Ivan Pavlovich Pokhitonov

Madame Léon Brouwers, Liège
Brussels, Galerie Georges Giroux, Tableaux modernes et anciens et des antiquités, lot 353, 18 - 19 October 1957, no.24, Le Printemps, BEF 2,200
Private collection, Belgium
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Liège, Cercle des Beaux-Arts et de l'Oeuvre des Artistes, Exposition du peintre russe Ivan Pokitonow, 12 - 24 May 1906, no.43, Coquin de printemps! (Russie)
Liège, Cercle des Beaux-Arts, Iwan Pokitonow, 16 - 30 April 1910, no.58, Printemps
Liège, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Parc de la Boverie, Société Royale des Beaux-Arts. Salon Triennal de 1924, 10 May - 29 June 1924, no.65, Printemps

The panel is sound. There are minor frame abrasions at the edges with some corresponding paint loss and indentations in the paint layer from a frame along the top and right edges. A couple of small paint chips are visible in the grass in the lower left corner. There are a few very fine cracks in the yellow pigment of the right-hand tree. Inspection under UV light reveals no obvious signs of retouching. Held in an attractive gold coloured frame with plaster mouldings. Unexamined out of frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

One of two paintings in this collection bearing the Cyrillic letter ‘zh’ for Zhabovshchizna below the signature, this small panel was twice exhibited during the artist’s lifetime and is the clearest example of his mature skills as a miniaturist that so entranced the public and the press when he first began exhibiting in the early 1880s:

‘Messrs Bogoliubov and Ivan Pokhitonov are talented representatives of Russia. There is much charm and adroitness in the tiny landscapes which Mr Pokhitonov seems to have painted with a needlepoint. Lovers of miniatures will consider them pure masterpieces’ (A.Michel, Le Parlement, Paris, 1882).

Pokhitonov’s landscapes are, above all, companionable; whether a hunter out with his dog, children at play, a pair of fishermen, or as in this intimate spring landscape, a couple sitting under blossom just out of sight of the house beyond.

The present lot will be included in the second volume of the catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Olivier Bertrand and due to be published in 2017.