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Lot 276
Australian light horse. A quantity of photographs that belonged to Leonard Howe who served with C SQD 6th Australian light horse no. 420. The photos were mostly taken in Palestine and Egypt during the first world war. Many are in the Serapeum area showing camel transport, laying railroad, signal station, watering horses, Turkish prisoners, etc. There are in excess of 90 images, several with comments on the back., together with in excess of 40 topographical photos and a souvenir album of the Sinia and Palestine printed on the cover `CPL T Ellis 7th LH`. Leonard Howe went to Australia c.1912 to work on a sheep farm. He was enlisted in Melbourne and was demobed in the UK and moved to Tiverton in Devon to run a dairy. He married Cassie Aplin who drove the Bridgwater and Kilve mail coach throughout the first world war.
Lot 293
Double barrelled percussion coat pistol made by Joseph W. Parkhouse Gunmakers, 54 High St, Taunton, C1860. 12cm half octagonal barrels, engraved frame and chequered walnut grip with silver escutcheon inset. Action working but stiff, top of one hammer and ram rod / throat missing. Light rust overall.
Lot 1
* BRODSKY, ISAAK (1884-1939) New Moon , signed and dated 1912. Oil on canvas, 62 by 80 cm. Provenance: Collection of E.I. Brodsky, the artist’s son, Leningrad.Private collection, St Petersburg.Private collection, Europe.Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the expert V. Kruglov.Exhibited: Isaak Israilevich Brodsky. Vystavka proizvedenii. K 90-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya, Museum of the Academy of Arts, Leningrad, 1974.Isaak Israilevich Brodsky. Vystavka k 100-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya, Museum of the Academy of Arts, Leningrad, 1984.Literature: I.I. Brodsky, Sbornik statei, Leningrad, Izdanie yubileinogo komiteta, 1929, illustrated in black and white.Isaak Israilevich Brodsky. Stat’i, pis’ma, dokumenty, Moscow, Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1956, p. 179, listed under works from 1912.Exhibition catalogue, Isaak Israilevich Brodsky. Katalog vystavki proizvedenii. K 90-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya, Leningrad, Iskusstvo, 1974, p. 32, listed.Exhibition catalogue, Isaak Israilevich Brodsky. Vystavka k 100-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya, Leningrad, Iskusstvo, 1984, p. 42, listed.Isaak Brodsky painted New Moon soon after returning from his travels round Spain, France and Italy, and the painting has noticeable signs of the romanticised approach to nature which is characteristic of the artist’s work in the 1910s. The attraction of this painting is a poetry that tugs at the heartstrings and its lyrical image of evening. It is a work of symbolism, but at the same time it retains a sense of naturalism in its vision of nature.The moon is a pale sickle, the branches of the trees glint, and a softly diffused light shines on the ground. The generally subdued palette of this landscape and the delicate relationships between the cold and the slightly warmer blue-grey tones, with no sharp contrast between dark and light, create the feeling of a sonorous and transparently clear dewy autumn evening. The painting comprises several layers: against the delicate blue-grey background the foliage is painted in patches of Umber and Sienna and later the twigs are touched in with a fine round brush to add expressive detail. Brodsky made the transition from a relatively fluid, Italian use of paint to a slightly fuller-bodied technique on a “thinned out” background.In his recollections Arkadiy Rylov gives a very exact description of the artist’s landscape technique: “Brodsky - like a jeweller or a weaver - covers his landscapes in patterns... These colourful patterns are original and lovely. He does not paint, but rather he draws with a fine paintbrush”.In fact, among the various means of expression employed in New Moon it is drawing that plays the leading role. Everything is subordinated to a stylising delineation. It is easy to discern strong admiration for the creative alignment of two associations - the Union of Russian Artists and World of Art. The conventionality of the painting’s rendition and the accentuated decorativeness of the composition are reminiscent of a theatrical backcloth created by the brush of a virtuoso artist and glimpsed, as it were, through the branches of the wings and scenery borders.It is surprising that Brodsky never turned his hand to theatre design. It is hard to find landscapes more theatrically constructed than his. The tree canopies and branches in the wings guide the eye into the open space of the landscape, allowing the focus to fall on the delicate, fragile beauty of nature lapsing into sleep and the barely discernible village floating in the distance. The view through branches into a landscape’s depth was one of the artist’s favourite and oft-repeated devices: indeed, one of Brodsky’s paintings from the 1910s was called Through the Branches.A contemporary of Brodsky’s, the renowned painter Konstantin Yuon, recalled: “I always understood his landscapes as pieces of music, the fine violin part led by his drawing, ever melodious”. And the artist himself, giving rein to his thoughts at the time, wrote: “My favourite motifs have remained, as before, landscapes seen in breadth, with wide open spaces and a perspective receding into their depths. I have been striving to construct landscape as a compositional entity, as a picture, intuitively resisting preoccupation with landscape sketched from nature, as inspired by Impressionism, which the imitators of that school elevated to a value sufficient in itself, driving out the idea of composing large creative works of art”.During the period when New Moon was painted, and right up until the Revolution, the vast majority of critics described Brodsky primarily as a landscape painter, which was partly due to his exceptional productivity in this genre.
Lot 2
* YUON, KONSTANTIN (1875-1958) Gates of the Rostov Kremlin , signed. Oil on canvas, 63 by 81 cm. Provenance: Previously in the collection of I. Isadzhanov, Moscow. Private collection, Europe.Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the expert Yu. Rybakova.Exhibited: Vystavka kartin K.F. Yuona. K 25-letiyu khudozhestvennoi deyatel’nosti, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 1926, No. 7. Sovetskie khudozhniki starshego pokoleniya, Moscow, June 1958 (label on the reverse).Literature: A. Koiransky, K.F. Yuon, St Petersburg, A. Kogan, 1918, p. 68, listed under works from 1906.Exhibition catalogue, Vystavka kartin K.F. Yuona. K 25-letiyu khudozhestvennoi deyatel’nosti, Moscow, 1926, p. 30, No. 7, listed.N. Tretyakov, K.F. Yuon, Moscow, 1957, p. 103, listed under works from 1906.Yu. Osmolovskii, Konstantin Fedorovich Yuon, Moscow, Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1982, p. 226, listed under works from 1906. The present work was published as a postcard by the Community of Saint Eugenia before 1926.Konstantin Yuon’s cycle of works dedicated to the ancient Russian town of Rostov the Great dates back to 1903, when a record in his handwriting appeared in the visitors’ book of the Rostov Museum: “Konstantin Yuon, artist from Moscow”. From that time on Rostov was for many years a place of pilgrimage for the artist. He came to work here from 1904 to 1906 and again from 1913 to 1916. The majestic ancient architecture became the subject of many of Yuons’s Rostov paintings. The majority of these works are now held in the State Tretyakov Gallery and the State Russian Museum as well as local museums in Omsk, Ryazan and Serpukhov.One of the few exceptions is the outstanding Gates of the Rostov Kremlin, well known from books, which has hitherto remained in a private collection but which MacDougall’s now offers for the first time at public auction. It is one of the most important works in the Rostov cycle. Painted in 1906, it differs dramatically from Yuon’s other works of this period which are based on the interaction between a genre element in the foreground and a wide panorama of the kremlin (Fine Day. Rostov the Great, 1906; Spring Evening. Rostov the Great, 1906; Winter. Rostov the Great, 1906).Painted from life, Gates of the Rostov Kremlin astounds the viewer with the sheer strength of its architectural mass. The artist is seeking to convey the powerful resonance of the white stone of the main holy gates of the kremlin, the harmoniously aligned rhythms of the two fortress towers adjoining the gates and the gatehouse church of the Resurrection, the window apertures of which in their rhythmic tread echo the arcades of the gallery. This striking effect is strengthened by the minimalism of the details, carefully selected and positioned, providing colour accents in the monochrome mass of stone. This piece clearly indicates the influence of Serov with his delicate nuances in composition and lighting.Yuon depicts a bright summer’s day but does not drench the scene in light, instead he makes his sunlit world, and first and foremost the architecture, extremely clear and well-defined in terms of its mass, while at the same time conveying the tremulousness and transparency of the summer atmosphere. The variety of the colour and light effects, the air and sunshine which pervade the picture, the purity of the paints, the colour in the shadows, the lively texture of his free brushwork - all these superlative aspects of Yuon’s technique are present in Gates of the Rostov Kremlin.Thanks to the authentically Impressionistic treatment of the motif, in Yuon’s characterisitc generalisation of forms, the fragmented composition and the broad brush-strokes, this canvas becomes a true paean to light, the nation’s history seemingly come to life before our eyes. The artist explained his Rostov works thus: “At that time it was as if I were painting and living in two different eras - encompassing both the past and the present.
Lot 4
SHILDER, ANDREI (1861-1919) Before the Storm , signed and dated 1918. Oil on canvas, 160 by 120 cm. Provenance: Private collection, UK.Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the expert V. Petrov.Exhibited: Pervaya gosudarstvennaya svobodnaya vystavka proizvedenii iskusstva, Palace of the Arts, Petrograd, 1919, No. 1584.Literature: Exhibition catalogue, Pervaya gosudarstvennaya svobodnaya vystavka proizvedenii iskusstva, Petrograd, 1919, p. 83, No. 1584, listed.Before the Storm stands out in the oeuvre of Andrei Shilder, not only because it is rare to find a genre element in the landscapes of Shishkin’s talented pupil, but also for its particularly poetic composition. Painted in 1918, this striking, monumental work merits special attention for the light it sheds on the attitude of the new generation of Wanderers towards the aims of Russian painting of the 1880s.In this picture Shilder consciously initiates a dialogue with Children Running from the Storm by Konstantin Makovsky, painted almost half a century earlier. Shilder’s little girls take up Makovsky’s theme, returning home from the forest with their basket filled with berries, they are caught in the elements. But if the clear-cut genre designation of Makovsky’s painting prevents us from a “landscape” reading of the work, Shilder’s Before the Storm prompts us to view nature as an equally important aspect of the composition. Undoubtedly, nature, which in its restlessness and apprehension corresponds to the human feelings and emotions, plays a major role in both works. Makovsky’s frightened children run from the terrible thunder-clouds; Shilder’s little girls hurry home to their village. In both works they will encounter on the way the narrow planks of a bridge across the stream - they must not trip on them as they run, must not fall into the dark water. In both pictures there are elements of a certain tender sentimentality, but here the resemblance ends. In Makovsky, the essence of the picture derives from the emotional state of the children, as if they themselves are narrating their adventure: how fearful the cloud was, how thorny the undergrowth, how cold the stream. In Shilder, conversely, the descriptive resonance of the canvas is achieved largely through the inclusion of the little figures of the girls in a carefully planned and precisely conceived landscape environment, of which they are a surprisingly organic element. The figures of the children do, of course, immediately draw our attention, but here they do not dominate, do not seem monumental, do not subjugate their surroundings, but rather exist in unbroken unity with the landscape. At the same time the countryside itself is depicted in a way we could consider to be the artist’s “signature” style, with the polished draughtsmanship - learned from Shishkin - of the plants in the middle ground and the extremely expressive silhouettes of the trees against a background, of vivid contrasts between the dark sky and last bright ray of sunlight. In this composition the dominant element is the emotional mood generated by colour and chiaroscuro, stimulating the viewer’s imagination and endowing the picture with particular mysteriousness. For this reason we can safely say that Before the Storm is a seminal work in the oeuvre of Shilder, an artist for whom a beautiful landscape, as a skilfully crafted work of art possessing its own means of expression, could in no way be equated with the precise rendering of the reality of nature.
Lot 10
ROCKLINE, VERA (1896-1934) Vue de Tiflis , signed "V. Rockline", also signed "Schlesinger" in Cyrillic. Oil on canvas, 97.5 by 75.5 cm. Provenance: Anonymous sale; Important Russian Pictures, Christie’s London, 28 November 2007, Lot 425.Private collection, UK.Exhibited: Rétrospective Vera Rockline, Galerie Drouart, Paris, 1984 (label and stamp on the stretcher).Femmes et Muses des Impressionnistes aux Modernes, Tokyo, Osaka and elsewhere, 1996-1997, No. 47.Elles de Montparnasse, Musée de Montparnasse, Paris, 12 April-4 August 2002.Literature: Exhibition catalogue, Femmes et Muses des Impressionnistes aux Modernes, 1996, p. 77, No. 47, illustrated, titled Paysage de Tiflis.Vue de Tiflis is one of the very few known works of Vera Rockline’s Russian period. The artist developed a passion for painting Cubist townscapes in the late 1910s under the influence of Alexandra Exter, her tutor in Kiev, whose studio the young artist, still bearing her maiden name Schlesinger, joined in 1918 after her parents moved there from Moscow. Before this, the young woman had been studying in Moscow at Ilya Mashkov’s studio of drawing and painting where, according to her contemporaries, she painted Neo-impressionist work of which little is now known.In the years 1918-1919, still under the name of Schlesinger, the artist took part in the Moscow Fellowship of Artists’ 24th exhibition; the 2nd exhibition of pictures by the Artists’ Union, the exhibition of Jewish artists’ painting and sculpture; and the 5th National Exhibition of painting From Impressionism to Non-objectivity. In the same year, however, the artist married and left with her new husband for Georgia. In 1919-1920 Rockline lived in Tiflis, where she created a small series of paintings and drawings of the city.In these works, the images of Tiflis are created using precise, sculpturally shaped volumes, and it seems as if all it would take is just one detail, one component, to be removed for gaps to open up and the whole thing to collapse. However, Rockline’s Cubism never crosses the line into complete freedom of form. Her paintings of this time are restrainedly Cubist and somewhat unreal: although possibly less free in their structure than the compositions of Exter, they are finer and more delicate in palette and closer in manner to Cézanne. In the landscapes that she painted in Georgia, the contraposition of masses is not quite so forceful as in her work as a student following in Exter’s footsteps. The connection between the masses is through Cézanne-like transitions that even out the light and dismember volumes into a mosaic of planes turned towards the viewer. In this period Rockline was striving to depict the space between objects rather than accentuating their convexity in the empty space of traditional perspective. She was interested primarily in the materialisation of that new urban architectural space which she felt in the Georgian capital. For this reason Rockline invariably brings mountains or the Kura River into her urban compositions of Tiflis, acting as a spatial caesura and providing a rhythmic prop for the viewer.In the present lot, painted in wonderfully harmonious dark blue-greens, browns and blacks, the caesura is the broad watery expanse of the Kura. But in her portrayal of water Rockline’s vision remains Cubist - she breaks down the river’s mass into elements and planes and portrays the restless motion of the water by colliding small flat areas of colour and geometrically compact shapes, rearranged and squeezed together by the strict sculptural and decorative rhythms of the spans of Mikhailovsky Bridge stretching out to Madatovsky Island.Like the majority of landscapes from this cycle, Vue de Tiflis is deserted, but in no way dead. Although there are no human figures, the boats in the foreground and the chimneys in the distance are evidence of life going on around. The main emphasis is on the sculptural expressiveness of the shapes. Buildings are vigorously cut up into shining facets, allowing them to be seen from various viewpoints at the same time. Rockline makes maximum use of opportunities to flatten out space, as ever restricting the depth in perspective of her Cubist structures by a succession of walls or the crested ridge of a mountain. All this makes Vue de Tiflis one of the most expressive and significant works of Rockline’s early period.
Lot 11
*§ SEREBRIAKOVA, ZINAIDA (1884-1967) Sleeping Nude (Katya) , signed and twice dated 1934, once indistinctly. Oil on canvas, 65 by 80 cm. Provenance: Anonymous sale; The Russian Sale, Sotheby’s London, 10 May 2000, Lot 65.Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.Private collection, Europe.Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the experts A. Kiseleva and I. Geraschenko.Related literature: For another version of the same composition, see Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967), Syseca, Malakoff, 1995, p. 15.The present work by Zinaida Serebriakova is an undoubted masterpiece among her famous nudes. Here the artist deploys a distinctive freedom and fluidity in her development of a classic theme in world art - the depiction of a sleeping sitter. Taking up the imagery of the sleeping Venuses of the Venetian masters, the nymphs of Boucher and the bathers of Cabanel and Renoir, Serebriakova does not reduce her model to some anonymous heroine of ancient mythology, rather, it is the “stolen moment” that interests her, catching a young girl, languid and flushed from sleep, at her most natural and without artifice. It is notable that the model here was the artist’s 22 year-old daughter Katya, her favourite sitter since the 1920s.We need only cast our minds back to the celebrated 1923 work in the Peterhof Museum, Katyusha on a Blanket, with the figure of the sleeping child sprawling across a vivid blue background, which initiated a whole series of similar works. Later too, in the best works of Serebriakova’s Petrograd and Paris periods we encounter this same, invariably smiling, mischievous young thing. Undressed and standing by the bed (Katyusha Nude, 1922); leaning on the balustrade, head thrown back and draped in a red shawl (Nude Leaning on Balustrade, 1929); sleeping, arms spread theatrically, amidst a mass of red and blue drapery (Nude, 1928); or lying peacefully on the bed-sheets (Nude, 1927). Yet the particular characteristics of the scene and the degree of finish in each of these works are always different, governed by whatever challenge Serebriakova has set herself. Thus the picture now offered for auction, painted with an extraordinarily free hand and splendid understanding of the female form, is among the most developed and finished of the artist’s works. Serebriakova achieves an overarching harmony in the composition, finding equilibrium between volume and linear rhythm and introducing colour and variation with the drapery. The delicate light effects and the warmth of the skin tone are particularly enhanced by the background of plain green cushions and the busily patterned blanket and rug hanging on the wall behind. Intoxicated by her ravishing model, Serebriakova creates an unreservedly sensual image of the naked young woman, accurately capturing the complex pose with a supple contour line and conveying the delicate, graceful sinuosity of her body. According to Alexander Benois, who in his letters often wrote admiringly of Serebriakova’s “peerless nudes”, this magnificent painting, full of internal movement, is animated “not by a generalised sensuality but by something specific, which we recognise from our literature, from our music, from our personal experiences. This is truly the flesh of our flesh. Here is that grace, that comfortable languor, that cosy, domesticated side to Eros - all of which are actually more alluring, more subtle and sometimes more perfidious, more dangerous than what Gauguin found on Tahiti and in search of which blasé Europeans left their pampered life at home and set off in the footsteps of Pierre Loti, across the whole of the white, yellow and black world” (Alexander Benois, Khudozhestvennye pis’ma, 1930-1936. p. 175).This Sleeping Nude from 1934 is a kind of summation of Serebriakova’s many years of experimentation and study in the genre. It combines an expressivity in the silhouette with painterly accomplishment in the brushwork allowing us to confidently assert that this represents one of the peaks of Serebriakova’s distinctive style.
Lot 12
§ SEREBRIAKOVA, ZINAIDA (1884-1967) Portrait of Marietta Frangopulo , signed and dated 1922. Pastel on paper, laid on cardboard, 63 by 49 cm. Provenance: Collection of L.G. Loitsyansky, Leningrad.Private collection, UK.Exhibited: Zinaida Serebriakova, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 1986. Literature: B. Ugarov et al, Zinaida Serebriakova. Katalog vystavki: sbornik materialov i katalog ekspozitsii k 100-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya khudozhnika, Moscow, Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1986, p. 165, listed; p. 168, illustrated.V. Kruglov, Zinaida Serebriakova, St Petersburg, Zolotoi vek, 2004, plate 75, illustrated.The present portrait of the ballerina Marietta Kharlampievna Frangopulo (1901-1979) belongs to Zinaida Serebriakova’s brilliant cycle of theatre works from the years 1922-1924. As early as January 1922 the artist’s mother Ekaterina Nikolayevna Lanceray was writing “This winter we have plunged right into the world of ballet. Zina draws ballerinas about three times a week, when some young ballerina will pose for her... and twice a week Zina takes her sketchbook into the wings to draw ballet dancers”. Here, behind the scenes at what had been the Mariinsky Theatre, the artist also made the acquaintance of a cheerful and sociable young ballerina who in her narrow circle of friends called herself “the free Hellene” (her father was of Greek extraction, a top official in a Petersburg bank). Marietta Frangopulo, soloist at the time with the Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, had recently been a fellow student of George Balanchine’s, graduating in 1919 from the Petrograd College of Choreography. She idolised poetry, and gave excellent renditions of the verse of Alexey Apukhtin and Igor Severyanin.The first pencil portrait of Frangopulo by Serebriakova was of her performing an arabesque in a dance class during the winter of 1921-1922: it is now held in the Chuvash State Art Museum. The crowning jewel of the artist’s ballet series, however, is the present portrait of 1922 in which the actress is depicted in a costume made after the designs by Bakst for Diaghilev’s one-act ballet Carnaval set to the music of Robert Schumann. The portrait is in pastel and, as Serebriakova’s daughter Tatiana later wrote: “in a manner uniquely hers, using thickly applied pastel, light hatching and stump-work technique”.In the same year, 1922, her best ballet portraits - Marietta Frangopulo, Lidya Ivanova and Alexandra Danilova in their costumes for the Pas de trois in Nikolai Tcherepnin’s ballet Armida’s Pavilion, E. Svekis in the costume for her character in Sleeping Beauty and a number of others - were shown at the World of Art exhibition in Petrograd. Their resonance was widely felt and Konstantin Somov liked them very much, writing in his diary: “I have been persuading Zina to do a big ballet portrait picture using the sketches I have seen!” Serebriakova followed his advice, and right up until her departure from Russia in 1924 worked passionately and prolifically to “paint ballet”, creating renown for herself as “the Russian Degas” as well as a whole suite of portraits and genre compositions dedicated to the theatrical world. Among them was one further pastel portrait of Frangopulo (1924), which is now the pride of the Museum of the Academy of Russian Ballet.
Lot 16
* PETROV-VODKIN, KUZMA (1878-1939) Still Life. Apples and Eggs , signed with a monogram, inscribed in Cyrillic "S-kand" and dated "1921-VII". Oil on canvas, 35.5 by 47 cm. Provenance: Collection of G. Blokh, Leningrad.Collection of N. Efron, Leningrad.Collection of A. Chudnovsky, Leningrad.Private collection, Europe.Authenticity certificate from the experts N. Aleksandrova and T. Zelyukina.Exhibited: Avantgarde 1900-1930: Tšudnovskin kokoelma Pietarista, Ateneum, Helsinki, 14 October 1993-9 January 1994, No. 53 (label on the reverse).Avantgarde 1900-1930: Tšudnovskin kokoelma Pietarista, Turku Art Museum, Turku, 5 February 1994-6 March 1994, No. 53 (label on the reverse).K.S. Petrov-Vodkin. Izbrannoe, The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, 1996 (label on the reverse).Literature: V. Kostin, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Moscow, Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1986, No. 64, illustrated; p. 157, listed.Exhibition catalogue, Avantgarde 1900-1930: Tšudnovskin kokoelma Pietarista, Helsinki, 1993, p. 102, No. 53, illustrated.Still Life. Apples and Eggs is one of the most typical and recognisable of Petrov-Vodkin’s works of the early 1920s. It was painted in Samarkand during the summer of 1921 when he was travelling around Central Asia with an expedition organised by the Academy of the History of Material Culture and it very clearly reflects his experimental path from the abstract space of his early years to the metaphysical world of “planetary reality”, full of colour and light.On the table, which is covered with a vivid, rich sky-blue cloth or sheet of paper, there are apples - some red and green, one yellow - and two eggs. At first glance we are struck by the absolute verisimilitude of the depiction: the sharply delineated flattened spheres of the apples, with their light, mauve shadows, and the accurately gauged ellipse of the eggs, warmed by the sun. The modesty of this still life, fairly typical of everyday life in those hard years, did not prevent the artist from creating a serene and exceptionally harmonious piece.In this still life we can sense that special sensitivity and pursuit of the metaphysical essence of objects and phenomena that became the defining element of Petrov-Vodkin’s works of the late 1910s and early 1920s and which resonated with the principles of his Italian contemporaries, Carrà and de Chirico. In its well thought-out haphazardness and in the seemingly random scattering of the fruit across the surface we see the artist’s carefully planned game; he is trying to trace, to get a feel for the inherent interconnection between objects by their very arrangement - the hidden life of inanimate matter. On the one hand, this “magic of corporeality” allows the artist to convey faithfully the concrete attributions of an object (of a greenish, ripe apple, of an egg) but on the other, to create a universalised image of that object, its Platonic eidos: the apple is a generous gift of the earth, the egg a symbol of the eternal beginning of life.Arranging his colour harmonies around the subtle juxtaposition of primary and complementary colours, Petrov-Vodkin achieves a striking vibrancy and richness. The artist is looking at the foodstuffs placed about the table from on high so that their configuration can be accurately rendered and we see them “as if in the palm of our hand”. In this way the artist tries to overcome the one-sidedness of the monocular point of view, considering it neither adequate nor a reflection of genuine knowledge of the object which can and must be viewed from as many angles as possible in order to form a true idea of it. Thus Petrov-Vodkin’s still lifes always have a peculiarly intense character generated by the strong lines of “spherical perspective” which spread throughout the whole space of the canvas. For Petrov-Vodkin, the problem posed by the object is inseparable from the concept of spherical perspective. Although he noted that this acquires an “even greater kinetic sense” in relation to large-scale objects - “landscapes and urban spaces”, which are inconceivable for him without strong “planetary” motion - the apples, matches and violins of his still lifes are connected with planetary motion in exactly the same way. It is no coincidence that a tilted perspective and tilted pictorial axis appear in all of them.The technique based on his “spherical system of perception”, allows Petrov-Vodkin to convey the whole in part, to retain in any still life a sense of the link between the object portrayed and the infinite expanse of the universe. As the artist himself confirmed, it is no coincidence that his study of the object, and by extension his principal work on still lifes, took place during the years of revolution. It seemed to him that without doing this he could not progress further; he could not solve the new artistic challenges he was presented with. Petrov-Vodkin succintly defined this genre, which was so important to him at this period: “The still life is one of the intense conversations the artist has with nature. In it, subject matter and psychology do not hinder the definition of an object in its space. What kind of object is it, where is it, and where am I, the viewer? This is the fundamental question the still life asks of us. And in this there is the great joy of knowing, which is what the viewer takes from the still life.”Petrov-Vodkin had occasionally painted still lifes of flowers and apples earlier in his career, but it was only from about 1918 to 1920 that they became central to his work. During this period he also regularly inserted into his landscapes and portraits the motif of an appletree branch loaded with fruit or of a single fruit or vegetable (Midday, 1917; Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter with Still Life, 1930s). However, thanks to their wonderfully sculptural forms and their graceful draughtsmanship and colour design, each of this artist’s still lifes with apples (Pink Still Life, Apple Tree Branch, 1918; Apple and Cherry, 1917; Apples, 1917; Still Life with Blue Cube, 1918 etc.) proves to be as beautiful and expressive as it is self-contained.Having resolved his major creative challenges of this period in both painting and drawing, Petrov-Vodkin did return from time to time to this genre, but the still life never again reached such heights in his oeuvre. The conciseness and creative concentration of his still lifes from the late 1910s to early 1920s (which invoke fundamental symbols, religious and cultural principles of existence and compassion for spiritual and physical hunger) make them, perhaps, the benchmark standards of Russian art of the post-Revolutionary period, alongside Pavel Filonov’s revolutionary Formula paintings.
Lot 25
*§ LARIONOV, MIKHAIL (1881-1964) Flowers on a Veranda , signed with initials, further inscribed with the artist`s name and dated 1902 on the reverse. Oil on canvas, laid on board, 54.5 by 97.5 cm. Provenance: Alexandra Tomilina, the artist’s widow, Paris.Private collection, Europe.Exhibited: Larionov-Gontcharova, Galerie Beyeler, Basel, July-September 1961 (label on the reverse).Michel Larionov, Acquavella Galleries, New York, 22 April-24 May 1969, No. 6 (label on the reverse). Literature: Exhibition catalogue, Michel Larionov, Acquavella Galleries, New York, 1969, No. 6, illustrated.Flowers on a Veranda is an outstanding example of Mikhail Larionov’s early work. This idiosyncratic piece has an impeccable provenance which can be traced back to the estate of the artist’ s widow, and is a rare example (even for museum collections) of his works in oil from the early 1900s. Unlike his works in pastel and gouache, very few oils of this period have been preserved, so each is particularly precious.It is most likely that the artist painted Flowers on a Veranda after his year-long exclusion from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture for sending pieces featuring “obscene content” to an exhibition of student work. Captivated by the experiments of the Impressionists which he had seen in the Moscow collection of Sergei Shchukin, Larionov was then beginning to consider himself a truly independent artist, liberated from academic didacticism. Every summer he would leave Moscow for his maternal grandmother’s home in Tiraspol, Bessarabia, where he had spent his childhood and where he now wholly devoted himself to painting from nature. The significance of these works in the artist’s creative development cannot be overestimated.He converted a wing of his grandmother’s house, with its enormous garden planted with apricot trees, into a studio, and there produced a series of canvasses, paeans to the everyday life unfolding outside his window. His best works of the first half of the 1900s are full of sunshine and greenery and depict pots of flowers, lilac bushes, geese and turkeys strolling about the yard. Stylistically these pieces, including Flowers on a Veranda, are reminiscent of his early works in which we recognise the influence of Borisov-Musatov and the plein air approach to rendering phenomena. Yet these are not studies, in the 19th century sense of the word, but finished pictures painted from nature, which are absolutely consonant with the art of the new century. In Larionov’s work of the 1900s, the question of distinguishing between a preparatory study and a finished picture does not even arise. Rather orangeries, acacias, roses wet from the rain and even pigs grow from the primary elements of a study into an autonomous painting, whilst retaining both the typically small dimensions and the dynamic paint application of a study. Flowers on a Veranda is similar in composition to the well-known 1904 work now in the Russian Museum, Still Life with Beer, in which the characteristic traits of Larionov’s celebrated works of the 1900s first appear. Despite their simplicity, the objects arranged on the veranda create a feeling of dynamic equilibrium. The pot holding the plant with luxuriant foliage emphasises the centripetal movement of the composition towards the corner of the veranda, literally dividing the picture into two practically equal halves. At the same time, the general structure of the picture is defiantly fragmentary: the flowerpots in the bottom row barely protrude from the edge of the canvas and the right-hand corner of the composition is dramatically cropped along both edges. The framing is extremely tight. It is as if the scene has entered the artist’s field of vision quite by chance. Larionov was not sitting down at a table to paint his still life, as Cézanne had done, but standing, and because of his significant height objects seem to retreat downwards, beyond the confines of the picture area. By doing this he creates the impression of dynamism, so important in avant-garde art of the early 20th century, of the motion of the human eye as if it were skimming across the line of plants by the window. The artist has placed an analogous counterpoint in the paint layer of the picture: He counters the firm, stationary mass of the ochre clay pots, the blue table and solid, wood-clad terrace wall, dappled with a pattern of shadow, with the Van Gogh-style light that streams through the window, seemingly “quilted” in thickly-impastoed, multi-directional brush-strokes.The composition is based on two main colours, red and yellow, with the addition of blue and green to reinforce the contrast. Almost everywhere, the blue serves to demarcate the yellow from the red zones. Only where light dominates completely, flooding into the room through the window panes, does a fiery red abut directly on to a bright yellow injecting an extraordinary colouristic force into the composition. The pot plants seem to be indoors but at the same time bathed in bright, exterior daylight. According to Gleb Pospelov, a renowned expert on the artist, “the light in Larionov’s works seemed to shine through a flattened reality. It somehow issued from the phenomenon of life itself… a radiance animated from within which permeated all living things: this was the defining essence of his art. The whole of Larionov’s oeuvre was a benediction on that which was alive and living, the like of which was completely absent from the work of other Russian painters at this time.”Larionov’s paintings were truly unique in European Post-Impressionist art. His dedication to “the living world” was inseparable from his extremely perceptive experiments in “liberating the paint layer”. It is no coincidence that in his pictures of the 1900s the “element” of paint confronts the elements of nature. The energy in Larionov’s best canvasses of the period is created from this very desire for equilibrium in the confrontation of these forces and this is clearly seen in the present lot.In Flowers on a Veranda, with its tendency to generalise the impact of the palette, its fusion of individual brushstrokes into one splash of colour and its decorative resolution of the whole, we clearly see Larionov establishing himself as one of the founders of the Russian avant-garde and as a major artist of the 20th century, head and shoulders above his contemporaries.
Lot 29
AIVAZOVSKY, IVAN (1817-1900) Gibraltar by Night , signed and dated 1844. Oil on canvas, 58.5 by 87 cm. Provenance: Collection of Charles E. Sorensen, Principal of the Ford Motor Company 1925-1944, Detroit.Acquired from the above by a private American collector in the early 1950s.Thence by descent to the previous owner.Private collection, UK.Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the expert V. Petrov.Exhibited: The Hague, 1844.Literature: N. Sobko, Slovar’ russkikh khudozhnikov, 1895, p. 316, No. 110.The work will be included in the forthcoming monograph Light, Water and Sky by G. Caffiero and I. Samarine, to be published in November 2012.Ivan Aivazovsky’s painting Gibraltar by Night in a way sums up his tour of Europe which he undertook after his graduation from the Imperial Academy of Arts. It is thought to have been painted in 1844 in The Hague from the artist’s fresh impressions of a visit to Gibraltar, and was then exhibited in the same city.By this time the young artist had managed to cover a good half of Europe in four years, and everywhere he went his journey was extraordinarily successful. Aivazovsky’s travels were accompanied by personal exhibitions in capital cities, the attention of the Pope and other highly important people, ubiquitous praise for his talent as a marine artist and the accolade of academician at three European Academies of Arts.The artist met with no less honour on return to his homeland. His colleagues immediately submitted a petition to the Board of the Petersburg Academy eloquently listing the artist’s achievements abroad: “Having made his name in Italy and in Paris, he acquired a reputation as the prime artist in Holland and England, travelled around the Mediterranean as far as Malta, busied himself in Gibraltar, Cadiz and Granada, earned praise and awards as no other prizewinner ever had the fortune to gain for himself, I regard it as my duty to propose, out of respect for his aforementioned merits, that the rank of academician be conferred on him”. Nine days later, on 13th September 1844, the Board of the Academy of Arts unanimously awarded Aivazovsky the title of academician.In fact, despite Aivazovsky’s rather tender age, in his work of the mid-1840s he comes across as a fully established master who has found his trademark theme and compositional metier in art, to which he remains true throughout his life. The ship foundering in the waves of a stormy sea, and the silhouette of a sailing vessel in the moonlight are depictions that have entered the treasury of motifs of Russia’s greatest marine artist. He created the majority of his compositions of this kind guided by the dictates of his heart. His visual memory, made many times more powerful by his lively creative imagination, allowed him, without precisely copying reality, to reproduce in his paintings a variety of emotional states in nature, by recalling a landscape motif committed to memory in its most general features, but charging it with imaginary effects of light and feeling, often disregarding whether this was true to life in the literal sense. Gibraltar by Night, however, evidently had a basis in reality. The artist, who visited London and the British crown possession of Gibraltar in 1843, had certainly heard a lot about the tragedy that took place that year in the Strait. In 1843 the British Navy’s new paddle steamer Lizard was lost off Gibraltar through collision with a French steamship. This was probably the event, agitatedly discussed in the British press, that inspired Aivazovsky to create his canvas.Through the historic collision, the artist’s favourite theme of the shipwreck was enriched by conceptual overtones that led him to enhance the drama of what happened. The modern ship driven by a steam engine comes to grief, her sailors - desperate to be saved - stretching out their arms towards a sailing vessel in the background proceeding peacefully at the will of the waves. At the same time, Aivazovsky intentionally shifts the dramatic scene away from the centre to the right-hand side of the canvas to give the viewer the chance to appreciate the dazzling seascape with its solitary rock on the horizon and his famous, masterfully painted path of moonlight sparkling in a multitude of gradations and splashes of colour on the foaming waves.The relationship in Aivazovsky’s paintings between main and secondary elements was prompted by artistic instinct. The main elements are the spectacular luminous effect, unique rhythmic structure and unity of light and air. Outward verisimilitude - perspective, the distribution of light, the working of compositional detail - are secondary. Aivazovsky was always faithful to this principle. The artist himself acknowledged: “I believe that my paintings are distinguished not only one from another, but also from the work of many others, by their luminous strength; and those pictures whose main strength is the light of the sun, moon etc., but also sea waves and surf, should be considered my best”.This painting is a variation in romantic tones on the theme of the insignificance of human progress when confronted by the elements. The artist takes the opportunity to build his composition on the contrast of the illuminated night sky and sea with the dark silhouette of the sinking steamship, strangely lit by the glow of red sparks flying out of her funnel. Aivazovsky seems to have explored to the limit the spectacular but simultaneously tragic phenomenon of the shipwreck. His aim was to heighten the emotional tension in his compositions. As he later wrote: “I frequently painted shipwrecks, but they were seen only in the distance, by viewers who had to imagine in their heart the horrors unleashed within the ship as her fracturing wooden walls were destroyed by the waves...” The artist felt a special excitement in suggesting that the viewers should work out for themselves the ending to a situation that was invariably presented to them together with much eloquent, symbolic detail. In the case of Gibraltar by Night this is a buoy being tossed by the waves that precisely centres the composition and a sailing vessel that has appeared not far away, inspiring hope. This device, often used by the artist, when combined with virtuoso effects of colour and light could be relied on to impart an emotional charge to the scene.
Lot 30
MAKOVSKY, ALEXANDER (1869-1924) View of Plios , signed, inscribed in Cyrillic "Plios" and dated 1918. Oil on canvas, 67 by 85 cm. Provenance: Private collection, UK.Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the expert V. Petrov.Exhibited: Possibly exhibited at the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Petrograd, 1918, No. 97.View of Plios is one of Alexander Makovsky’s best-known works. Son of the celebrated Peredvizhnik Vladimir Makovsky, Alexander arrived at the banks of the Volga, earlier immortalised by Levitan, as an already mature artist. In the hard years after the Revolution, this small settlement and its picturesque surroundings which still retained features of the old merchant life became a bountiful source of inspiration, tinged with nostalgia. Here, during his summer migration from his job as head of the art department of the Russian Red Cross Society, Makovsky created a whole series of notable canvasses, halfgenre, half-landscape and saturated with light and colour, which have become one of the most brilliant episodes in his oeuvre.After a long break, the artist in his Volga paintings of the 1920s returns to painting large-scale, highly-populated compositions, and for these he produces a large number of carefully rendered studies portraying distant river vistas and individual protagonists - peasants, boatmen, merchants and those out strolling along the river bank. It is no coincidence that we sometimes encounter those same protagonists, depicted by Makovsky in his series of tempera works, Volga Types (1922), and in small oils such as Peasant with a Tobacco Pouch and Acquaintances (both 1921), The Mushroom Gatherer, and The Old Beekeeper (both 1922), in such major paintings as the present lot View of Plios, and many others: Market Day at Plios (1919-1923), Waiting for the Ferry (1920-1923), Street in Plios (1923), Easter Procession (1921-1923) and At the Ferry (1924). Most works in Makovsky’s Plios cycle have long since entered the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery and other leading museums of Russian art, thus the appearance on the market of a work of this quality can without doubt be considered a great rarity.
Lot 46
DEINEKA, ALEKSANDR (1899-1969) Still Life with Azalea and Apples , signed and dated 1937. Oil on canvas, 64.5 by 74.5 cm. Provenance: Private collection, Europe. Authenticity of the work has been confirmed by the expert T. Levina.Deineka’s 1937 painting Still Life with Azalea and Apples is a fine example of his work in the still life genre from the period when his artistic talent was blossoming. It was painted soon after his return from an extended trip to the USA, France and Italy, and it retains that very keen, strong “impression of an assertive freshness of technique”, of which the renowned critic Abram Efros wrote in 1935.In the artist’s approach to his entirely traditional nature morte - flowers, fruit and drapery - there is none of the unity of picturesque subject matter inherent in classical painting, which portrays everything in a single textural key. With Deineka, it is as though he endows every object with its own personal texture and colour, emphasising the diversity of the matter of which the forms are composed - a diversity of organic matter and geometry. Natural shapes that are round - the flower-heads, the foliage, the apples - are moulded in strokes of thick, sculptural impasto. Treatment of the clay pot and bright yellow porcelain dish is more subtle, but solid enough. And lastly, the busy checked pattern of the fabric is painted deliberately sketchily and the paint layer is fairly light (similar checked fabric will appear in the dress of the model in Deineka’s later work Young Construction Worker, painted in 1966).Painting crafted in this way shows the impact of Cubist collage, transformed to introduce a variety of textures to the painted surface. A distinct pure form of the style became especially evident in the work of Deineka’s senior contemporary and close associate within the Society of Easel Painters, David Shterenberg. While Deineka does not venture so far into laying bare techniques as does Shterenberg, there is a palpable interplay of contrasting material structures in his Still Life with Azalea and Apples.
Lot 102
OO gauge, nine Bachmann diesel locomotives: consists of 2x BR Class 31 Bo-Bo (32411`D5233` F/G broken hand rail, 32326 `25054`); 4x Class 37 Co-Co (32775 `37038`, 32376 `Eisteddfod Genedlaethol 37429`, 32375 EWS `37419`, 32778 `D6826`); 32050 Class 42 Bo-Bo BR maroon `Foxhound D817`; 32525 Class 55 Co-Co `King`s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry 55002`; 32751 Virgin Class 57 Co-Co `Scott Tracy 57301`. All appear G/VG unless noted, boxed. (9).
Lot 263
Six boxed tinplate/plastic items: consists of four Chinese-made (clockwork motorcycle with sidecar, friction Tiger Truck, battery powered Mystery Action Bus P heavily corroded, friction powered train with battery-operated light); Ichiko (Japan) 12" VW school bus; plastic VW Beetle. Overall G unless stated. (6)
Lot 360
Daiya (Japan) Space Conqueror Robot, c.1950s: tinplate battery operated robot is blue with detailed tinprinting, red and yellow oxygen tanks to back, clear dome over head with securing ring, gun with light behind red window, height 28cm. Some corrosion to battery compartment cover inside, lacks antenna, some light surface scratches particularly to oxygen tanks. Otherwise good example of this scarce model, in working order.
Lot 793
Four Dinky Toys diecast buses: consists of 297 Silver Jubilee bus (G/VG, boxed); 2x 282 Duple Roadmaster (dark blue with light blue hubs, red with red hubs, both P, unboxed); 290 Double Decker Bus (cream upper deck, green lower deck, light green hubs, P, unboxed). Together with a Lesney Matchbox box containing Dinky tyres; Morestone Modern Products Polica Car (F missing aerial in F box); Corgi Austin Metro (G, boxed). (7).
Lot 280
Airplane Model "Etrich Taube" of 1909 A flying-scale model of ultra-light construction, the balsa wood frame with fine fabric covering, engine turned aluminum cowl concealing an 4-stroke engine driving the two-blade propeller, with adjustable nigging arranged for wing control and other movable control surfaces, on rubber tyred coil spring undercarriage and tail skid, 200 cm wingspan. Flugmodell "Etrich Taube"-Eindecker von 1909 Detailgenaues Modell des ersten in größerer Stückzahl gebauten Flugzeuges im Maßstab 1:7. Spannweite 200 cm, stoffbespannter Holzrahmen, Propellerantrieb durch 4-Takt-Motor, Steuerung durch Flügelverwindung mittels Seilzug. Condition: (3/-) Starting Price: €450
Lot 289
English Sextant "Husun", 1938 Manufactured by: "H. Hughes & Son Ltd., London". Serial no. 20037, silver scale, with reading light (battery case in the handle), complete with accessories in mahogany case. Englischer Sextant "Husun", 1938 Hersteller: "H. Hughes & Son Ltd., London". Serien-Nr. 20037, Silberskala, elektrische Beleuchtung (Batteriefach im Griff), komplett mit Zubehör im Mahagoni-Kasten. Condition: (4/3) Starting Price: €120
Lot 409
Coin-Operated Scale with Card Printer, c. 1925 Railway station scale, mechanically operated, with electric light, untested, height 80 in. Personenwaage mit Karten-Ausgabe, um 1925 Münzbetriebene Bahnhofswaage, mechanisch mit elektrischer Beleuchtung, ungetestet, Höhe 202 cm. Condition: (3/-) Starting Price: €120
Lot 444A
Coin-Operated Working Model "The English Execution", 1928 English model with 5-pence slot. Manufactured by Klaus `Charles` Ahrens, London. Mahogany floor standing case, size: 30 x 18 1/2 x 74 3/4 in., 110 V. - Originally operated on English piers. Created to shock the people! Put a coin in and the scene will unfold: The doors open, light inside, no sound, the bell rings and the trap door falls open and the man is hanged from the neck, the doors close - time for the next coin and another English execution! Placard signed: "H. Taylor, 1928" - Excellent working condition, extremely rare, especially in this superb condition! Working Model "The English Execution", 1928 Münzbetriebener Spielapparat, wie er in den englischen Seebädern oder Vergnügungshallen in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren sehr populär war. Münzeinwurf für 5 Pence. Hersteller: Klaus `Charles` Ahrens, London. - Holzgehäuse, Maße: 76 x 47 x 190 cm, für 110 V. - Nach Einwurf der Münze öffnen sich die Tore, eine Glocke ertönt, und unter Beleuchtung öffnet sich die Falltüre und der Täter wird gehenkt, die Tore schließen sich - Zeit für eine neue Münze und die nächste Exekution! - Bild signiert: "H. Taylor, 1928". - Voll funktionstüchtiger Zustand - äußerst selten, vor allem in diesem Top-Zustand! Condition: (2/2) Starting Price: €5500
Lot 458
Jennings: "The Governor - Tic-Tac-Toe", c. 1960 American 3-reel slot machine by Jennings & Co., Chicago. Chrome-plated case, for 50-pfennig coins, with electric light, very good working condition. - Literature: Bueschel, "Jennings Slot Machines", 1992, p. 612. Jennings: "The Governor Tic-Tac-Toe", um 1960 Jennings & Co., Chicago. Klassischer "einarmiger Bandit", mit Münzmechanik für 50-Pfennig-Münzen. Seitenwände aus Holz, Front und Oberteil aus verchromtem Guß, Indianerkopf aus Messing. Maße: 44 x 68 x 43 cm. - Literatur: Bueschel, "Jennings Slot Machines", 1992, S. 612 oben. - Gut erhalten und spielbereit. - Schönes dekoratives Stück! Condition: (3/2-3) Starting Price: €750
Lot 587
Merry-go-Round with Horses Fairground model, wood and metal, hand-painted, electric light and motor, Ø 19 in., height: 19 1/2 in. Miniatur-Pferdekarussell "Merry-go-Round" Holz und Metall, Handbemalung, elektrische Beleuchtung, Antrieb durch Elektromotor, Ø 48 cm, Höhe: 50 cm. Condition: (2-3/2-3) Starting Price: €120
Lot 588
Miniature Model of Chair-O-Plains "Wellenflug" Large fairground model, with 32 seats and ticket box, wood and metal, hand-painted, electric light and motor, Ø 18 1/2 in., height: 25 3/5 in. - An impressive working model! Miniaturmodell eines Kettenkarussells "Wellenflug" Mit 32 Sitzen und Kassenhäuschen, Holz und Metall, Handbemalung, elektrische Beleuchtung, Elektromotor, Ø 47 cm, Höhe: 65 cm. - Imposantes Modell! Condition: (2/2) Starting Price: €180
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