Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky

Private Collection, United States
Thence by descent

This painting has most likely never been restored. The canvas is still stretched on its original stretcher. The paint layer is slightly dirty and unvarnished. There is a small paint loss in the blue shirt of the seated child on the far left and also to the immediate left of the standing girl with the red bandanna. In the head and background above the standing child on the furthest left there is a thin scratch. However, these are very minor; the panting is in very good state and will a small amount of restoration, it should be hung as is. 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 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."

From the very beginning of his career, Bogdanov-Belsky created images from the lives of peasant children. His many pictures were very popular in Russian society and often were illustrated in children's reading books. Above all he was a portraitist, receiving commissions from the imperial family, he even executed two portraits of Nicholas I from nature. Finding less and less artistic support as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Bogdanov-Belsky left Russia and traveled to Riga, Latvia in 1921. He was well received there and his first personal exhibition of paintings was a great success. He found new inspiration in the country's eastern territory of Latgalia, where he painted many images of peasant children—playing on the shores of rivers and lakes, ice skating, shepherding cows, catching fish and trudging logs—in the picturesque countryside.

The present lot represents an exceptional example of his series Children of Latgalia. From catalogues of the artist's exhibitions, the first picture to depict children by a campfire was exhibited in Copenhagen in 1929, while another was displayed in Riga in 1932. Bogdanov-Belsky continued to exhibit images on this theme, which became one of the most popular in his oeuvre, so much so that related works were published frequently in Latvian and Russian publications; for example, a variation of the present lot was reproduced on a black and white postcard during the artist's lifetime. By the Campfire gives a particularly powerful sense of the dazzling natural setting in which the children of Latgalia lived and played.