From the diary entries of Konstantin Somov, the celebrated artist, St Petersburger, academic, World of Art member and later, émigré, we know that the painting Sleeping Lady on a Sofa in a Yellow Dress, (or as the artist himself called it Sleeping Lady in a Room in 18^th Century Dress) was painted at the behest of Bernhard Venyaminovich Elkan, dentist, art-lover and one of the most ardent collectors in Petrograd.

Elkan had already decided to commission a version of Somov’s painting Sleeping Young Woman (1909) owned by the Moscow collector Vladimir Girshman in January of 1918, soon after the events of the Russian Revolution and in spite of the radical socio-political changes in the country. However, it didn’t happen until May of 1919, after the nationalisation of Girshman’s collection which ended up in the Tretyakov Gallery (fig.1).

Unlike Girshman’s Sleeping Young Woman, which is painted in gouache and watercolour on paper laid on canvas, Elkan commissioned his painting for 7,000 rubles, of roughly the same size only in oil on canvas. He immediately paid 5,000 rubles upfront which was no small sum in those troubled times. It was largely thanks to such support that, in the words of his future wife Anna Morisovna Elkann, ‘our Petersburg artists could survive and continue their work through cold and hunger’. (quoted in A.Elkan, ‘Dom Iskusstv’, Mosty, No.5, Munich, 1960, p.298).

It took Somov roughly a month to finish the picture. On the 21^st August 1919, enchanted by its artistic virtues, Elkan collected it from the artist in ‘complete rapture’. It is true that the figurative and compositional resolution of the work and the objects in the depicted interior repeat components of the 1909 painting, but there are differences: the flowers on the four-part screen have been replaced by stylised images of 18^th century figures in costume; the ornamental rug on the floor is brighter; the generally uplifting, highly lyrical mood of the painting; its bright palette dominated by the yellow of the charming young woman’s luxurious dress and the turquoise of the sofa upholstery. In the 1919 painting there is one crucial new detail: at the centre of the composition the artist has placed a small book with a five-line verse, a limerick, which is a nod to the poetic inclination of the collector’s soon-to-be wife, Netochka (Anna) Elkan, who in ten years would go on to become the spiritual centre of the Russian émigré poets in post-war Paris. She worked alongside the poet and art historian Sergei Makovsky, and in the 1910s edited the St Petersburg journal Apollon. It is entirely possible that the painting was a present from Bernhard on the occasion of her 20^th birthday.

Somov frequently repeated images of sleeping, dozing and reclining beauties throughout the three decades of his career and they were always highly sought-after among his admirers. Apart from the ones that belonged to Girshman and Elkan, similar works could be found in the collections of M.S. Karzinkin, V.V. Nosov, D.I. Tolstoy, A.A. Korovin, I.I. Rybakov and many others. In July of 1920 Somov painted the small oil Sleeping Lady in a Yellow Dress in a Garden for the famous Petrograd collector and graphic art expert Fedor Notgaft (1896-1942) to whom, in Anna Elkan’s words, her husband was ‘bound in ardent friendship. They were forever discussing art and swapping pictures’. In 1921 Elkan founded the Petrograd publishing house Akvilon (1921-1923), decisive proof that the ‘particular Petersburg culture of books and love for them’ was alive and well. Both collectors counted artists among their friends, it was not by chance that Elkan’s collection included works by Dobuzhinsky, Benois, Lancere, Kustodiev, Golovin, Annenkov, Vereisky, Mitrokhin, Konashevich and in 1923, 20 works by Somov, including the present lot Sleeping Lady on a Sofa in a Yellow Dress.

We are grateful to Dr Elena Yakovleva, art historian and senior research fellow of the Russian Institute of Art History, for providing this catalogue note.