Nicolai Fechin 1881-1955

Rosemary Dobbins Lloyd, Berkeley, California, 1947 (acquired from the artist through Stendhal Gallery, Los Angeles, California)
Kitty Dobbins McCleave (her sister), Berkeley, California, 1959
Constance McCleave Brownridge (her daughter), Oakland, California, 1974
By descent to the present owner (her daughter), 1995

Los Angeles, California, Stendhal Gallery, Spring 1929

The Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1929, illustrated

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is lined. Under UV: Some pigments fluoresce erratically, but they appear to be original to the artist.
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.

Nicolai Fechin executed My Gardener’s Baby during the years he spent living in Taos, New Mexico from 1927 to 1933, the period considered today among his most prolific and successful. Born in Kazan, Russia, Fechin and his young family immigrated to New York in 1923. After living in Manhattan for three years, during which time he exhibited his work widely, Fechin developed tuberculosis. With his health deteriorating, he was advised by his doctor to seek a drier climate. Fechin and his wife, Alexandra, chose to relocate to Taos, which was then developing into a vibrant artist’s colony, attracting such modernists as John Marin and Marsden Hartley. Although he was initially reluctant to leave New York, Fechin’s creative impulses flourished in the new environment. Whereas, “the city had always depressed and overwhelmed him; here he felt an unusual closeness to the earth. In fact, the whole atmosphere was congenial: abundant sunshine, peaceful, majestic mountains, nourishing rivers and streams…it was conducive to good health and productivity” (Mary N. Balcomb, Nicolai Fechin, United States, 1975, p. 61-2).

Prior to leaving Russia, Fechin studied at the Imperial Academy of Art in Saint Petersburg where his primary teacher and mentor, Ilya E. Repin, exposed him to the ideas of Impressionism. A celebrated realist painter, Repin embraced the lighter palette and more expressive technique practiced by the Impressionists in the late 1870s, but considered their typical subject matter—sun dappled landscapes and moments of leisure—to be frivolous. Under Repin’s tutelage, Fechin cultivated an exuberant style of painting that recalled the immediacy and spontaneity of the Impressionists but maintained a strong focus on draftsmanship and design of the Russian realist tradition.

Encouraged in part by Repin’s emphasis on the importance of individualism in art, Fechin began to focus primarily on portraiture as early as 1904, but the works he executed in Taos distinguish themselves as among the most compelling of his oeuvre. In these paintings, including My Gardener’s Baby, Fechin emboldens his distinctive vision of the impressionist style with dramatic new juxtapositions of vibrant color inspired by Taos. For, in addition to its spectacular scenery, Fechin found himself deeply inspired by the colorful culture of the region’s indigenous population; their simple way of life and religious customs reminded the artist of his own childhood in rural Russia. Seeing potential subject matter everywhere, Fechin frequently asked his Indian neighbors to pose for him and became particularly eager to capture the children of Taos engaged in of their everyday activities. “Fechin was fond of portraying children," explains Galina Tuluzakova. “It is difficult to avoid sentimentality in children’s portraiture, to regard the child not as a future grown up person, but to emphasize the self-contained value of the still unshaped character, to convey the specific fluent quality of childish movements and the intrinsic vivacity of childish glances” (Nikolai Fechin, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2007, p. 451).

My Gardener’s Baby demonstrates the aesthetic shift Fechin’s work underwent during his Taos period. Here he renders the features of the child with careful attention, accurately capturing the subtle physical details specific to childhood. The sitter’s eyes meet the viewer with a dark, almost apprehensive intensity, giving the work a sense of powerful intimacy and demonstrating the artist’s interest in conveying the psychological character of his subject. The attention Fechin paid to facial expressions—particularly the eyes—as a means of communicating emotion can also be attributed to Repin’s influence. The strong draftsmanship the artist achieves here allows him to experiment more liberally with color and texture in the background and the clothing of the figure without forsaking the overall success of the composition. He applies strong passages of bold pink, deep brown and fiery orange to the canvas with exceptionally gestural brushstrokes that contrast vigorously with the solidly rendered face of the figure. An extremely energetic painter, Fechin often utilized a palette knife to thickly apply pure pigment to the canvas, also discarding tools entirely to use his thumb to rework details such as the subject’s specific expression. This unusual process, which his daughter remembered as imbuing his portrait sessions with a sense of excitement, ultimately contributes to the artist’s dynamic aesthetic, one that transcends Impressionism to suggest components of Fauvism, Expressionism and abstraction.