Niko Pirosmani

The White Dukhan'

The Collection of Tamar Tsitsishvili, acquired in 1949

Thence by descent to the present owner

Drosha (The Flag) magazine, 1977, No.3, illustrated
K.Bagratishvili, Niko Pirosmani: 1862-1918 , Leningrad: Aurora, 1983, p.278, no.14, illustrated (erroneously numbered 10 and with incorrect, possibly framed, measurements)

Structural Condition The artist's canvas has been attached to a wooden board and while ideally it is preferable to have canvas lined onto canvas as opposed to canvas lined onto board, this is providing a stable and secure structural support. There are slight lines of craquelure which are all stable and secure Paint surface The paint surface has an even varnish layer and inspection under ultra violet light shows retouchings predominantly around the framing edges and in the four corners where the canvas appears to at some stage to have been creased. There are very minimal retouchings on the deer. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in good and stable condition and no further work is required for reasons of conservation.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

 

 

It is fascinating to imagine the moment when Ilya and Kyrill Zdanevich and Mikhail Le Dantu first encountered the paintings of the unknown and untrained Niko Pirosmanishvili in the cellar of a Tbilisi tavern in 1912. At the height of Russia's primitivist movement, self-taught artists were considered a bridge to the remote past, but the expressive power of Pirosmani's imagery was especially relevant in the context of Russia's primitivist movement, establishing a mythic point of origin for her culture in the arts of the East, particularly of Georgia and Armenia, argues Jane Sharp.

 

Although he died impoverished, alone and almost forgotten, Pirosmani's  art has been re-examined in the later 20th century and now holds a privileged place in Georgian as well as Russian cultural history, inextricably associated with a wistful nostalgia and an innocent world view untainted by modern social values, a romantic ideal perfectly illustrated by the artist's biography. He spent much of his life drifting from one Georgian tavern, or dukhan, to the next, earning his lodging by carrying out handy-work for the innkeepers, painting shop signs or decorating the walls of their premises (fig.1). Indeed it was mainly the dukhan owners who became his unofficial patrons.

 

It was in one such tavern where the present work was found before it was acquired by the actress Tamar Tsitsishvili.  Tamar was famed for her striking looks which were considered to embody the ideal of Georgian female beauty, she posed for a number of Georgian artists, including Lado Gudiashvili, and Igor Grabar, whose 1942 portrait of Tamar hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery (fig.2).

 

In an interview with the magazine The Flag in 1977, Tamar recalled, 'In the summer of 1949, we spent our summer holiday in the countryside of Gidani.'  The family decided to stay in a local house on the way. Once inside, 'my eyes were immediately drawn to the painting which was nailed to the wall. I recognised this was a work by Pirosmani and asked the owner, how she had acquired it'. Her brother, who went by the nickname 'Polish' as he had learnt to speak some Polish during the war, recounted how he had rescued the painting from the White Dukhan and how it had been stored in their attic until recently when his sister had brought it downstairs to decorate their house.

 

Pirosmani produced a large quantity of works throughout his life but few have survived. Writing about the artist in 1922 V.Archuadze recalls that he would readily cry, 'Give me some cardboard and a few paints, and in two or three hours I'll paint you a little fox or whatever you like. It's no trouble', (cited in E.Kuznetsov, Pirosmani (2nd ed.), Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1984, p.88.)

However, he had little business acumen, often refusing to take money for his commissions or giving away his paintings as gifts. Unable to afford materials of good quality, he was economical in his use of paint, and executed many of his compositions, such as this one, on thin and brittle card. As a result, few have survived.

 

Nonetheless it was Pirosmani's creative scope in the face of these conditions which astonished his contemporaries. 'His unique manner, ... the limited means with which he achieves so much, - are magnificent' (F.Luchisty, 'In the studios of Larionov and Goncharova', Moskovskaya gazeta, 7 January 1913). He worked with a restricted palette of mainly brown, ochres, cadmium and zinc white, 'setting himself astonishing problems with colour which he is able to resolve in an astonishing way', as Kirill Zdanevich commented in Zakavkazkaya rech', on 13 February 1913. (cited in E.Kuznetsov, Pirosmani (2nd ed.), Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1984, p.88.)

 

Compositionally, the offered lot follows the formula of many of Pirosmani's animal portraits, with the subject captured in a static pose and closely cropped. There is little space between the foreground and background planes, creating an impossible perspective often found in the studies of naive artist Henri Rousseau (fig.3). In contrast to the more usual method of painting with dark pigments on a light ground, Pirosmani applies light colours to a matt, black ground, endowing his subject with an ethereal, luminescent quality and strengthening the impression of an unreal, fantastical world.

 

The subject of a young roe deer with large brown eyes sipping unawares from a forest stream is a recurrent one in the artist's oeuvre (fig.4). Pirosmani's choice of such a gentle and vulnerable animal is not an accidental one and has been seen by many art historians as a spiritual self-portrait, representative of the artist's own anxieties. Comparisons have also be made with the late medieval church frescoes which invariably influenced Pirosmani's artistic vocabulary. Contemporary Georgian viewers would have also associated the image of the deer with Saint David Garajeti, who lived in the desert of Geraja and, according to legend, was sent a deer by God every morning so that he could drink its milk.

 

It is these unmistakable anthropomorphic qualities which have made Pirosmani's animal portraits amongst the artist's most popular compositions. In a short review of a  small exhibition of Pirosmani's works in 1916, a Kavkaz journalist commented, 'If you forget that you are simply looking at an animal, and you're suddenly gripped by a feeling not dissimilar to mystical fear.'  (cited in E.Kuznetsov, Pirosmani (2nd ed.), Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1984, p.180)