Russian Painting

by Peter. Leek

  NIKOLAÏ NIKOLAYEVICH SAPUNOV

  Nikolaï Nikolayevich Sapunov was born on 17 December (29 N.S.) 1880 in Moscow. From 1893 to 1901 he studied at the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Isaac Levitan, Valentin Serov, and Konstantin Korovin; in 1904 to 1911 at the Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg under Alexander Kiseliov. In 1900 he worked in the decoration studio of the Moscow Arts Theatre under Victor Simov, producing sets after Korovin’s sketches from 1901 to 1903. He made a trip to Italy in 1902.

  From 1908 on he lived in Saint Petersburg. He was one of the organizers and members of the artistic council of the House of Intermissions in Saint Petersburg (an institution that existed in 1910-11). He participated in exhibitions as from the 1900s, took part in the Blue Rose exhibition in 1907 and contributed to the World of Art exhibitions from 1911 onwards.

  In the early 1900s he designed sets and costumes, together with Sergeï Sudeikin, for several theatrical productions at Moscow’s Hermitage Theatre (Savva Mamontov’s opera), Esposito’s Camorra, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (not staged), etc. Then he designed sets and costumes for Balmont’s Three Flowerings at the Tragedy Theatre in Saint Petersburg (1905), Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Rossini’s Barber of Seville at the Opera Studio in Moscow (1905) and Maeterlinck’s Death of Tentaglles at the Theatrical Studio on Povarskaya Street in Moscow (again with Sudeikin; 1905, not realized). When he worked for the Theatrical Studio the artists rejected a design for the first time and painted the sets themselves. His subsequent productions were staged in Saint Petersburg in cooperation with Vsevolod Meyerhold: Ibsen’s Hedda Gabbler and Blok’s Balaganchik at Vera Komissarzhevskaya’s Theatre (1906), the pantomime Columbine’s Scarf after A. Schnitzler’s story, the pastorale Liza the Dutch GirI and The Corrected Eccentric, both by M. Kuzmin, at the House of Intermissions (1910). His last works were sets and costumes for Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1911) and C. Gozzi’s Princesse Turandot at K. Nezlobin’s Theatre in Moscow (staged by Fiodor Komissarzhevsky). His designs for operas and dramas are also known: Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, Mozart’s Don Juan, Bizet’s Carmen and Blok’s King on a Square (1907), Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Chekhov’s Uncle Vania (1909), and G. B. Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (1910).

  He often produced easel paintings devoted to the motifs from earlier productions: The Mystical Meeting (1910, based on Blok’s Balaganchik), The Green Bull Flotel (1910, based on Liza the Dutch Girl), Pantomime (1910, based on Columbine’s Scarf), Jourdain’s Room, Turkish Ceremony, and Dorimène (1911, based on Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme); his painting The Dance of Death (1907) based on Wedekind’s play is also famed. Other easel paintings belong to different genres. There are landscapes: Winter, 1900; Blooming Apple-Trees, Landscape with a River, Before a Thunderstorm, all 1911; flowers and still lifes: Roses, 1906; Blue Hydrangeas, 1907, 1909, 1910; Still Life with a Self-Portrait, 1907; Peonies, 1907, 1908; Still Life, 1910; Still Life: Vase of Flowers, Teapot and Cup, Still Life: Vase, Flowers and Fruit, both 1912. There are also portraits: Nikolaï Milioti, 1908; L.Guseva and A. Komissarzhevskaya, both 1911; a mulatto actress — four versions, 1911-12; the poet and composer Mikhaïl Kuzmin — two versions, 1912, not completed; pencil portraits of Valery Briusov, 1912 as well as depictions of festivities and masquerades: A Minuet, A Ballet, Night Merry-Making, Masquerade, 1907; Spring: Masquerade, 1912 or popular entertainments: Carrousel — two versions, 1908; Mummers. Finally, pictures and sketches of genre scenes of a grotesque character exist (Tea-Drinking, 1912) along with representations of a drawing room in a brothel, a nighttime tavern, a male choir in a tavern, etc. He produced vignettes for the journals The Balance and The Golden Fleece.

  In the spring of 1912 he took part in the establishment of a theatre in Terioki (now Zelenogorsk) near Saint Petersburg and intended to paint sets for a production of Ostrovsky’s drama The Thunderstorm at that theatre. He also intended to go to Paris, probably to hold negotiations with Diaghilev. He drowned in the Gulf of Finland near Terioki on 14 (27) June 1912.

  SERGEÏ YURYEVICH SUDEIKIN

  Sergeï Yuryevich Sudeikin was born on 7 (19 N.S.) March 1882 in Saint Petersburg. From he studied (with breaks) at the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and from 1909 to 1911 at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, where from 1910 he attended the studio of Dmitry Kardovsky. In about 1901 he traveled to the Caucasus and to Italy, then in 1906 to Paris, where he took part in the Russian section of the Salon d’Automne. He played an important role in the organization of the exhibitions of the Scarlet Rose (1904, Saratov) and the Blue Rose (1907, Moscow); in 1907 he participated in the Wreath exhibition mounted by Mikhaïl Larionov and David Burliuk. He was a member of the World of Art as from 1911 and a regular contributor to its exhibitions. During the 1900s — 1910s he painted pastorals, ballet scenes and “fêtes galantes”: A Night Holiday (1905), A Pastoral (1905, 1906, 1912), Merry-Making (1906), In a Park (1907), A Poet of the North (1909), Ballet (1910), The Carrousel (1910). He also turned to the motifs of popular merriments, show-booth farces, and theatrical performances: Shrovetide Festival (1910s), Petrouchka and a series of lubok prints called Shrovetide Characters (mid-1910s), The Puppet Theatre and Harlequinade (1915); produced still lifes, landscapes, and portraits: Still Life (1909, 1911), Saxon Figurine (1911), Flowers and Porcelain (early 1910s), A Park (1915), A Summer Landscape (1916); Portraits of S. Tiunin (mid-1910), Yury Yurkun (1915), Vera Sudeikina (1917), and Ya. Izrailevich. He created graphic works for books and the press: illustrations of Maeterlinck’s Death of Tintagiles (1903), M. Kuzmin’s book The Chimes of Love (together with Nikolaï Feofilaktov), The Travel of Sir John Fairfax (Apollon, 1909, No. 5), Autumn Lakes (1912), Venetian Madmen (1915); contributions to the journals The Golden Fleece, The Balance, Apollon, Satiricon, and New Satiricon. He mainly worked for the theatre and artistic cabarets. In the late 1890s and early 1900s he designed a number of productions for Savva Mamontov’s Opera in Moscow. In 1905 he took part in the decoration of the Theatre-Studio at Povarskaya Street attached to the Moscow Arts Theatre, designing the production of Maeterlinck’s Death of Tintagiles there and his Soeur Beatrice at Vera Kommissarzhevskaya’s Theatre in 1906. He continued to design various productions in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in subsequent years: G.B. Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (1909) and O. Dymov’s Spring Madness (1910) at the New Drama Theatre, M. Kuzmin’s comic opera Amusements for Virgins and three one-act ballets at the Maly Drama Theatre (1911), Jacinthe Benavente’s Seamy Side of Life at the Russian Theatre (1912), one-act ballets for the tour by Mariinsky Theatre dancers around Russia in 1914-15, including Adam’s Giselle and Bizet’s Andalusiana; Beaumarchais’ Marriage of Figaro at the Chamber Theatre (1915), etc. In 1913 he produced sets and costumes for F. Schmidt’s ballet Tragedy of Salome for the Russian Seasons in Paris. (Like Sapunov, he always painted sets from his designs himself.) He did a great variety of work for Saint Petersburg theatres. In 1910 he produced a curtain for the House of Intermissions and designed the production of E. Znosko-Borovsky’s Transformed Prince. He created costumes for guests, props and patchwork panels for the artistic cabarets The Stray Dog and The Comedians’ Halt. From 1911 to 1915 he painted and decorated the main rooms in The Stray Dog and designed theatrical soirées such as “Dogs’ Carrousel” and “Dolls’ Den”. Between 1915 and 1917 he designed masquerades, festivities, and play productions: A. Schnitzler’s Columbine’s Scarf and Kozma Prutkov’s Fantasia. In 1917 he went to the Crimea, worked in the valuation commission at the nationalized Vorontsov Palace and at the end of the year he moved to Tbilisi where he painted, together with David Kakabadze and Lado Gudiashvili, the poets’ tavern Khimerion, designed Vassily Kamensky’s poetry evening (1919), painted pictures and took part in exhibitions. In 1920 he left for Paris. He did a great deal of work for N. Balieff’s cabaret-theatre La Chauve-Souris, and designed several theatrical productions, including Beyer’s Puppenfee and Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty for Anna Pavlova’s troupe. In 1922 he
moved to the USA and settled in New York. He designed a number of productions for the Metropolitan Opera and other theatres, as well as ballets produced by Balanchine, Fokine, Mordkin, and Bronislava Nijinska. He was artistic designer of the Hollywood film Resurrection, created a panel based on Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacré de printemps, as well as painting pictures. He died in New York on 12 August 1946.

  DMITRY ISIDOROVICH MITROKHIN

  Dmitry Isidorovich Mitrokhin was born on 15 May (27 N.S.) 1883 in Yeisk on the Sea of Azov. In 1902 he entered the College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow, where he studied under Appolinary Vasnetsov and Alexeï Stepanov. In 1904 he transferred to the Stroganov College where his teachers were Stanislav Noakovsky and Sergeï Yaguzhinsky.

  In 1904-05 he worked with the Murava group of artistic potters. In 1905-06 he lived in Paris for ten months attending evening classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Théophile Steinlen and Eugène Grasset and studying classical European and Japanese engravings, drawings by the Old Masters, and contemporary graphic art. He took part in exhibitions as from 1906 and began to exhibit with the World of Art in 1911, of which he became a member in 1916.

  In 1908 he moved to Saint Petersburg, where from 1918 to 1923 he was a curator and head of the Department of Engraving and Drawings at the Russian Museum. From 1919 to 1923 he was Professor of the Art Faculty at the Higher Institute of Photography and Photo-technology, from 1924 to 1930 professor of the Polygraphic Faculty at the Higher Art-Technical Institute, lecturing on book graphic art.

  At the age of 58, during World War II he joined the popular militia as a volunteer. In October 1942 he left besieged Leningrad for Alma-Ata. In 1944, after the evacuation, he moved to Moscow. He worked in all fields of graphic art, producing illustrations for books and journals, applied graphic works, engravings, lithographs, drawings, and watercolours.

  In 1904 he created his first vignettes for the journals The Balance and Pravda (Truth). Between 1905 and 1910 he drew covers, head-and tailpieces, initials and illustrations for the journals The Viewer, Yunost (Youth), Satiricon, Novy Satiricon, Apollon, Lukomorye, Vershiny (Summits), etc. In the 1920s he designed some elements for various journals (Dom iskusstv [The House of Arts], Krasnaya Panorama [The Red Panorama], Vesntik profsoyuzov [The Trade Union Herald], and Drezina [The Hand Car]). As a graphic artist he designed either only covers or entire books. He created his first cover in 1907 and the last in 1962. The best examples of the whole publications designed by him are children’s books in the series issued by the Knoebel Publishing Company: Hauff’s Little Muck and The Ghost Ship, V. Zhukovsky’s Goblet and Orlando the Sword-Bearer (1911-1914), Poe’s Gold Bug (1922), Hugo’s Les Misérables (1923), books for the Academia Publishing House (1930-34), Aristophanes’ Comedies, Heliodorus’ Ethiopica, K. Immermann’s Münchhausen, Turgenev’s Prose Poems and French Folk Tales (1958).

  He produced about 50 bookplates, designed a decorative typescript (an alphabet on subjects from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 1910; An October Revolution Alphabet, 1927) and drew dozens of colophons, trademarks, emblems and labels. In the field of engraving, after a short fascination with coloured lithography, he worked in the techniques of xylography, linocut, metal engraving (burin and dry-point); quite often he tinted his prints in watercolour or printed a picture from two or three blocks. His works are mainly street scenes and views of the Petrogradskaya Side in Saint Petersburg, and depictions of Yeisk fishermen. He used the medium of metal engraving to produce the Central Park of Culture and Leisure series, still lifes, and flowers.

  He was constantly drawing from life, making sketches in the streets and parks of Leningrad, in Alma-Ata, and during his travels to Yeisk, Abkhazia, Novgorod, Arkhangelsk, the Northern Dvina and the seashore by Riga. During the last thirty-five years of his life he mostly produced drawings as works in their own right. His output amounts to many hundred of small-scale landscapes, interiors, and still lifes depicting fruit, flowers, fish, pharmacy vessels, etc. He died on 7 November 1973 in Moscow.

  GEORGY IVANOVICH NARBUT

  Georgy Ivanovich Narbut was born on 26 February (10 March N.S.) 1886 in the Ukraine (village of Narbutovka, Glukhov District, Chernigov Province, now Sumy Region). In 1906, on graduation from the school in Glukhov, he entered the Oriental Faculty of Saint Petersburg University, but immediately transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology and left the university in November 1907. He practiced drawing in the students’ circle which was advised by World of Art members. A pupil of Ivan Bilibin, he lived in his apartment from 1906 to 1912. In the winter of 1907-08 he studied in Yelizaveta Zvantseva’s studio under Leon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. In the autumn of 1909 he went to Munich where he spent about half a year, briefly attending Hollósy’s studio. During World War I he was an official of the Trophy Commission; in 1915 he worked as an artist of the heraldry department, where about 60 coat-of-arms were designed under his direction. In March 1917 he was an active member of the Committee for Artistic Matters attached to the Provisional Goverment. Later he moved to Kiev and took part in the establishment of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts. After it opened in September 1917, he was made Professor of Graphic Art, before becoming rector in February 1918. He was a member of the board and chairman of the Art Industry Department of the All-Ukrainian Committee for the Fine Arts, a member of the committee for the creation of a new emblem for the Ukraine, and led the commission for the organization of a museum based on the B. and V. Khanenko collection. He began to exhibit with the World of Art in 1904 and became a member of the association in 1913. He worked almost entirely in graphic art, especially in designing books and journals and producing illustrations for them. He contributed to the journals Satiricon, Apollon, Argus, Lukomorye, Gerboved (The Heraldic Scholar), Otechestvo (Fatherland), etc. In Kiev he designed and illustrated the journals Nashe minule (Our Past), Narodnoye khoziaystvo Ukrainy (The Popular Economy of the Ukraine), Zori (The Dawns), Solntse truda (The Sun of Labor), Mistetstvo (Art). His first illustrations and elements of book designs dated from his school period (The Song of Roland, 1903; the tales The Brave George, 1904; The Snow Maiden and Gorshenia, both 1906). Later he designed and illustrated many fairy tales and fables (often using a silhouette drawing, black or white, in combination with colours): The Crane and the Heron, The Bear (1907); The Terem, Mizgir (1909); Dance, Matthew: Don’t Spare Your Shoe (1910); B. Dix’s Toys (1911), The Year 1812 in Krylov’s Fables (1912), Russia Saved, after Krylov’s Fables (1913), The Nightingale (1912) and other Andersen’s fairy tales, S. Repnin’s Tale of the Love of the Beautiful Queen and the Faithful Prince (1916). He designed many book covers: Fiodor Sologub’s Book of Partings (1908), Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s Gogol: Creative Work, Life and Religion, V. and G. Lukomsky’s Vyshnevetsky Castle (1912), A. Sacchetti’s A History of the Music of All Times and Peoples (1913), The Russian Red Cross: 1867-1917 (1917). He designed and illustrated the books G. Lukomsky’s Old Architecture of Galicia (1915) and Old Landed Estates in Kharkov Province (1917), S. Troinitsky’s Coats of Arms of the Hetmans of Small Russia and The Coats of Arms of the Commander and Officers of the Brig Mercury (1915), T. Shchepkina-Kupernik’s Songs of Brussels Lace-Makers (1915), V. Narbut’s Hallelujah (1919). He produced an illustration for I. Kotliarevsky’s Aeneid (1919). He worked on The Ukrainian ABC in 1917 and 1919 (neither version was completed). He also produced bookplates, posters, designs for stamps, banknotes, textiles, wallpaper and flyleaf papers. His easel works were compositions in watercolour or gouache: the Cornet cycle of 1910 (A Cornet, Landscape with a Cornet, Organ, etc.); allegorical war scenes (Allegory of the War with Turkey, The Battle of Heligoland, The Destruction of Rheims Cathedral), etc. 1914-16); Roses in a Goblet (1915); architectural fantasies on the theme of old estates (Moonlit Night, 1916; Architectural Motif, 1917; Ruins and Mills on a Moonlit Night, 1919, etc.). He executed portraits (half-length, full-length, and group portraits) of his relatives, friends, and his family (1913-19), and created his Self-Portrait. He took part in t
he decoration of the large-scale exhibition Lomonosov and the Age of Empress Elizabeth (the painted decor of the Small Russia [Ukraine] Room, 1912) and executed wall paintings on S. Troinitsky’s estate. He died in Kiev on 23 May 1920.