ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH KUPRIN | Autumn Bouquet Against Blue Background (Krylatskoe)

Tatiana Anisimova-Kuprina (1902-1987), the artist's wife
A gift from the above to the family of the present owners

Leningrad, Academy of Arts of the USSR, A.V.Kuprin, S.D.Lebedev, N.P.Ulyanov, 1977

K.Kravchenko, A.V.Kuprin, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1973, p.10, no.89 illustrated b/w; p.89 illustrated; p.235 listed
Exhibition catalogue A.V.Kuprin, S.D.Lebedev, N.P.Ulyanov, Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1977, p.24 listed under works from 1923

Original canvas which is buckling in places. The stretcher is protruding in the lower right corner as well as in the upper left. There are frame abrasions with associated paint loss. There are fine cracks in places, notably along the right edge and to the lower half of the left edge. There is a horizontal crack running from the right edge towards the top of the vase. There are further cracks in places. There are several scratches and flecks of paint loss to the table in the lower right. The surface is dirty with accretions and spots of dirt in places, including a drip mark to the background along the right edge. Inspection under UV light reveals some minor crude retouching to the aforementioned scratches in the lower right corner. Held in a silver coloured wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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‘Everything is brought together in the centre’ wrote the art critic Lev Mochalov of Kuprin’s paintings, ‘and then from this central nucleus the main compositional rays propel outwards like droplets which spin out from a stone when it splashes into water’. The tight knot of autumn leaves in the present still life spray outwards from the centre in exactly the manner Mochalov describes, lending a sense of dynamism to the composition characteristic of Kuprin’s best works and accentuating the contiguity of forms with overlapping colour.