Yuri Pavlovich Annenkov

Original canvas which is slightly loose in the stretcher. There is surface of the painting is a little dusty and there are lines of craquelure and small patches of paintloss throughout. The varnish has slightly discoloured. UV light reveals no apparent signs of retouching. Held in a painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Yuri Annenkov was an artist of many talents and veritable polymath, who was involved in fine art, experimental theatre, literature and performed at public spectacles celebration the October Revolution. He found fame in 1922 with the publication of Portrety, a collection of 80 portraits of writers and artists including Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, Maxim Gorky, Alexander Benois, Jean Pougny and Nathan Altmann: all great figures of Russia's 'Silver Age'. These portraits, frequently reproduced, have since become the iconic images which have coloured the personalities of their sitters.

Annenkov's portraits, at the same time arrestingly realistic yet also displaying a very personal artistic interpretation, unquestionably influenced the genre of portraiture during the twentieth century. By applying certain elements of cubism, as well as collage and relief to the traditional psychological approach, Annenkov discovered a singular artistic language, which he employed to great success for example in his depiction of Alexander Tikhonov from 1922, sold at Christies's Important Russian Pictures Sale in London on 28 November 2007 Lot 379 (fig.1).

As a result of his fame, Annenkov was commissioned to paint the portraits of leading Soviet party figures such as Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky and Zinoviev. In 1924 he won a GOZNAK competition to design the representation of Lenin which would be used on official publications.

In July 1924 Annenkov left Petrograd to exhibit his works at the 14^th Venice Biennale and never returned to Russia, deciding instead to settle in Paris. There, he continued to expand his gallery of portraits in both pencil and oils. The offered work is believed to be a portrait of the French publisher, Bernard Grasset (1881-1955), who printed the first edition of Marcel Proust's Du côté de Chez Swann in 1913 after it had been rejected by three major publishers. Grasset's business was at its height during the 1920s when this portrait is likely to have been painted. Stylistically, it is very close to the series of portraits painted in Russia. The model is characteristically represented within the environment of his work – here, books the capital of a Classical column, point to his interest in art and history. Stylistically, the work is comparable to portraits of Boris Suvarin (1926), the brothers Andre and Maurice Paz (1928), the explorer John Reed (1933) and Leon Blum (1936), which are all executed in a similar manner.

 

This portrait will be included in the forthcoming Yuri Annenkov catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by André and Vladimir Hofmann.