Vladimir Davidovich Baranov-Rossiné

Paris, Galerie Jean Chauvelin, Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné, 6 February - 6 March 1970, cat.no.25, listed with dimensions as Le Pont, 1911

The paper appears to have been mounted onto a canvas board. The sheet is slightly undulated and there is a small loss to the lower left hand corner which shows the canvas beneath, and also smaller losses to the top right and lower right hand corners. The paper is a little dirty along the inner mount edges, and has become slightly worn, with some fine lines of craquelure to the ground, again mostly along the edges and to the corners. There is some smudging to the pencil lines. Held in a modern gold painted moulded plaster frame and under glass.Unexamined out of frame.
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This exceptional early landscape is thought to date from between 1909-1911, a time of immense and rapid change in his own artistic development and that of his circle in Southern Ukraine. Drawn into the orbit of the Burliuk brothers and the landmark Venok exhibitions in 1907 (Moscow) and 1909 (Kherson), Baranov-Rossine was fast becoming one of the frontrunners of the Russian avant-garde. A conservative reviewer of the first Venok exhibition in Moscow in 1907 picked out Baranov-Rossiné as 'the best of the group', but was taken aback by the novelty of their attention to brushwork. 'Everything has been sacrificed to the new device of the brush, to a new form and grouping of strokes... ' (V.Muratov, Vystavka kartin 'Stefanos', Russkoe slovo, 4 January 1908, no.3). The technical goals of Venok, according to another, more receptive critic, was to 'reduce drawing to a minimum, to stylize colours, to find a new, more expressive, more nervous stroke' (A.Timofeev, Po vystavkam. Venok, Rul, 18 January 1908, no.8).

The present landscape hints at the fan-shamed elements and rhythmic composition that became his hallmarks. In his early work, he frequently turned to less formal materials of gouache on paper and oil on cardboard as opposed to full-scale canvases. Parallels to the present work can be found in Stockholm (1910) or Pink Castle (early 1910s), gouache on cardboard and similarly signed BwR in the lower right: again, clearly defined turrets, an emphasis on reflection to underpin the composition and the same curving tri-partite clouds. Gorelin famously described Baranov-Rossiné's pictures as 'full of blue air' - this is surely one of the best examples.

"He approaches very specifically the treatment of landscapes, sunsets, simple views like barges on a river, a group of trees and so on. He paints in big, rough brush strokes as if pieces of paint are thrown together to form a mosaic. If you stand close, it is difficult to make either head or tail of it, but at a short distance the picture gives the impression of quite a pleasant combination of harmonious half-tones. As a young but undoubtedly talented artist, LBaranov can be forgiven for his extremities, his excessive roughness; he seems to stick to his path as an original and not to be lead astray into the imitations of new schools, which is all too easy.' (V.Yanchevsky, Exhibition of Impressionists, Rossia, 26 March 1909, no.1024).

We are grateful to the artist's son, Dimitri Baranoff-Rossiné for providing additional cataloguing information.