Lot 46
  • 46

Leon Shulman Gaspard 1882 - 1964

Estimate
300,000 - 500,000 USD
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Description

  • Leon Shulman Gaspard
  • Russian Snow Scene
  • signed Leon Gaspard, Russie and dated 1914, l.l.
  • oil on canvas
  • 26 1/2 by 24 in.
  • (67.3 by 61 cm)

Provenance

Berry-Hill Galleries, New York
William C. Foxley, Wyoming, 1987 (acquired from the above; sold: Sotheby's, New York, December 2, 1993, lot 93, illustrated in color)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

Condition

Please contact the department at 212-607-7280 to obtain a copy of the report prepared by Simon Parkes Art Conservation.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Leon Gaspard was born in Vitebsk, Russia in 1882.  As a young boy, Gaspard accompanied his father on fur and rug trading expeditions through the Siberian wilderness.  Gaspard would sketch each village they visited as his father conducted business with the nomadic tribesmen of the Kirgiz, Kalmyk and Kazakh peoples.  The vibrant and exotic display of color, design and patterns he observed on these trips became a constant theme in Gaspard's later works and he continued to travel extensively throughout his life in search of artistic subjects.  Although Gaspard depicted many cultures in his artwork from the Siberian Steppes to Mainland China, Mongolia and Tibet, to Morocco and Tunisia and finally Taos, New Mexico, he is most renowned for his Russian winter scenes.  His distinctive paintings, like Russian Snow Scene, which are filled with movement and rendered in brilliant colors, form a historic legacy of exotic cultures, cultures with which the majority of the contemporaneous Western world had no firsthand knowledge.  

In 1909, after relocating to France and exhibiting in the Paris salons and galleries, Gaspard married Evelyn Adell, a wealthy American ballet student.  The artist and his new wife spent their unusual two-year honeymoon travelling through his homeland, riding on horseback as far as Irkutsk, Siberia.  Gaspard created hundreds of sketches during this journey, which he turned into finished works upon their return.  The resulting paintings were a great success in Paris and brought Gaspard some notoriety in the Paris art world.  Completed in 1914, Russian Snow Scene dates to the months before the outbreak of World War I when Gaspard would take a break from painting and enlist in the French aviation corps as an aerial observer.  The present work, probably developed from his earlier sketches, depicts a small village in the Russian landscape, blanketed by snow and surrounded by trees and mountains.  The cerulean blue onion domes, typical of Russian church architecture, and the parade of villagers, bundled in their brightly colored traditional costumes, stand out brightly against the muted landscape.  Rick Stewart notes, "the artist's ability to indicate a wealth of visual information in one small, vibrant sketch...alive with movement, [is] brought about by Gaspard's attention to composition, expressive brushstroke, and the deft juxtaposition of spots of pure color.  The bustling procession of people seems to mirror the picturesque jumble of buildings" (Leon Gaspard, Berry-Hill, 1986, p. 5).

Gaspard said of his 'vibrant' and 'expressive' style, "color is the liberating element", the artist "looks first for the possibility of a combination of colors—for high color notes against neutral background colors; for that atmospheric quality which gives his sketch a distinctive mood" (Leon Gaspard, 1986, p. 7).  Frank Waters has described the artist's portraits of vanishing peoples and cultures as "a barbaric, brilliantly beautiful world that no longer exists, but which has been caught and held out of the remorseless stream of time by the strikingly colorful palette of Leon Gaspard....  This is a limitless wilderness of steppe, desert, and mountain, and across it, into ancient villages and teeming marketplaces, trek the native clans and breeds and tribes who have known it from time immemorial...and snow.  A patch of snow is the signature on Leon Gaspard's best paintings" (Leon Gaspard, 1981, pp. 1-2).