by Leek, Peter.
Between 1918 and 1921 she taught at the Institute of Photography and Photo-technology, from 1934 to 1936 at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of the All-Russian Academy of Arts in Leningrad. She participated in exhibitions from 1898 on and became a member of the World of Art in 1899.
In 1926 she joined the Four Arts group. She worked in various media: wood engraving, watercolour, drawing, and, considerably less, in lithography, oil and tempera painting. The dominant subjects of her work in all media were townscapes, mainly the views of Saint Petersburg. She is known mainly as a xylographer; producing both coloured and black-and-white engravings. In 1901 she created her first series of wood engravings devoted to Saint Petersburg for the World of Art journal, which included one of her most famous prints, Saint Petersburg: New Holland.
From 1901 to 1905 she created a number of coloured prints depicting the palace-and-park ensembles of Pavlovsk and Tsarskoye Selo, and between 1908 and 1910 a series of colour views of Saint Petersburg (The Columns of the Exchange and the Fortress, A Perspective View of the Neva, The Mining Institute, The Kriukov Canal, The Admiralty Clad in Snow, etc.).
She produced two series of black-and-white engraved illustrations for books — for V. Kurbatov’s Saint Petersburg (1912) and for N. Antsiferov’s Soul of Saint Petersburg (1920). Among her best works of the 1910s and 1920s featuring Saint Petersburg are The Biron Palace and Barques (1916). Tackle (1917), The Moika by the Singers’ Bridge (1919), Smolny (1924), View from the Trinity Bridge (1926), and The Fontanka and the Summer Gardens in Hoar-Frost (1929).
In 1922-23 she produced a series of small-scale black-and-white engravings, Pavlovsk, which was published as a book with her introduction. Besides Saint Petersburg and its environs, her xylographs captured landscapes and urban views in many countries: Finland Beneath Blue Skies (1900), Fiesole (1904), Saint-Cloud and Fireworks in Paris on July 14 (both 1908), Venice by Night and Villa d’Este (both 1914), Versailles: The Pool (1927), etc. She often used the medium of wood engraving to produce bookplates for, among others, V. Riabushinsky (1911), Sergeï Lebedev (1923-24), Ivan Pavlov (Our Library, 1929), Dmitry Mitrokhin (1940), and herself (My Epitaph, 1946). Sometimes she turned to lithography: she produced a series of landscapes at Tsarskoye Selo, Pavlovsk, and Peterhof (1904); a series of twelve sheets making up her album Saint Petersburg (1922), and a series of postcards with views of Leningrad for letters to the front (1942). Drawings and watercolours produced throughout her creative career depicted Saint Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad, Tsarskoye Selo, and Pavlovsk (Tsarskoye Selo: A Bench, 1904; Saint Petersburg: View from the Peter Park, 1912; Pavlovsk: The Temple of Friendship, 1921; Petrograd: Red Pillars, 1922; Leningrad: The Kirov Islands in Early Autumn, 1937), Finland (Rocks over a Fiord at Nodendal, At Sunset, both 1905), Paris (Notre-Dame de Paris, Musée Cluny, 1906), Italy (Venice: The Grand Canal; Villa Borghese: A Pine Grove, both 1911), Holland and Belgium (Amsterdam: Old Warehouses; Bruges: A Group of Houses, both 1913), Spain (Segovia: View of Alcazar, Landscape near Toledo, both 1914), oil derricks in Baku and the town of Koktebel in the Crimea (Baku: Bibi-Eibat, Old Oil Derricks, 1916; Koktebel: Sura-Kaya in the Evening, 1924). She also practiced portraiture, her first attempts having been made in Repin’s studio. She produced a number of watercolour portraits of artists, actors, writers, and scholars: Ivan Yershov (1923), Alexander Benois (1924), Andreï Bely (1924), Sergeï Lebedev (1924, 1932), Yelizaveta Kruglikova (1925), Maximilian Voloshin (1927), and a tempera self-portrait (1940). She wrote Autobiographical Notes. She died on 5 May 1955 in Leningrad.
ZINAIDA YEVGENYEVNA SEREBRIAKOVA
Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova was born on 28 November (10 December N.S.) 1884 on the estate of Neskuchnoye near Kharkov. She was the granddaughter and great granddaughter of architects, Nicholas Benois and Albert Cavos respectively, the daughter of the animal sculptor Yevgeny A. Lanceray, Alexander Benois’ niece and the sister of the artist Yevgeny Ye. Lanceray and the architect Nikolaï Lanceray.
After the death of her father in 1886, the family moved to Saint Petersburg and settled in the Benois family house, visiting Neskuchnoye, from 1898 onward, every summer.
In 1901 she studied for less than a month in Princess Tenisheva’s private school (before its closure); from the autumn of 1902 to the spring of 1903 she was in Italy studying the art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; from 1903 to 1905 she studied in the Osip Brais studio in Saint Petersburg and copied works by the Old Masters in the Hermitage.
In 1905-06 she trained in drawing and watercolour at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, visited museums and exhibitions. In 1911 and 1913 she traveled to the Crimea, in 1914 she toured Switzerland and Italy.
From 1918 to 1920 she lived in Kharkov, working in the Archeological Museum, and then returned to Petrograd. She contributed to exhibitions from 1910 and became a member of the World of Art in 1911.
She worked in many genres and media (oils, tempera, gouache, watercolour; from the early 1920s on she often resorted to pastel). She produced a large number of landscapes at Neskuchnoye and during her travels to Italy, Switzerland, and the Crimea: Capri, 1903; Orchard in Bloom, 1908; Winter Crops, 1910; Before a Thunderstorm, 1911; Spring in the Crimea, Mountain Landscape (both 1914); Landscape, The Village of Neskuchnoye, Kursk Province, 1916; View of the Peter and Paul Fortress, 1921, etc.
She produced many portraits and portrait studies: Christia the Peasant Girl (1903), A Peasant Girl (1906), a portrait of a nurse (1907), a student (1909), Olga Lanceray, Nadezhda Chulkova and Georgy Chulkov (1910), Yevgeny Lanceray (1912), Boris Serebriakov (1913), Sergeï Ernst (1921), Anna Cherkesova-Benois with her son (1922), etc.
Children’s portraits occupy a special place in her work: At Dinner (1914), The Guard House (1919), Boys in Sailors’ Jackets (1919), Girls at the Piano (1919); she also produced many self-portraits: At Toilette: A Self-Portrait (1909), Girl with a Candle: A Self-Portrait (1911), Self-Portrait with Daughters (1921), Self-Portrait with a Brush (1924), etc.
Between 1913 and 1917 she created a number of paintings devoted to peasant life: A Bathhouse, Harvest, Bleaching Linen, Sleeping Beauty, producing many preliminary drawings, sketches, and studies, which sometimes have an artistic value of their own, such as A Bathhouse. Study; Peasants; Peasant Woman with a Kvass Jar; Bleaching Linen. Study.
In 1922, 1923 and 1924 the theme of ballet became prominent in her work: portraits of dancers in theatrical costumes (George Balanchivadze-Balanchine, Alexandra Danilova, Lydia Ivanova, Yekaterina Geidenrich, Valentina Ivanova, her daughter Tatyana, etc.), scenes in ballet dressing rooms during performances (Pugni’s Pharaoh’s Daughter, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Nutcracker, Bayer’s Puppenfee; Ballerina before Her Entry, Blue Ballerinas, etc.). In the same years she turned to the still life which she often combined with portraits: The Attributes of Arts. Still Life, Tata with Vegetables, Katia with a Still Life, In the Kitchen, Herring and Lemon.
In 1915-16 she took part in the Kazan Railroad Station project, producing sketches for paintings in four lunettes: Turkey, Japan, India, and Siam. In the autumn of 1924, having received a commission for a decorative painting, she left for Paris and did not return.
She made journeys to England, Germany,Belgium, Morocco, Italy, Switzerland, Brittany, and the south of France. She painted portraits (including those of Sergeï Prokofyev, Konstantin Somov, and Sergeï Lifar), landscapes, and still lifes. She died on 19 September 1967.
IGOR EMMANUILOVICH GRABAR
Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar was born on 13 March (25 N.S.) 1871 in Budapest; in 1876 the family moved to Russia. During his studies at the Katkov Lyceum (1882-89) he attended Sunday classes of drawing at the Society of Art Lovers where he studied under V. Popov. From 1889 to 1893 he was a student at the Law Faculty of Saint Petersburg University; at the same time he covered the whole course of the Faculty of History and Philology. From 1894 to 1896 he studied at the Academy of Arts in the studios of Pavel Chestiakov and Ilya Repin. From 1896 to 1901 he li
ved in Munich and attended the school of Anton Ažbe (later he taught there); he also studied architecture at the Munich Polytechnic. From 1895 onward, he made frequent visits to Europe (Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Denmark, Britain, Greece, Spain); visited Egypt in 1914 and the USA in 1924. He lived in Saint Petersburg until 1903 and then moved to Moscow. He contributed to exhibitions as from 1898. He was a member of the World of art from 1901 on, of the Union of Russian Artists beginning in 1904, of the Moscow Painters group as from 1924, and of the Society of Moscow Artists from 1927 on. From 1913 until 1917 he was a trustee, then, until 1925, director of the Tretyakov Gallery. In 1914-15 he rearranged the display on the art-historical principle; in 1917 he published the gallery’s first ever catalogue raisonné. In 1917-18 he headed the Museum Department of the People’s Commissariat for Education. In 1918 he organized the State Central Restoration Workshops and was their director until 1930; from 1944 to 1966 he directed scholarly research there. Between 1919 and 1930 he organized and participated in expeditions to restore and discover works of art in the central and northern areas of Russia. From 1920 to 1946 he was a professor at Moscow University (lecturing on art restoration); from 1937 to 1947 he was director and professor of the Moscow Art Institute. From 1943 to 1946 he was the director of the All-Union Academy of Arts and the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad. In 1944 he proposed establishing an Institute of the History of Art attached to the USSR Academy of Sciences and was its director to the end of his life. His artistic legacy consists mainly of easel paintings, with the exception of drawings produced at an early age, before the Academy of Arts, for the journals Shut (The Jester) and Strekoza (The Dragonfly) (1890-91) and a large number of illustrations for Gogol’s stories The Overcoat, The Sorochintsy Fair, The Night Before Christmas, and others (1893-94). In 1892, during a journey down the Sukhona and Northern Dvina Rivers, he produced a series of watercolours depicting works of wooden architecture and used them to make originals for postcards issued in 1903 by the Publishing House of the Red Cross Society of St. Eugenia. His favourite genre in painting was landscape, in which he worked throughout his career: Sunbeam (1901), September Snow (1903), March Snow (1904), studies and paintings depicting hoar-frost (1903-08, 1918-19, and every winter after 1941), Rowan Tree (1915), On the Lake (1926), A Creek (1930), Winter Landscape (1954), The First Thawed Patches of Spring (1957), etc. He also often painted still lifes: Flowers and Fruit on the Piano (1904), Chrysanthemums (1905), After the Meal (1907), Delphinium (1908), Pears on a Blue Tablecloth (1915), Roses on the Piano (1939), etc. Portraiture, which had already attracted him in his school years, occupied a prominent place in his work in the 1930s and 1940s: he produced portraits of his brother Vladimir Grabar (1901), his mother Olga Grabar-Khrabrova (1924), Piotr Neradovsky (1931), Nikolaï Zelinsky (1932), S?etlana (1933), Sergeï Prokofyev (1934, 1941), Sergeï Chaplygin (1935), Kornei Chukovsky (1935), Boris Grekov (1945) and others, as well as more than twenty self-portraits (1897-1956). From 1909 to 1914 he designed the Zakharyin Hospital complex near Moscow. Between 1894 and 1960 he published many critical articles in various journals and newspapers; from 1899 to1912 he worked for the journals The World of Art, The Old Years, and The Balance. He wrote monographs on Isaac Levitan (together with Sergeï Glagol), Valentin Serov, Ilya Repin, Theophanes the Greek, Andreï Rublev, books about old Russian art, restoration and preservation of works, articles for encyclopedias, and the book My Life: an Automonograph. He initiated and directed the publication of the first scholarly History of Russian Art (vols.1-6, 1910-14, unfinished; he was also the editor and author of its most important sections). In the early 1950s he again undertook the publication of a multi-volume History of Russia Art, being one of its editors and authors (five volumes appeared during his lifetime, from 1953 to 1960; the work was completed in 1969). He died in Moscow on 16 May 1960.
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.