Russian Pictures
Russian Pictures
Property from an Important Private European Collection
Auction Closed
November 26, 01:34 PM GMT
Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
YURI PAVLOVICH ANNENKOV
1889-1974
GREEN LANDSCAPE
signed in Latin l.l.
oil on canvas
68 by 57cm, 26¾ by 22½in.
Executed circa 1926-1927
Collection of Sarah Hunter Kelly (1896–1982), Paris and New York
P.Courthion, Georges Annenkoff, Paris: Chroniques du Jour, 1930, pl.3 illustrated b/w and listed
Exhibition catalogue Russische Kunst, Munich: Galerie Pabst, 1989, pl.15 illustrated
Munich, Galerie Pabst, Russische Kunst, 1989, no.15
Annenkov managed to leave the Soviet Union through his participation at the 1924 Venice Biennale, from where he went straight on to Paris. Once in France, he threw himself into painting, opening his first solo show at the Galerie Bing in 1930. The exhibition was accompanied by a book by the Swiss-French critic Pierre Courthion with illustrations of thirty-one works, of which the present lot is no.3. With its economy of line, flattened perspective and bold yet restricted palette, it most likely dates to 1926-1927.
By the time of Courthion's publication in 1930, Green Landscape was already in the collection of a Monsieur Kelly, Paris. Thomas Smith Kelly was the husband of the celebrated interior decorator Sarah Hunter Kelly (whose name is inscribed on the stretcher). Originally from Philadelphia, the Kellys moved to Paris at the end of the First World War and remained in France for nearly two decades. They soon fell in with a glamorous crowd including Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, Magritte and Man Ray, and bought the 100-room 18th century chateau Méréville outside Paris to house their growing art collection which included works by Quentin de la Tour, Thomas Hart Benton, Marcel Duchamp and the present lot by Annenkov.
We are grateful to the expert Vladimir Hofmann, the artist's former student and author of his catalogue raisonné, for providing additional cataloguing information.