Valentin Alexandrovich Serov

The Hunt with Borzois is a rediscovered masterpiece from 1906 by an artist whose works rarely come up at auction.  Its palpable energy, revolutionary technique and bold rendering of pictorial space confirm its sophistication and importance within Serov's oeuvre.

Valentin Serov joined the World of Art group in late 1890s and quickly gained authority within it. The group was known for its emphasis on style, monumentality, nostalgia for the past and consummate craftsmanship. What distinguished Serov within the World of Art was his versatility, an organic union of the old and the new. Even while Serov’s style matured and changed, he never entirely abandoned heritage in favor of the modern.

Serov’s landscapes were distinguished by their simplicity and modesty; he adored the drab autumn hues of fields, tumbledown huts, unassuming animals and people. His outdoor scenes are unusual in that they lack judgment or criticism, they are observed by the calm consciousness of an artist.

In Serov’s work, we note an exquisite sense of harmony, the way the surface of each object is reflected in the light of adjacent objects. In The Hunt, the color of the fields marvelously plays off the flecks of gold on the horses and the decorative saddles. The figures in Serov’s landscapes freeze in unexpected poses; we sense that the surface is only a fragment of the entire spatial environment. Serov transitioned to historical pictures at the turn of the century.  His first series of illustrations were done for N. Kupetov's book Royal Hunting in Russia.  In this series he is most aligned with the World of Art philosophy, as rather than depict a specific historical event, Serov captures the spirit of an epoch, a historical genre. Works such as Peter II and Princess Elizabeth Riding to Hounds and Young Peter the Great Riding to Hounds are forerunners of the present lot, both in their technical execution and in subject matter (figs. 1 and 2).  Especially notable are the gracious Borzois hounds, leaping lithely through space.

Serov was particularly affected by the events of “Bloody Sunday” on January 9, 1905, when the Tsar’s soldiers opened fire on a crowd of civilian protesters. As a result, Serov was enraptured by the revolution that followed afterward, and the way he approached landscape changed as well.  An appearance of Russian Art Nouveau entered his style, as well as a more engaged attitude to reality. He was moving away from mere reproduction at the same time as he sheepishly admitted, “I am, excuse the expression, a realist after all.”