Sergei Vasilievich Malyutin

The Fine Art Salon of Nadezhda E. Dobychina, Petrograd, No.3947

Original canvas. There is a layer of slightly discoloured varnish. There is a small chip of paintloss to the middle of the upper portion of the work and also one in the lower left quadrant. There are lines of craquelure in places throughout, especially the lower left hand corner. UV light reveals no apparent retouching. Held in a gold painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Described by Alexander Benois as 'one of our finest artists', Sergei Malyutin left a significant artistic legacy despite the relatively small number of his works which have survived.

 

A regular exhibitor with the Union of Russian Artists, Malyutin's early figurative canvases are characterised by their strong colour scheme and expressiveness, traits which anticipate the flair he would demonstrate in his portraiture, considered the pinnacle of his artistic oeuvre.  In the early 1900s Malyutin decided to create a gallery of portraits celebrating Russia's pre-Revolutionary intelligentsia, including artists, writers, collectors and publishers, as well as cultural figures such as Nadezhda Dobychina (1915) in whose salon the offered lot was exhibited. Typically, these works depict the subject's head and torso against a monochrome background, to create a stark juxtaposition with the sitter's clothes.

Deeply affected by the death of his wife in 1908, Malyutin began a series of portraits of his children, Olga, Vladimir, Vera and Mikhail, to systematically record their changing personalities as they grew. These very intimate works reveal great emotional sensitivity, an artist wanting to capture 'the children of a new age, full of upheavals and contradictions, children who have become adults ahead of their time' (G.Golynets, S.Malyutin: Selected Works, Moscow: 1987)

In this remarkably modern portrait of his eldest son, Vladimir, Malyutin's confident modelling of his subject's facial features, enhanced by the strong light source to the left, suggests a and resolute and headstrong character. The artist employs a rich crimson ground to underscore the complex psychology of a boy caught between childhood and youth.

In the 1919  Stockholm Exhibition of Russian Art catalogue, a work from 1914 from the collection of Dr. Emil Hultmark, with measurements matching those of the offered lot and titled Portrait study is listed as number 31.