The Russian Sale

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Lot 40
  • 40

Pyotr Petrovich Vereschagin, 1836-1886

bidding is closed

Description

  • Petr Petrovich Vereschagin
  • market day in nizhny novgorod
  • signed in Cyrillic l.l.
  • oil on canvas
  • 78 by 105.5cm., 30¾ by 41½in.

Provenance

Icons, Russian Pictures and Works of Art, Sotheby's, London, 13th June 1995, Lot 169

Catalogue Note

Born in Perm in 1834, he was the son of the painter Pyotr Prokofievich Vereschagin (d.1843), and the brother of the painters Vasili Petrovich and Michael Petrovich Vereschagin.  He initially studied under his father and then with his grandfather (the artist Ivan Vasilievich Babin), before enrolling at the Imperial Academy of Arts from 1858 to 1865, where he specialized in landscape painting, studying under Sokrat Vorobiev.  He was made an Academician in 1873.

 

Pyotr Vereschagin painted many town views including Nizhni Novogorod, Pskov, Sevastopol, Kiev, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, several of which are in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.  The offered work should be directly compared with a view of Nizhni Novgorod of 1872 (See State Tretyakov Gallery-Catalogue of the Collection: Paintings of the Second Half of the 19th Century, Volume 4, No.382, p.176), which is itself a variant of an earlier work of 1867 in the Nizhni Novgorod State Art Museum.  The Tretyakov Gallery work was previously published in F.I.Bulgakov, Nashi khudozhniki, St. Petersburg 1890, Vol.1, p.86.  The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, also holds a number of works by the artist, including a view of Nizhni Novgorod, dated 1867.

 

Founded in the thirteenth century, at the confluence of the Rivers Volga and Oka, Nizhni Novogord occupied a position of strategic importance.  In terms of commerce and security, it dominated the river routes into Central Russia Siberia and the Urals, and also south to the Caspian Sea, the Transcaucasus and Persia.  The town played a vital role in the struggle against the Tatars, and was used by Muscovy as its base for the conquest of Kazan in 1592 and it was from here in 1611 that Minin launched his offensive to liberate Moscow from the Poles.  It became best known for the annual summer fair that was re-located to the town in 1817, having been held nearby since the early 16th century. It was the biggest fair in the country selling all manner of goods and established Nizhni as the chief commercial centre in Russia.