Lot 20
  • 20

Ilya Efimovich Repin

Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Ilya Efimovich Repin
  • Portrait of Countess Vera Kankrina
  • signed in Cyrillic l.l. and bearing the sitter's autograph and date II / V 1906 t.r.
  • watercolour, bodycolour and charcoal over pencil on card
  • 41 by 33.5cm, 16 1/4 by 13 3/4 in.

Exhibited

Rome, Esposizione internazionale di Roma, 1911
New York, Kingore Galleries, The Ilya Repin Exhibition, 1921, no.24

Literature

Exhibition catalogue Esposizione internazionale di Roma. Catalogo della mostra de belle arti, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche, 1911, p.293, no.36 listed as Contessa Kankrin
C.Brinton, The Ilya Repin Exhibition, New York, 1921, no.24 listed

Catalogue Note

Lots 20 and 21 come from a series of graphic portraits executed at Penaty, Repin's studio and summer home in Finland, between 1906 and 1911. The identical sizes and grey card supports suggest they were once part of the same album, and, indeed, when Repin was asked to exhibit 39 of them in a dedicated gallery at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome he gave them the collective title of The Nordman Album, a reference to Natalia Nordman, writer, suffragette and Repin's companion, whose hospitality attracted many notable visitors to Penaty including Maxim Gorky, Vasily Polenov and Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Countess Vera Petrovna Kankrina, née Strukova (1864-1920) was Natalia Nordman's relation and an old friend of Repin's. The chair of the Development Commission of the Red Cross Committee in Russia, Kankrina was an early supporter of Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky’s pioneering work in colour photography. In 1905 she signed an agreement to publish his colour photographs of major sights of Russia. These were printed in a series of postcards and sold in railway station kiosks across Russia.