Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev

Ada Sergeevna Lazo, the artist's widow

V.Petrov, Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev, Leningrad: Khudozhnik RSFSR, 1972, p.264, listed under works for 1937 as Krasnoflotets (s vintovkoi)

The canvas has been lined and slightly undulated to the lower left and upper right corners. The paint surface is slightly dirty. There is a pinhole to the upper area of the left arm, with associated paint loss, and another small spot of paint loss to the left sleeve opening. Vertical lines of craquelure are visible to the upper left and middle right of the composition, and in places elsewhere. UV light reveals no apparent signs of retouching. Some pigments fluoresce under UV light. Held in a brown wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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Vladimir Lebedev is widely known as a pioneer of illustration, who created, in a long and fruitful collaboration with Samuil Marshak, some of Russia’s best-loved children’s books. Equally, his designs for the windows of the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) are among the most iconic images of the 1920s.

His position as one of the most influential Soviet graphic artists has often, unjustly, eclipsed his output as a painter.  The artist became seriously interested in oil painting late in his career, and was honoured with a solo exhibition at the State Russian Museum in 1928. Due to the changing political climate of the 1930s however, he became increasingly isolated and a victim of scathing criticism in the press. On 1 March 1936, only weeks after the infamous attack on Dmitri Shostakovich, Pravda published an article titled “On Artists-Daubers", in which Lebedev’s illustrations were denounced as “formalist”. Marginalised and disappointed, Lebedev found comfort in his art. He turned to oil painting, particularly portraiture, and increasingly painted for himself and not for public display, creating some of the most intimate and lyrical works in his oeuvre.

Portrait of a Red Fleet Sailor is part of a very small cycle of portraits of Soviet sailors, all dating from 1937, some of which are in the collection of the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg (fig.1). Typical of Lebedev’s portraiture of the period, the treatment of the background and the well-organised composition reveal the lasting importance of the artist’s experiments with Cubism of the 1920s, while his refined technique is influenced by French Impressionism and particularly Renoir. As with his other portraits, Lebedev seems less interested in images of Soviet heroism than in focussing on the sitter, giving the picture this intense and intimate character.