Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel

Acquired in Paris by a Russian émigré collector in the interwar years
Sotheby's London, Icons, Russian Pictures and Works of Art, 24 November 1992, lot 32

Hamburg, Pavillon Tokio, Hamburg Art Week, June 2011

The hollow of the reverse along the upper edge is filled with plaster to secure the mounts. There are a few scattered firing glaze defaults on the lower edge and several minor chips along the edges and in a few places elsewhere, including a few of the fish scales.
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These exceptionally rare sculptures are superb examples of the world-class ceramics that were produced in the 1890s at the Abramtsevo ceramic workshop, based at Savva Mamontov's country estate until 1896, when it moved to Moscow. The artistic colony which Mamontov supported was fundamental to the spread of new ideas on a Neo-Russian style and Art-Nouveau in Russia, and as with corresponding movements in Western Europe, the new style permeated every aspect of the arts. As Benois marvelled, the Abramtsevo artists 'strive to ornament life itself, they aim to invest their soul, their identity, that mysterious spark of Apollo in other words, which is the essence and salt of every artist, not only into their paintings and sculptures, but into every aspect of life, everything around them' (A.Benois, Istoriya russkoi zhivopisi v XIX veke, p.387). 

It was at Abramtsevo that Vrubel was inspired to produce some of his greatest works. 'I'm back at Abramtsevo again, and again I am overwhelmed', he wrote to his family in 1891. 'I can hear that intimate note of our native land which I am so desperate to capture on canvas and in ornament' (M.Vrubel, Correspondence, p.79).   

The estate workshop was originally revived in order to restore the decorative tiles at Abramtsevo and to train local artisans, but the resident artists were quick to use the kiln for their own less utilitarian purposes. Serov, Polenov, Vasnetsov and Korovin all experimented in the workshop, but it was Vrubel who had the most instinctive feel for the medium and his enthusiasm was stimulated further in 1891 when he and Mamontov discovered old maiolica techniques on their trip to Italy. On returning to Abramtsevo, Vrubel worked with the young chemist Petr Vaulin (1870-1943), and developed a new technique which reduced the time and heat of firing. An iridescent, rainbow colouration resulted from the reduction of metal oxide used in the glaze. Vrubel harnessed the decorative possibilities of this effect and transformed his fluid ceramic sculptures with this mysterious metallic patina. In the late 1890s the Abramtsevo ceramics were exhibited widely, at Nizhny Novgorod (1896), Diaghilev's exhibition of Russian and Finnish artists (1898), Mir iskusstva (1899), and at the Paris World Exhibition (1900).

The German painter Georg Baselitz was deeply struck by Vrubel's unorthodox style and abstract techniques; they recall 'the Russian fairy tale, The Stone Flower... An artist leaves his family, his wife and is transported inside a mountain, into a crystal cave where there is another woman, a fairy, and where he creates great art' (Baselitz quoted in Michail Wrubel, Der Russische Symbolist, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1997). 

The present works include some of the most sophisticated and highly-worked versions of these enchanting fairy-tale sculptures, and in terms of sheer originality, confirm Vrubel's position as a key transitional figure in the history of Russian art. In the words of Eleanora Paston of The State Tretyakov Gallery, the group represents 'a unique and missing link in the study of Vrubel's decorative ceramics'.

This spectacular ceramic has been the subject of intensive scholarship and is now considered to be a much earlier conception and inspired by Lermontov's Rusalka. It has traditionally been titledTsar of the Sea and linked to Rimsky-Korsakov's opera, Sadko which premiered at Mamontov's private opera house on 26^th December 1897. Until recently it was thought to date from 1898-1900, but analysis of the version at The State Tretyakov Gallery has revealed that the techniques and materials (slip-cast moulding, baked clay, white enamel and oxidised glazes) are in fact characteristic of the works produced at the Abramtsevo ceramic workshop in the early 1890s.

This dating fits with Vrubel's life and work at the period. In the winter of 1890, Vrubel was commissioned by Petr Konchalovsky to illustrate a 50 year jubilee edition of Lermontov's works. Among Vrubel's illustrations was Rusalka in which the mermaid sings of the knight sleeping on the riverbed, where 'the shoals of golden fish swim' and 'comb the silky locks of his hair'. Vrubel finished work on the illustrations in March 1891 and he is known to have developed his ideas across various mediums simultaneously (for example, both his painting Sitting Demon and ceramic Head of a Demon date from the spring of 1890).

In a letter to his wife in the summer of 1904, Vrubel states his satisfaction with the present conception: 'Both are good works, the mask of the Livian lion and the mask of the Tsar of the Sea, in which golden fish are caught up in his wave-like locks and his beard. One could use it as a vase for visiting cards, but I am determined to give both pieces to Savva Ivanovich; to decorate the dining room - the Tsar of the Sea and Spring; for my room I intend the lion's head' (quoted in P.Suzdalev, Vrubel, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 199, p.241).

The present version is perhaps his most dramatic and successful rendition: the blues gather in ink-like pools and the details of the fish weave beautifully through the many layers of the work. The organic ornamentation recalls Alexander Benois' comment in 1904, 'His art can be likened to an enchanted garden where all the flowers, alive and fragrant have been invented, created and grown by the gardener-magician'. 

We are grateful to Eleonora Paston of The State Tretyakov Gallery and Vilyams Nevsky of the Abramtsevo Museum for providing additional cataloguing information.