Nikolai Andreevich Tyrsa

Acquired from the family of the artist in 2006.

The canvas has been striplined. There is some light surface dirt. There are stretcher marks to the upper and right hand edge. There are some small patches of paint shrinkage. UV light reveals an uneven layer of varnish and no apparent signs of retouching. Held in a simple wood and plaster frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Executed in the mid 1930s

Nikolai Tyrsa was one of Leningrad's most prominent and versatile artists during the 1920s and 1930s. He turned to oils relatively late in his career, but by thinning his medium was able to translate the techniques he mastered as a watercolourist to produce gloriously free still lifes full of joie de vivre. In terms of colouration and tone Still Life recalls the bouquets of Renoir, but by using free brushstrokes more commonly associated with water-based mediums he infuses the canvas with an energy that anchors it firmly in the 20^th century.

Tyrsa never completed his course at the Imperial Academy of Arts. His student years were shaped instead by Leon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky who taught him at the Elizaveta Zvantseva School of Drawing from 1907-10. He participated in the renowned World of Art exhibitions in St Petersburg and Moscow in 1915 and the first Russian Exhibition in Berlin in 1922. In the years before the revolution Tyrsa rose to prominence for his drawings in the Russian art journal Apollon became an original illustrator in the 1920s. A solo exhibition of his works was held at the Russian Museum in 1941.