Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky

Acquired directly from the artist by the gandfather of the present owner in the 1940s
Thence by descent

Riga Art Museum, 1932, cat. no.1

Segodnya newspaper, 27 March 1932, ill.
Z.Ligers, Bogdanoff-Belsky. The Life of a Russian Painter, Riga, 1943, ill. black and white

Original canvas. There are frame abrasions to the lower edge and a light surface scratch along the lower edge. UV light reveals some retouching to the aforementioned scratch and minor retouching in places elsewhere towards the edges of the picture. Unframed.
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Executed in 1931.

Religious themes recur periodically in Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky's Russian period. The artist first addressed the subject of the faith of Orthodox children in his 1889 diploma work A Future Monk which he painted at the Moscow school of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. It was received well at the exhibition and the young artist rose to prominence when it was bought by the famous Moscow collector Nikolai Soldatenkov.

The offered lot was painted after Bogdanov-Belsky's emigration to Latvia, in the summer of 1931 in a small church on the Loborzh estate, not far from the town of Rēzekne. The estate belonged to Maria Voshchina, the daughter of the famous Russian writer and poet, Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov. The children in the painting lived in the nearby villages and were eager to pose for the artist. The five girls hold candles in front of an icon of the Madonna and Child as they listen to the priest's sermon; the atmosphere of the church instils in them a belief in God, and with this, a sense of morality.

 

The 4^th exhibition of Professor Bogdanov-Belsky's work opened in the Riga Art Museum in February 1932 to great acclaim. The offered lot was published in colour in the paper Segodnya on 27^th March 1932 and bought by a private collector. Bogdanov-Belsky decision to publish a photograph of the offered lot in Liger's monograph suggests he valued the work highly and he painted this church interior for a second time in 1939 (fig.1). This later version repeats a few of the children from his 1931 painting and was subsequently acquired by the Riga Art Museum.

We are grateful to Nina Lapidus, art historian and author of the monograph on Bogdanov-Belsky (Moscow, Bely Gorod, 2005) for providing this note.