Ivan Pavlovich Pokhitonov

Following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Walter F. Altschul was forced to flee Prague and abandon his successful glove manufacturing business there. Emigrating via England and Bolivia he eventually settled with his family in New York. Altschul’s passion for art and his entrepreneurial spirit led him to carve out a new career in the art and antiquities trade. He first worked at Parke Bernet, later opening a gallery on Madison Avenue. An art collecting guide of the time described Altschul’s gallery thus: ‘The delightfully cluttered little gallery of Walter Altschul on the street level at 889 Madison Avenue (near Seventy-third Street) is crammed with paintings of many periods, sculpture ranging from ancient Egypt to the nineteenth century, ceramics, miniatures, and varied antiquities. Altschul’s specialty is seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and he usually manages to have some good examples on hand despite the brisk demand. Altschul puts unusual energy and sagacity into the search for artworks for his gallery. Collectors are sometimes astonished at the importance of paintings he may have propped on a chair or hung in an obscure corner’ (T.Farah, Art Collecting: For Pleasure and Profit, New York: Cornerstone Library, 1964).

Landscape with Haystacks and a Flock of Sheep formed part of Altschul’s private collection. It belongs to a series of landscapes executed during Pokhitonov’s years in France. In the early 1880s following a number of successful exhibitions and his contract with the famous art dealer Georges Petit, Pokhitonov was seeking to satisfy the growing demand for his paintings and produced a number of plein air compositions in the environs of Paris. His recurring subject of figures embedded in nature was influenced by the landscapes of the Barbizon school, which Pokhitonov first discovered at their retrospective exhibition at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris.