Martiros Sarian

V.Elsner, Purpur kifery. Erotika, St Petersburg: Alcyone, 1913, p.39 illustrated
S.Khachaturian, Martiros Sarian, Canada, 2001, p.228 illustrated 

The sheet has been laid on cardboard and is scored along all four edges. The left edge is slightly uneven. There are pinholes in all four corners. There is a diagonal surface scratch across the vegetation in the upper left and the hippopotamus' head. The surface is covered in a light layer of dirt. Held in a black painted wooden frame behind glass. Unexamined out of frame.
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An exceptionally rare work inspired by Sarian’s trip to Egypt in 1911, Pasiphaë comes directly from the collection of the artist’s family. It was executed in 1912 as an illustration to Vladimir Elsner’s poem about the Colchian princess Pasiphaë who became enamoured of a white bull as a result of Poseidon's curse. In his illustration Sarian deviates from the original story by transforming the protagonist into an Egyptian priestess and the bull into an orange hippopotamus. Pasiphaë’s head is shown in profile, while the rest of her body is face on, evoking the depictions of the gods on ancient Egyptian friezes that inspired many of Sarian’s works from this period, such as Walking Woman (fig.3) and Date Palm (1911, State Tretyakov Gallery). The Egyptian influence further manifests itself in the palette with its emphasis on ochres, the most commonly used pigment in Egyptian wall painting. By depicting the first encounter between Pasiphaë and the object of her lust, Sarian elevates the classical Greek myth about an unlikely romance into a timeless story of a mystical union between nature and mankind. This unusual reading of the poem complements Sarian's pantheistic outlook which he had explored in his acclaimed Fairy Tales and Dreams series (1903-1907).

The work was published in 1913 in Purpur kifery, the collection of erotic poems with which Elsner made his literary debut. Born in Kiev in 1886, Elsner was the editor of a popular four-volume anthology of contemporary poetry, but today he is remembered as the best man of Nikolai Gumilev who claimed to have taught Anna Akhmatova the art of verse writing. Purpur kifery was not terribly well received by contemporary critics: Valery Briusov likened the experience of reading it to drinking ‘lukewarm vodka’, and it is chiefly thanks to its illustrations, by the leading Symbolist painters Nikolai Milioti, Georgy Yakulov and Sarian, that Purpur kifery remains a much sought-after publication. Sarian’s other illustration for the anthology is in the collection of Martiros Sarian Museum in Yerevan.