwaukee Art Center, 1942, no. 12 Tamara de Lempicka, Tokyo & Osaka, Seibu Gallery, 1981 Tamara de Lempicka, Tra eleganza e trasgressione, Rome, Accademia di Francia (Villa Medici), 1994, no. 53, illustrated in colour in the catalogue Tamara de Lempicka, Art Deco Icon, London, The Royal Academy & Vienna, Kunstforum Wien, 2004-2005, no. 55, illustrated in colour in the catalogue Tamara de Lempicka, Vigo, Fundación Caixa Galicia, 2006 Tamara de Lempicka, Milan, Palazzo Reale, 2006-2007, no. 51, illustrated in colour in the catalogue Literature G. Mandel, La pittrice Tamara de Lempicka, Milan, 1957, illustrated p. 12 G. Marmori, Tamara de Lempicka, Milan, 1978, p. 7 G. Bazin, H. Itsuki, Tamara de Lempicka, Tokyo, 1980, no. 89, illustrated in colour W. Joop, Tamara de Lempicka, Träume von Mythen und Moden // Pan, Offenburg, May 1987, p. 17 K. de Lempicka-Foxhall, Ch. Phillips, Passion by Design: The Art and Times of Tamara de Lempicka, New York, 1987, illustrated p. 140 A. Blondel, Tamara de Lempicka, Catalogue Raisonné, 19211979, Lausanne, 1999, no. B.222, illustrated in colour p. 309

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 149

Ruzhnikov

In March 1939, Tamara de Lempicka arrived in New York, along with her latest paintings. Among these pieces was yet unfinished At the Opera, which she had started before leaving Europe.

The painting is preceded by a study in pencil dated 1937, with significant differences compared with the final portrait. The painting was first presented in 1941 at the Julian Levy Galleries in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The exhibition announcement in the Los Angeles Examiner on 24 March 1941 contained a photo of Lempicka in her studio in Beverly Hills in front of this canvas. The painting’s more overtly visual elements, which in certain elements resemble the neo-Baroque, nevertheless render it a wonderful example of the Art Deco movement, of which Lempicka was the most prominent and influential woman.

The painting comes from the collection of German fashion designer Wolfgang Joop, one of the most passionate collectors of Lempicka’s work. The picture was particularly admired by Andy Warhol, who was the under-bidder at the sale in which Joop acquired the painting. ‘I whisked away the first picture, Dans l’Opera, from under Andy Warhol’s nose,’ later commented Joop. Among other works by Lempicka in Joop’s collection were portraits of the Duchesse de la Salle, Marjorie Ferry, Mademoiselle Poum Rachou, and Arlette Boucard aux Arums the finest group of paintings ever to appear on market.

Lempicka claimed to have been born in Poland in 1902, though scholars now believe she was in fact born in Moscow, in 1895.

Her wealthy family emigrated to Paris just prior to World War I, and it was here, surrounded by avant-gardists, that she developed her unique style. Lempicka’s earliest influence was academic. She trained at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under French painter Maurice Denis, who taught her the principles of Les Nabis: a group of Post-Impressionist artists who stressed the importance of graphic art and design within painting.

Characterised by bold compositions, theatrical lighting, decorative emphasis on pattern, and sensual modelling, Lempicka’s paintings are instantly recognisable. Best known for her striking portraits of glamorous women, Lempicka’s work captured the spirit of the Hollywood age, yet infused her paintings with Baroque and Renaissance techniques, a synthesis of tradition and contemporary attitudes Tamara de Lempicka Portrait of the Duchess de la Salle, 1925 Private collection

150 • PAINTINGS

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 151

Ruzhnikov

152 • PAINTINGS

ÉDOUARD VUILLARD (1868-1940) LA SALLE À MANGER AU CHÂTEAU DES CLAYES 1935-1938 distemper and charcoal on paper laid down on canvas 173.5 x 134.5 cm stamped with signature, lower right: E Vuillard Provenance Estate of the artist Sam Salz Inc., New York Eva Susan Stern, London Robert B. Mayer, Chicago (acquired from the above, 1955) Sale: Christie’s, New York, 15 November 1989, lot 462 Private collection Sale: Christie’s, New York, 8 November 2000, lot 39 (price realized $688,000.)

Private collection, USA Exhibitions Vuillard, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 1945 Vuillard, Brussels, Palais de Beaux-Arts, October 1946, no. 6 (illustrated; titled ‘Déjeuner aux Clayes’) Vuillard, Stockholm, Galerie d’Art Latin, 1948, no. 20 Edouard Vuillard, Charles Hug, Basel, Kunsthalle, March-May 1949, no. 237 (illustrated; titled ‘Salle à manager aux Clayes’) Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940, New York, The Jewish Museum, 4 May - 23 September, 2012 Literature C. Roger-Marx, Vuillard et son temps, Paris, 1946, p. 168 illustrated C. Roger-Marx, Edouard Vuillard 1867-1940 // Gazette des Beaux-Arts 29, № 952 (June 1946), p. 376, illustrated C. Roger-Marx, Vuillard, Paris, 1948, no. 63, illustrated, p. 71 R. Gaffé, Introduction à la peinture française. De Manet à Picasso, Paris, 1954, p. 171, illustrated A. Salomon, G. Cogeval, Vuillard. Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels, Paris, 2003, vol. III, p. 1563, № XII-212, illustrated in colour (titled ‘Lunch at Les Clayes’) S. Brown (ed.), Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses (exhibition catalogue), New York, 2012, p. 65 (illustrated)

Château des Clayes, a fourteenth century manor house not far from the Palace of Versailles, was to be Vuillard’s last country refuge and his major source of inspiration in the last twelve years of his life. Les Clayes was owned by Joseph (Jos) Hessel and his wife Lucie, Vuillard’s lifelong friends and closest companions. Jos Hessel was a partner in the prominent Parisian art-dealing firm Bernheim-Jeune, and together with the Bernheim brothers was instrumental in introducing Vuillard to avant-garde circles. Lucie Hessel - who became Vuillard’s lover, confidante, muse and mentor - was one of Vuillard’s most frequent subjects until his death in 1940.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 153

Ruzhnikov

Édouard Vuillard Jos and Lucie Hessel in the Small Salon, Rue de Rivoli, 1900-1905 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

154 • PAINTINGS

The artist was often guest at the fashionable social events and friendly gatherings held at Les Clayes. He quietly observed the guests, filling his notebooks with sketches. Jacques Salomon, his nephew-in-law, recalled of Vuillard at Les Clayes that “he was constantly drawing his friends, and those who found his eye upon them knew they must hold the pose in which he had caught them…” (J. Russel, Vuillard, Greenwich, CT., 1971, p. 128.)

Then these sketches were transferred “to a sheet of cardboard or canvas, or more frequently to a piece of paper which he cut from a roll that stood permanently in one corner of his studio.” (ibid., p. 127).

In the present picture, Vuillard masterfully displays elegantly dressed bourgeoisie involved in casual conversation within a formal dining room setting. This contrast of highly refined individuals shown in intimate and relaxed poses is typical of his later works. “In an unsystematic way he assembled as complete a record as any we have of the way well-to-do people looked and behaved in the France of the Third Republic.” (J. Russel, Vuillard, Greenwich, CT., 1971, p. 69.) Madame Hessel is pictured at the far right of the table, conversing with the playwright Romain Coolus. Lulu Hessel, her adopted daughter, is seated in the middle.

La Salle à Manger au Château des Clayes was painted on ochrecoloured paper using the distemper medium. “Vuillard first used détremper as a scene painter in the theater and liked its quick-drying properties as well as its chalky, unreflective surface, which harmonized well in an interior setting…In cultivating a dry, matte quality, Vuillard was in tune with most of the decorative painters of his generation, who, in the wake of Puvis and Gauguin, sought to avoid the illusion of depth and reflective properties associated with oil paint and to appropriate, in different ways, the flat wall-enhancing effects of fresco.” (B. Thomson, Vuillard, New York, 1988, p. 44). Subtle use of colour recalls Vuillard’s artistic beginnings as a Nabi.

Édouard Vuillard was born in Cuiseaux (Saône-et-Loire) in 1868

but spent his youth in Paris where his family moved in 1877.

Vuillard did not seriously apply himself to painting and drawing until the age of 19 when influenced by friendships made at school with Ker-Xavier Roussel and Maurice Denis, both later recognized as artists in their own right. In 1887, Vuillard began attending art classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and from 1888 at the Académie Julian, where he met Paul Serusier and Pierre Bonnard, thus forming the nucleus of the group which was to call themselves the «Nabis». Inspired by Japanese colour woodcuts and the painting of Paul Gauguin, the Nabis rejected the naturalism of academic art and experimented with a new concept of image space, attaining a decorative flatness and pattern-like order of what is depicted. Their principal belief was that above all, art is decoration and that art should strive for evocative and expressive declaration. Vuillard’s embrace of this philosophy is evident in the many large decorative panels painted over his career with expansive areas of flat, matte colour, cropped compositions, altered perspective and unusual colour relationships. But Vuillard’s work and particularly his subject matter also reflect an impressionistic attitude, that there should be no division between the artist’s studio and the life that exists around it. Vuillard is also often referred to as an «Intimist» for the frequency with which he depicted family interiors and local scenes. After the breakup of the Nabis in 1900, Vuillard established himself with a fashionable social circle. His subject matter reflected this change as he began painting portraits of prospective clients in elegant surroundings.

Vuillard’s paintings are held in major national collections, including the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, MOMA, New York, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and the National Gallery, London.

WWW.RUZHNIKOV.COM • 155

Credits Photography: Andy Johnson, London, UK Design: Mariya Kiseleva, Moscow, Russia Printed: Alenprint, Budapest, Hungary Chief consultant: Krysenok Diplodok

Andre Ruzhnikov +44-7866-638-973 +1-917-244-3777 +7-905-715-5530 ruzhnikov.com e-mail: andre@ruzhnikov.com info@ruzhnikov.com