VALENTIN ALEXANDROVICH SEROV | Still Life with Hare

Olga Serova, the artist's widow

I.Grabar, Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov: zhizn' i tvorchestvo, Moscow: Knebel, 1914, p.281 listed under works from 1880

I.Grabar, Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov, zhizn' i tvorchestvo, Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1965, p.380 listed under works from 1880 as Zayats na stule

D.Sarabianov, Valentin Serov: Paintings, Graphic Works, Stage Designs, Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1982, p.279, no.29 listed as Dead Hare on a Chair

In 1879, at the age of fifteen, Valentin Serov was taken on as a student by Ilya Repin. As well as shadowing the master while he worked, Serov undertook an intensive programme of study set by Repin, and, as part of this, produced many still-lifes with the aim of developing and refining his artistic skills. As Serov’s biographer, Igor Grabar, writes of this period, ‘now there was nothing that could distract him from painting, and he gives himself up to it from morning to evening, almost without rest. He spends the entire day in the studio and works on the still-lifes set by Repin.’ (Grabar, Serov, Moscow 1913, p.39). The present lot is one of two still-lifes by the artist featuring a hare but the only oil. Following the artist’s death in 1911, both still-lifes were in the collection of Serov’s widow Olga.