Boris Israilovich Anisfeld

Shepherd Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the family of the artist)

New York, The Brooklyn Museum, The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition, 1918, no. 9 , traveling exhibition
New York, Reinhardt Gallery, The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition, 1924, no. 29
(Possibly) Pittsburg, Carnegie Institute, date unknown, no. 218
New York, Shepherd Gallery, Boris Anisfeld in St. Petersburg 1901-1917, no. 21
Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Boris Anisfeld "Fantast-mystic": Twelve Russian Paintings from the Collection of Joey and Toby Tanenbaum, 1989, no. 5, traveling exhibition

"Anisfeld Exhibition Still Big Attraction," San Francisco Bulletin, 28 May 1919
Emily Grant Hutchings, "Art and Artists," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 27 July 1919
Peyton Boswell, "Anisfeld Art in Striking Display," [source title unknown] New York, 1920
Christian Brinton, The Brooklyn Museum, The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition, New York, 1918, no. 9, plate XIV, illustrated
Carol Brown, "Works of Anisfeld shown in New York," The Day (New London, CT), 20 November 1984
Elisabeth Kashey et. al, Shepherd Gallery, Boris Anisfeld in St. Petersburg 1901-1917, New York, 1984, no. 21, cover plate (illustrated)
Marjorie Kinkead, "Boris Anisfeld: Colorist," Asia, 19 February 1919, p . 171
"Exhibition of Paintings by Boris Anisfeld at the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.," Academy Notes, Buffalo, N.Y.: Albright Art Gallery, January-March 1919, p. 9, illustrated
Roger J. Mesley, Art Gallery of Ontario, Boris Anisfeld "Fantast-mystic": Twelve Russian Paintings from the Collection of Joey and Toby Tanenbaum, Toronto, 1989, no. 5, plate V (illustrated)
N.N., "A Russian Painter and New York Water Colorists," The Nation, 16 November 1918, pp. 595-596
"On Exhibition at the Kingore Galleries," Brooklyn Eagle, 11 January 1920, illustrated
Laurence Campbell, "Boris Anisfeld at Shepherd," Art in America, April 1985, p. 207
Guy Pène du Bois, "Among the Art Galleries," The Evening Post Magazine, 2 November 1918, illustrated
Henry Tyrrell, "The Exotic Art of Boris Anisfeld," The Christian Science Monitor, Fall 1918
Henry Tyrrell, quoted in Christian Brinton, "The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition," Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, January 1919, p. 16

"I always see a thing first in color. It comes to me as a complete conception, and I rarely have to alter the essential character of my initial impressions. It is my habit...to put down the visions of color and form, such as they are, quite rapidly, and to amplify and intensify the scheme at some later time when I am so disposed" (Boris Anisfeld, 1918).

While a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Art, young Anisfeld met Igor Grabar, who introduced him to Sergei Diaghilev. Both men were impressed by the student's paintings, and they welcomed him to join the World of Art, an artistic society that had influenced his artistic maturation, and whose journal (World of Art, 1898-1904) had offered him insight into recent artistic developments in Western Europe. Anisfeld accepted their offer, and by 1906 he was exhibiting as a World of Art member in Russia.

Furthermore, Diaghilev invited Anisfeld to participate in the Russian show at the 1906 Salon d'Automne in Paris.  There his work was so well received that he was elected one of the Salon's prestigious sociétaires, and his name was established among Russians and Western Europeans alike. Even when placed amidst the latest works of known artists like Gauguin and Matisse, Anisfeld's work appeared both progressive and brilliantly complex, for he expertly combined and refined qualities of Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloissonism, Post-impressionism, and even Fauvism--a trend that had not yet reached Russia, but at which Anisfeld arrived on his own.

He began to work on September soon thereafter, in 1908, while visiting Tver (now Kalinin) on the Volga; he reworked the painting almost a decade later, as he prepared for his mid-career retrospective, The Boris Anisfeld Exhibition, hosted by the Brooklyn Museum in 1918. September--Tver exhibits many of the stylistic elements that characterized his early Russian oeuvre--thick impasto, bold brushstroke, intense color--yet it also exhibits remarkable maturity and surreal balance, creating a kind of visual poetry that mirrors the awesome cycles of nature. Although the composition is divided (both vertically and horizontally) by planes of color, these planes, juxtaposed and repeated as they are, unify the canvas with structure. The sweeping trees and their parallel trunks create a rhythm, while the background hills seem but a patchwork of autumnal colors that extend beyond the river's edge--not as a reflection, but as some fantasy, where seasons know no boundaries. At lower right appears a line of sheep, each bent to graze, and their forms create another pattern, harmonious and dreamlike.

Anisfeld retained this painting in his personal collection until his death in 1973, when he bequeathed the collection to his daughter. In 1984 she consigned several paintings to the Shepherd Gallery of New York, where September--Tver was chosen to illustrate the exhibition's catalogue cover. The painting was sold into a private collection at that time. It was last exhibited in Toronto, as one of twelve paintings that comprised Boris Anisfeld: "Fantast-Mystic," a traveling retrospective of the artist's most significant Russian paintings.