Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova

Leeds, Bristol, London, The Arts Council of Great Britain, A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings and Designs for the Theatre, Larionov and Goncharova, 9 September - 16 December 1961

M.Chamot and C. Gray, eds, Exhibition catalogue A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings and Designs for the Theatre /  Larionov and Goncharova, Arts Council of Great Britain, London: Graphis Press, 1961, no.89, illustrated and listed as 'Lent by the artist' for the purposes of the exhibition

Original canvas which is undulated in places throughout. There are flecks of paint loss in a number of places to the tree trunk second from the left and a further small area of paint loss to the top of the right hand tree trunk. There is a layer of surface dirt and there is very minor wear to the edges. UV light reveals no apparent signs of retouching. Held in a white painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Winter. Wood Gatherers draws on a theme that Goncharova had first shown at the Golden Fleece exhibition in Moscow in 1909 and again returned to in 1911 (fig. 1). Scenes from Russian peasant life had been the main focus of Goncharova's oeuvre between 1908 and 1912. In particular, she was 'attracted to austere images redolent of a dimly remembered past' (D.Sarabyanov, Russian Art From Neoclassicism to the Avant Garde, Thames and Hudson, 1990, p.265) where figures engage silently in their daily toil in complete harmony with the landscape.

The offered work brings together several dominant strands of the artist's oeuvre and is remarkable for its modernity. The rough-hewn simplicity of the composition is reminiscent of the popular Russian prints which had inspired Goncharova's early primitivist work. The combination of a restrained palette with starkly reductive modelling hints at the the dynamically interactive linear forms of her earlier rayonist compositions.  Here, the dark silhouettes of the tallest trees create a visual rhythm across the canvas, cutting through the expanse of subtly-shaded whites, and the figure laden with wood at the centre of the composition is picked out in deep browns that render him as much a part of the landscape as the trees themselves.