Russian Pictures
Russian Pictures
Portrait of Henrietta Pascar
Lot Closed
June 8, 02:04 PM GMT
Estimate
180,000 - 250,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Petr Petrovich Konchalovsky
1876 - 1956
Portrait of Henrietta Pascar
signed in Cyrillic and dated 1923 l.l.; further signed in Latin, numbered 516 and dated on the reverse
oil on canvas
Canvas: 109 by 91cm, 43 by 36 in.
Framed: 112 by 94.5cm, 44 ¼ by 37 ½ in.
An actress of Romanian Jewish descent originally from Bessarabia, Henrietta Mironovna Pascar studied at the Sorbonne in her youth, later taking acting classes in Vsevolod Meyerhold’s studio before becoming the director of the first State Children’s Theatre in Moscow in 1919. By that time, Henrietta was already married to an influential entrepreneur and dedicated revolutionary, Semyon Lieberman. Following the October Revolution, the family's connections with Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first People's Commissar for Education, led to her occupying an institutional position within the newly created administration. ‘As member of the directory, Pascar was leading the creative process’ – wrote Natalya Sats, a fellow stage director and Pascar’s successor at the State Children’s Theatre (N.Sats, Novelly moei zhizni, Moscow, 1984, p.140).
Henrietta staged predominantly Western classics including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Jungle Book, and fairy stories by Hans Christian Andersen. Yuri Annenkov later recalled in his memoirs: ‘One of the most artistically perfect children's theatres was founded in the early years of the Revolution by Henrietta Pascar, the most talented and inventive pantomime actress and stage director. The audience of this Moscow theatre consisted mainly of primary schoolchildren and pupils from orphanages, brought to the theatre by their teachers and educators’ (Yu.Annenkov, Dnevnik moikh vstrech, vol.2, New York, 1966, p.21).
In the fall of 1923, however, Henrietta’s career as a children’s theatre director ended abruptly after staging Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, where the British flag was raised on the stage and a toast to the king was made. Quite unexpectedly for the director, the play was banned after two performances, and Henrietta Pascar was dismissed from her position. In 1924, she was granted permission to accompany her husband on a trip abroad and would never return to Russia. She eventually settled in Paris, where she would continue her career as an actress and cabaret performer under the pseudonym of Madam Pascar.
Painted by Konchalovsky shortly before Henrietta’s emigration from the Soviet Union, the present portrait skilfully captures the eccentric and flamboyant personality of a woman who pioneered the Russian children's theatre tradition.