Vasili Vasilievich Vereshchagin

Sale: American Art Association, New York, Vassili Verestchagin Collection, November 17, 1891

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is in very good state. The canvas has an old glue lining and the original pinholes in the corners are still visible. The paint layer is slightly dirty and some splashes of brown substance are visible in the white headdress. Apart from cleaning the paint layer and applying a couple of small dots in the background, no further restoration will be necessary.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Vereshchagin is known first and foremost for his outstanding depictions of battles scenes. Yet during his many trips throughout Russia and around the world—including Western Europe, the Near East, India, the United States and Japan—he enthusiastically recorded faces of the various people he encountered, expressing his ethnographical interest in depicting the details of indigenous everyday life while maintaining the individuality of his models. This lot comes from a series of Palestinian sketches relating to the artist's travels from 1883-1884. A reproduction of this work, based on Parisian photographs taken from the monograph by Fedor Bulgakov, entitled V.V. Vereshchagin and his Depictions, was published during Vereshchagin's lifetime.  At the end of the monograph is a brief explanatory text for each image. This sketch is accompanied by the following note: "The style of an Arab woman can be called glorious.  It is quite often in places where there is a concourse of people that one can meet a woman with such striking beauty: yet, as is true for all Eastern women, they can age very quickly.  Arab women of lower classes endure lives of hard labor, while the wealthy consider labor to be degrading and spend their time in endless gossip." From November 1888 to November 1890 there was an exhibition of Vereshchagin's paintings in New York at the American Art Gallery, which concluded with the sale of an entire collection of paintings, including in part the sketches and paintings of this Palestinian series.